[wplug] Understanding Load

[Vance Kochenderfer]

Kevin Squire <gentgeen at wikiak.org> wrote:
> I have been diving into the performance of one of our servers lately.
> Trying to figure out if the hit in performance is due to one of the
> changes made at network level, server level, or is it just that the
> server is getting used more.
> 
> On thing I am trying to understand is "Load" ... the systems (1min) load
> during the day can go as high as 80 ... but tends to bounce around 3-10

The "System Monitoring with dstat" article from the April 2007
edition of The Open Pitt
<http://www.wplug.org/w/images/0/0b/Wplug-top034.txt> gives the
definition for what load numbers represent and one way to find out
what's causing a high load.

The vmstat program seems to be more commonly preinstalled, and
gives some (but not all) of the same info.  See for example:
<http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/3/html/Introduction_to_System_Administration/s1-resource-rhlspec.html#S2-RESOURCE-TOOLS-VMSTAT>

(BTW, if anyone would like to write a helpful article for The Open
Pitt like Patrick's, we'd be happy to publish it.  Contact me off-
list if you're interested!)

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger