Load should be one or less?

noob_0001 · 05-22-2005, 09:09 PM

I just checked at my hosting account and I had a load of over 4 and their was a little red light flashing in the Cpanel. That is bad, yes? Did they over sell?

rwh · 05-22-2005, 10:49 PM

There could be a lot of causes for this. Backups running, logs/stats running, mysql db dump from another user. Load of 4 should be ok in these conditions.

rck · 05-23-2005, 05:15 AM

A load of 1 means: 1 CPU is used to 100 %. So if you have 4 CPUs, a load of 4 means: All 4 are busy.

If you only have 1 CPU and a load of 4, that means: Even if your CPU was 4 times as fast it still would be used to a 100 %. So I'd say: Yes, this is bad, if you have less than, say, 5 CPUs.

Usually, your server load should be up to 80 % (of all CPUs), after that it's time to switch to a faster server.

It would of course be interesting, whether that's just a single peak or whether you have that high a load all the time.

noob_0001 · 05-23-2005, 09:52 AM

Thanks guys. I just checked and it is at 1.58 for 1 cpu

rwh · 05-23-2005, 07:47 PM

4 is not a bad load, we have one dedicated client that runs between 4 and 6 24 hours a day with 200 to 300 users online with heavy images and some audio clips and it runs fine and all the members notice no lag in time. They have operated like this for over 1 year. While I agree 1 and below is what we try to acheive but it is not always needed.

Jonathan VanSchaack · 05-23-2005, 08:45 PM

A load of 1 means: 1 CPU is used to 100 %. So if you have 4 CPUs, a load of 4 means: All 4 are busy.

thats not totally true, its 100% of the cpu cycles not actual cpu usage

so depending on if your running HTT or not and how much ram for swap ext.. you might be fine.