What is the system load average?

Kaz Wolfe · Jul 15, 2016

I have a message in my hosting control panel

The system load average is 14.01

This is an automated message notifying you that the 5 minute load average on your system is 14.01.
This has exceeded the 10 threshold.

One Minute - 32.35
Five Minutes - 14.01
Fifteen Minutes - 5.67

What is the system load average? and how to calculate this or how to know my VPS server is overloading?

Thanks
Kaz

ExpertHosters · Jul 15, 2016

Of-course the server is overloading. The server load at that point of time was 32.35. Its too high for a VPS. You need to check which process is causing this much load on the server. The server might go down if the load keeps going higher.

LJSHost · Jul 15, 2016

Hi Kaz,

The load average is the run-queue utilization averaged over the last minute the last 5 minutes and the last 15 minutes.

The values of these numbers depends how many cpu cores you have on your VPS

Single core example: load average: 0.75(current), 0.14(5 mins), 0.09(15 mins)
Multi core example (4 cores):load average: 3.75(current), 2.14(5 mins), 1.87(15 mins)

The load average should be lower than the amount of cores assigned to your VPS.

You can find out how many cores you have by running: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor

Kaz Wolfe · Jul 17, 2016

LJSHost said:
Hi Kaz,

The load average is the run-queue utilization averaged over the last minute the last 5 minutes and the last 15 minutes.

The values of these numbers depends how many cpu cores you have on your VPS

Single core example: load average: 0.75(current), 0.14(5 mins), 0.09(15 mins)
Multi core example (4 cores):load average: 3.75(current), 2.14(5 mins), 1.87(15 mins)

The load average should be lower than the amount of cores assigned to your VPS.

You can find out how many cores you have by running: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor

Thanks for explaining me!

I ran this command, I have 4 CPUs

# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
processor : 0
processor : 1
processor : 2
processor : 3

Is there a formula to calculate the load average base on number of CPUS? and how to know which parts on my hosting server are making it high load? it is possible?

I want to refer to your formula

Single core example: load average: 0.75(current), 0.14(5 mins), 0.09(15 mins)
Multi core example (4 cores):load average: 3.75(current), 2.14(5 mins), 1.87(15 mins)

LJSHost · Jul 17, 2016

To find whats creating high load average on your server, you need a process monitoring tool such as 'top'
Top will display all running processes and display how much cpu and memory each process is using, it should only take a quick look to find out where the load problem is.

As you have 4 cores you want to keep the load under 4.0

Mr.Wizard · Jul 20, 2016

LJSHost said:
The values of these numbers depends how many cpu cores you have on your VPS

If we increase number of CPUs then it will decrease server load?

ExpertHosters said:
Of-course the server is overloading. The server load at that point of time was 32.35. Its too high for a VPS. You need to check which process is causing this much load on the server. The server might go down if the load keeps going higher.

I agree with ExpertHosters, the server load is too high, I have ever faced with this problem, one of my sites get suspended because it was high load on a shared hosting.

What is the system load average?

Kaz Wolfe

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