Server Load 1.12 (4 cpus)

[ckh84]

I click the server status in cpanel.

i get this
Server Load 1.12 (4 cpus)(red colour)

and sometime go to 2.x because of i try to restore db and run sql query.

WHat is this mean.... red colour mean overuse?

>20 will get suspend?

[flexidx]

that means the server is comming to a halt. According to the Pres. this is a DDOS attack, or some other site on the server with poorly written scripts.

good luck

[ckh84]

can you explain more ont this? sorry, cause i'm new...

1) Server Load 1.12 (4 cpus)(red colour)
does this mean the cpu i'm using?

WHat is this mean.... red colour mean overuse?

>20 will get suspend?

And DDos because of me or?

[admin]

Not sure why it was red, but a server load of 1.2 is FANTASTIC for a quad processor system. Really, our servers are quite capable at anything under a load of 10, so you should be quite happy with 1.2.

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com

[Nick Manley]

The CPU load is a calculation that measured load averages typically found in the Unix "uptime" command. It's kind of complicated.

Truthfully the load average is the sum of the number of processes currently running and the number of processes in the queue. In this definition, the term processes doesn't mean programs, daemons, or services running. It means the actual calculations taking place on the CPU at that moment.

Bluehost has 4 CPUs on all of their servers. If you had a load average of 4.0 that would mean that each CPU is calculating 1 processe for the given amount of time. It's a time based thing. The load average isn't calculated live on the spot, but rather how much work in general it is doing for a given time frame.

Lets assume that it is a 5 minute time frame. Over the last 5 minutes your server has an average 1.2 processes running or in the queue. However keep in mind that you have 4 CPUs doing work for you. Each CPU only had an average of 0.3 processes running or in the queue.

I remember when I was doing research on this topic myself. I read that it could be thought of as percentages. If you had 2 CPUs a 2.0 load average would mean it is operating at 100%. Ignore that!!! That is completely wrong. It's a time based thing. If you try to convert it to a percentage it would suggest that the CPU is running at full capacity for that entire length of time. In reality it could simply be that it had a rather large queue but only for a brief moment and that would scew the results. I wanted to make this clear since I've seen that false idea of turning it into a percentage spreading across a few different websites.