Server load on my Webhost

[stuppy]

Hi, Quick question.

I recently bought some webspace on a new webhost. In CPanel when I go SERVER STATUS, what does the CPU Load actually mean?

This is what it says at the moment :

Server Load 0.59 (2 cpus)

About 20minutes ago it was at like 2.16.

Cheers

 

[Augmented]

It's the (average) number of processes waiting to use the CPU over a set period of time - that figure is probably either over 1 or 5 minutes. For example Apache [httpd] will be running several processes, as will mysqld. The more process requiring power from the CPU, the higher the load will likely be as they, in simple terms, have to each sit and wait idle for the currently active process to finish eating CPU before they in turn can run.

Load spikes aren't that much of a problem. If the load peaks for 1 second to 50 and then drops down, you're not likely to notice it. Sustained load is the problem. If it peaks to 50, and stays that way, then you're going to find everything that requires CPU to be very slow - overloaded webservers with high-traffic sites are often slow to respond on dynamic/scripted pages e.g. this forum with too many users will experience slowdown as there will be many httpd processes requiring CPU power to process the PHP scripts.

 

[Beansprout]

Bear in mind that webservers often have two or more CPUs, so to get the 'actual' load value you should divide the number by the number of CPUs. So, if it's a dual processor system, then a perfectionist would call a load number above 2 'bad'.

However, it greatly depends what's causing the load - but in this case, 0.59, 2, etc are nothing to worry about