Reading Server Load in VPS WHM?

Avatar
  • Answered
We recently upgraded our account to VPS.

I have been looking at Server Load in the WMM panel, and it is currently reading around 0.51.

At what point to we reach maximum processor usage? Is the max 1.0 or is ti a different number?

Thanks-
Avatar
BradM
Hi MBGreen, In order to know when you're running your server at 100%, you need to know how many processors are on your machine. Your server's load average is basically an indication of how many processors you are using. For example: If you have 1 processor and your server is at a load of 1, you're running at 100%. If you have 2 processors and your server load is at 1, then you're running 1 out of the 2 processors at 100%, which means you're at 50% utilization. Finally, if you have 16 processors and your server load is at a 4, you're only running at 25%. It can get a little more complicated than that, but that's the basics. VPS servers are a little different. My VPS server shows that I have 16 processors, so theoretically my server load would have to be up to 16 before I reached 100% utilization of the server. Because you're in a VPS environment, it doesn't work exactly this way however, because things are virtualized. I touched base with one of our System Administrators and was informed that in the VPS environment you'll want to run your server below a 1. A server load of 1 - 2 is considered high, where a server load of 3 - 5 is reaching critical levels. These numbers again may flucutate based upon which server your VPS is on and how many processors are on that server. I suggest keeping your server load below 1. For your particluar server, it would be best to email our System Administration team so they can look at the specific details of your account and provide you with a more direct answer. I hope this helps! Feel free to post a comment at the bottom of this page if you have any follow up questiosn, I'll be more than happy to see what I can do further to help. Thanks, - Brad