

Understanding Linux CPU Load - antouank
http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages

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dredmorbius
This neglects open handles.

Systems whose primary role is serving data requests, typically databases,
webservers, and fileservers, can see high load but it is driven by IO rather
than processing. Similarly, disk contention and or swapping can also result in
high load.

Lesson: also look at iowait, swapping, and VM statistics.

