HP UX B.11.00 System Load

[Amit Mehta]

We have a web based application on NAS 4.0 sp 5 running on HP UX B.11.00.
What is the range between which the load averages can vary ? What is a high system load and what could be the possible solutions to
keep system load at a permissible level . I would appreciate your help .
Thank You. Amit

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Amit,

You need to keep a closer look at the system if you see the averages above 5 in your uptime. However this number is not a very good indicator of CPU utilization. The default but the best tool available is sar. Do a sar 2 20 and look at %idle. If it is near zero and your "sar -q 2 20" shows runq-sz > 5 with $runocc 100, then your system is cpu bound. A good ratio of %USR vs %SYS (in sar 2 20) is
90:10 for a compute intensive application. If not you may have to find the reason for system mode utilization. It could be

1. Due to patches. Get latest diagnostics and other performance related patches installed on the system.
2. Defunct processes. Find the defunct processes and kill them.
3. Incompleted but runaway cronjobs.
4. Incomplete backups still running during the day time.
5. costly commands like find etc.,
6. Bad application code.

Glance will give you a very good picture. If you don't have glance, you can try with a combination of sar and top.

-Sri