Linux Load Average Spikes: IO Wait & Bottlenecks

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

An alert fires: “High load average on production server.” Your heart rate quickens. You SSH into the machine and run a command like top, only to be confused. The CPU usage is hovering at 10%, but the load average is sky-high. What’s going on? If the CPU isn’t busy, what is the system “loaded” with? This common scenario highlights one of the most misunderstood metrics in Linux performance troubleshooting: the system load average.

Context Switching & Its Impact On System Performance

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Context switching is the process of switching the CPU from one process, task or thread to another. In a multitasking operating system, such as Linux, the CPU has to switch between multiple processes or threads in order to keep the system running smoothly. This is necessary because each CPU core without hyperthreading can only execute one process or thread at a time. If there are many processes or threads running simultaneously, and very few CPU cores available to handle them, the system is forced to make more context switches to balance the CPU resources among them.

Context Switch on Netdata

Linux Load Average Spikes: IO Wait & Bottlenecks

Context Switching & Its Impact On System Performance