How is load average related to CPU utilization?

Posted by Kaustubh P on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Kaustubh P
Published on 2011-02-10T07:21:19Z Indexed on 2011/02/10 7:26 UTC
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Filed under:

server

|

load

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cpu-usage

I am facing a load average of > 3 since past 2 days. The CPU utilization is never above 40 % in all cases. Here are some screenshots of Server Density monitoring tool that I use.

enter image description here

The process snapshot at the highest peak, @ 0:00 is as follows: enter image description here

And the process snapshot at the peak created at 12:00 is: enter image description here

My question is, even though CPU utilization is not 100 %, why am I facing a high average?

PS: All snapshots are sorted by descending CPU utilization.

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