High Steal Time utilization on Apache Linux Server

Posted by JMC on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by JMC
Published on 2012-03-30T19:55:39Z Indexed on 2012/03/30 23:32 UTC
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I have a CentOS "development / testing" server that runs extremely slowly. It's running Apache and Mysql using PHP. Top reports that 98% of the CPU utilization is frequently spent on "st" - Steal Time. What could cause a server to spend so much CPU on steal time, and how can I diagnose the problem? I didn't notice the problem until after I granted a third party developer root access (for all I know it has a root kit running, though unlikely).

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