Gauging CPU Performance and Capacity
The CPU is the heart of any system and as such plays a central role in the system's overall performance. Many aspects of a system can affect its processors, so CPU tuning and capacity planning can be a very complex task. The next few sections detail the nature of Unix CPU usage and how to use available Unix tools to diagnose CPU performance problems and plan for the future.
Interpreting Load Averages
Many users and administrators associate a high load average with overworked CPUs, yet they don't know what a load average really is. A load average is the average number of runnable processes active on the system over a set period of time. Runnable processes include currently running processes and those on the ...
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