Question

A monitoring alert reports that a database server has a load average of 24.0 on an 8-core system, yet top shows CPU usage is only about 15% with over 80% idle. Users report the application feels extremely sluggish. What is the MOST likely cause of the high load average?

Accepted Answer

Numerous processes are stuck in uninterruptible sleep (D state) waiting on blocked I/O

Answer

A single runaway process is consuming all available CPU cycles

Answer

The system is swapping heavily and CPU is spending time in the OOM killer

Answer

The load average calculation is inaccurate and should be ignored on multi-core systems