Load describes how much work a Linux operating system has had to handle in the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes. The load is primarily composed of CPU, RAM, and disk work, but there are other factors involved as well.

In general, it can be said that the load is „1“ when a core is so busy that no further tasks can be handled in real time. So any value above 1 means that tasks had to wait for processing.

If you have 2 cores, for example, a load above 2 is an indication that tasks are waiting in a queue. At this point, tasks are no longer executed „live“ because the task queue is full.

You can check the load on your server using the „uptime“ command. The last 3 values describe the load average. If these values are higher than the number of your cores, your server is overloaded. In that case, you should consider upgrading your resources.

If you have any questions about this topic, please contact us through a support ticket. We will be happy to assist you.