I have cPanel and right now when I look at server status it says...
Server Load 0.41 (1 cpu) [Green Light]
I assume this is pretty good. I have seen it as high as 1.38 and still had a green light. Can anybody provide more insight into what these numbers mean?

When your sites start to slow down, thats too much server load.

Essentially what the server load means, is how many tasks are waiting to be completed at that time. When there is a load of 1, that means there is one task waiting to be completed. Depending on the hardware of the server, depends what type of load it can take. A celeron, duron or sempron I wouldn't want to a load any higher than 1. After that you'll notice some performance decrease. A Pentium 4, Athlon, Xeon, or Opteron, you could have a load of 2+ and no one would know.

A load of .41 is perfectly fine for most servers. I wouldn't be too worried about. Even a low end celeron server spiking over 3-4 wouldn't worry me. You'd want to find out the cause of those spikes, but until you start getting a high for the majority of the time, there's no need to be worried.

Anything > 3 is fine.

> OR <

i guess you mean <

If its ever red that means its bad ;)

as long as your clients' sites are slowed down, you are in the green.

I wouldn't worry unless that little light turns red

Hi,

Generally anything under 3 is fine, but if your server load starts to stay constantly at anything more than 1, it's probably quite heavily loaded.

However, as others have said, forget the number - if the sites are running slow then thats when you need to worry.

Dan

>> http://www.whreviews.com/ - here you can find some needful information.
And here is something about server load: http://www.whreviews.com/server-load.htm

i have a webmin stats program, and found when the daily average is above 1 (with one cpu, above 2 for 2 cpus) then it is time to upgrade your server. now occasionally my server load can get as high as 12, but i found the daily average is what matters. in fact, first you will see the weekly average go above 1 before the dailly average breaks 1.

How much server is recommend (max)?
I have a PHP script that use cat /proc/loadavg, and it gives me a server load in % for the last 1, 5 and 15 minuts.