recommended load average?

[lordzardeck]

What would be the recommended load average for a forum with an estimated 30 - 40 online users average and over 300,000 posts?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Can't really give "recommendations" on server load. Server load is dependant on server specs, configuration, scripts, traffic, and so on... Generally, the lower the better.

[lordzardeck]

would be 4.0 too high?

[LiroyvH]

Did you not read?
It depends on the server configuration whether 4.0 will be too high or perfectly acceptable...

Your post lacks details with regards to the server configuration, so nobody will be able to give you a answer until you do post them.

[lordzardeck]

Operating System:   Linux 2.6.18-028stab070.14
Processor:   Intel® Xeon® CPU L5320 @ 1.86GHz (138.198MHz)
Load averages:   4.18, 3.47, 3.38
Current processes:   56 (53 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie)
Processes by CPU:   httpd (19) 1.3%, (other) (25) 0.0%
Memory usage:    22.087% (347392k / 1572864k)
Swap: 0% (0k / 0k)

does that help?

[LiroyvH]

Is this a VPS?

Hard to say. On the CPU itself it would be acceptable to have 4.00, 1.00 per core is no problem at all.
Though with VPS I have no idea how it would affect performance, in general if it displays the total system load it should be fine. It depends a bit on the hypervisor. 

[lordzardeck]

Is this a VPS?

Hard to say. On the CPU itself it would be acceptable to have 4.00, 1.00 per core is no problem at all.
Though with VPS I have no idea how it would affect performance, in general if it displays the total system load it should be fine. It depends a bit on the hypervisor.

We are pretty sure it's a shared host, but we don't know [the owner doesn't know either. figure that one out :p]. Sometimes the server will be below 1.0, and it runs excellent. Once it reaches 4.0 or higher though, things really start to slow down. I guess I was really just wanting to know if I should be worried about having it at 4.0.

[LiroyvH]

I doubt the CPU will be able to scale down to 138Mhz with energy savings, especially not when the load is rising...
This definitely looks like a VPS.

If the owner of the VPS doesn't know what he purchased i'd really suggest reviewing that in the future...