Monitoring, anticipating, and reacting to server load is a full time job in some organizations. Unexpected spikes in resource usage can indicate a software or hardware problem. Gradual increases over ...

This column is the first in a series of columns dedicated to one of my favorite subjects: troubleshooting. I'm a systems administrator during the day, and although I enjoy many aspects of my job, it's ...

The first three numbers are the load average over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes. Load average being a measure of how busy the system is, the higher the load average the busier the system is.