High load due to I/O wait in Ubuntu 12.04 on EC2 instance

amazon ec2amazon-web-servicesioload-averageubuntu-12.04

I am using Ubuntu server 12.04 , having trouble finding cause of load, I have seen change in response time of server from past week

after reading Linux Troubleshooting, Part I: High Load

It seems like there is no issue with CPU and RAM, and this load may be related to I/O-bound load
by using top command I got following output

Load and memory usage

Here it is 97.6%wa , RAM is free and no swap used .

Following is output of command iostat which sows that there is 89% iowait

ubuntu@ip-my-sys-ubuntu:~$ iostat
Linux 3.2.0-58-virtual (ip-172-31-6-203)    02/19/2015  _x86_64_    (1 CPU)

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           3.05    0.01    3.64   89.50    3.76    0.03

Device:            tps    kB_read/s    kB_wrtn/s    kB_read    kB_wrtn
xvdap1           69.91         3.81       964.37     978925  247942876

I also used iotop which after fix interval shows 99 %I/O, Disk writes I observer as 1266 KB/s

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and

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Is is bad? as response time is lowered. what is causing this?

EDITS which are asked by others

iftop O/P

                  12.5kb             25.0kb            37.5kb             50.0kb       62.5kb
└─────────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────────────
ip-12-1-1-111.ap-southeast-1.  => 115.231.218.130                      0b   2.04kb   522b
                                 <=                                      0b   1.53kb   393b
ip-112-1-1-111.ap-southeast-1.  => 62.snat-111-91-22.hns.net.in      1.52kb  1.52kb  1.72kb
                                 <=                                    208b    208b    262b
ip-112-1-1-111.ap-southeast-1.  => static-mum-120.63.141.177.mtnl.      0b    480b    240b
                                 <=                                      0b    350b    175b
ip-112-1-1-111.ap-southeast-1.  => ip-112-11-1-1.ap-southeast-1.co      0b    118b    178b
                                 <=                                      0b    210b    292b
ip-112-1-1-111.ap-southeast-1.  => static-mum-120.63.194.119.mtnl.      0b      0b    240b
                                 <=                                      0b      0b    175b

TX:             cum:    123kB   peak:   3.72kb               rates:   1.67kb  2.02kb  1.78kb
RX:                    51.5kB           4.88kb                        1.19kb   989b    918b
TOTAL:                  174kB           8.60kb                        2.86kb  2.98kb  2.68kb

output of iostat -x -k 5 2

ubuntu@ip-111-11-1-111:~$ iostat -x -k 5 2
Linux 3.2.0-58-virtual (ip-111-11-1-111)        03/04/2015      _x86_64_        (1 CPU)

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           3.75    0.01    4.74   22.72    4.06   64.71

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
xvdap1            0.00   263.80    0.42  109.42     7.28  1572.36    28.76     1.92   17.52   17.57   17.52   2.31  25.39

avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           8.97    0.00    4.77   76.34    9.92    0.00

Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
xvdap1            0.00    35.69    0.00   85.88     0.00   438.93    10.22   137.55 1612.71    0.00 1612.71  11.11  95.42

@shodanshok point 2

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iotop -a

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Best Answer

Tune your mysql service for avoid touching to disk and watch out in your postfix queue, you may have a lot of emails into an I/O sensitive queue (i.e. deferred, small itens with random read behavior).

Your email system have been used as relay for spammers.

Take a look at postfix documentation and restrict relay access to your MTA.

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