Here is the output for #vmstat for my VPS (Parallels virtualization):
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu------
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
0 0 0 323044 0 358840 0 0 56 0 0 25354 0 0 99 0 0
0 0 0 322708 0 359056 0 0 208 0 0 23444 0 0 99 0 0
0 0 0 322248 0 359500 0 0 440 452 0 23553 0 0 99 0 0
0 0 0 321212 0 360076 0 0 576 24 0 23141 0 0 99 1 0
As you can see, the cs
value is off-the-scale. It varies between 20000 and 30000. What could be causing this? My website runs fine, then occasionally spikes up to load average 80, disabling the website for 10 minutes at a time.
Best Answer
cs
is "context switches", a context switch is basically "the CPU changing between tasks". It's normal for this value to be high, they can happen hundreds of times a second, as part of normal multitasking.Your load spike issue is unlikely to be related, busy systems will generally have a large
cs
counter.