High System Load, Low CPU- A Problem?

[Chris Dill]

My specs are in my sig. My system load is normally 1-2-3 and spikes up to 4-5-6. CPU usage is good, as is disk. RAM is typically maxed, but I think thats normal with the amount of RAM I have, coupled with what I run. How do I see what is loading up my system and troubleshoot it? Or should I not be worried?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

If you're happy with the performance of your system, there is nothing to fix.

If you are unhappy, we'll need to know more about your use case to proceed.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Chris Dill]

If you're happy with the performance of your system, there is nothing to fix.

If you are unhappy, we'll need to know more about your use case to proceed.

Cheers,
Matt

Well said! Overall I have no complaints. Often Radarr runs slow, or friends complain about Plex studder/freeze but I think all of these problems are related to network bottleneck.

 

[Apollo]

I believe Plex is doing the transcoding and when it does the green graph shows up.

It is easy for you to test by running Plex on your end and monitor the result in realtime. You can use Netdata for realtime results.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

friends complain about Plex studder/freeze

Your CPU can transcode three Plex HD streams at a time assuming the server isn't doing anything else.

I agree with @Apollo, check to see what Plex is doing while you're seeing CPU spikes.

Radarr could also be a problem depending on how and when you are using it. I remember Sonarr (back in the day) being very transaction intensive. So, while you have plenty of disk bandwidth, IOPS and random access may be slower than you're expecting because Radarr is doing its thing. Don't know enough to say for sure.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[rvassar]

What's using the extra memory? You have 1.8Gb of Swap in use.

Every time one of those pages gets scheduled, the process gets paused, and the disks have to go find the bits that have been parked, pull those in, and likely in the process kick something else out. Huge performance impact.