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Load average is one of the first numbers experienced administrators check when diagnosing server performance — three numbers representing average load over 1, 5, and 15 minutes.
Reading the Numbers
The values represent how many processes were actively using or waiting for CPU time on average. A rough guideline: on a server with 4 CPU cores, a load average sustained above 4 suggests the server is genuinely overloaded.
What the Three Numbers Together Tell You
Rising numbers (1-minute higher than 15-minute) indicate load is currently increasing; falling numbers indicate a recent spike that's subsiding.
Context Matters
A load average alone doesn't tell you what's causing it — pair it with CPU, memory, and disk I/O checks to find the actual bottleneck.
