[PLUG] help with /proc/cpuinfo

[Aaron Burt]

On 2019-04-25 10:54, VY wrote:
> Yes, I love to learn as well.
> 
> This is the output to lscpu:
>   Architecture:          x86_64
[...]
> Hypervisor vendor:     Xen
> Virtualization type:   full

Ah-hah.  You're in a VM, and I'll bet you have a "noisy neighbor."

> The load average is:
> load average: 464.68, 415.14, 416.96
> which does not make sense at all.

Loadavg is just how many processes are waiting to use the CPU.

> The rest of TOP:
>   Cpu(s): 51.3%us, 16.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 32.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  
> 0.4%si,
> 0.2%st
> 
> If I hit 1, it affects all 4 CPUs.

All good.  Very much looks like a "noisy neighbor" problem, which is 
when another VM on the hypervisor is hogging all the CPU (or RAM) and 
leaving you with no compute resources.  From your VM's perspective, it's 
going at the rated clock speed, but time is going by REALLY FAST.

> Can you elaborate on why
>  >    apicid : 25
>>   initial apicid : 25
> 
> 25 is a weird number?   From an earlier thread, is this simply a 
> logical
> ID?

Eh, sort of.  There should only be a couple APICs in the system.  And 
usually it'll be pretty consistent.
  But since it's a VM all bets are off.

> All the other systems are reporting this number as 4 and all of them 
> are
> having reasonable load.

They're on a different hypervisor machine, and probably a different 
version of the hypervisor software.

> I do not have root access nor sudo.  I want to try and find out why
> the load is so high before I escalate and argue for more privilege.
> When I brought this up to the responsible team, I was given a probable
> cause -- There are other activities hosting this VM server and they are
> causing this issue.

So they already told you that you have a noisy neighbor.  All right 
then.  Don't use that VM and get by on the 3 you have, or ask the team 
to migrate your slow VM to a different hypervisor machine, or ask for a 
new VM on a less loaded hypervisor machine.  But unless the noisy 
neighbor calms down it sounds like your one sad VM isn't getting any 
better.

Is this a customer-facing service?  If so, you should point this out to 
your hosting team.

Good luck,
   Aaron