[BlueOnyx:25197] Re: High Load Average

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Richard,

> Just recently the load average is going crazy and of course the server
> slows right down. I have about 10 low to medium usage websites, no
> emails. Mainly Wordpress sites.
> 
> In Top, there is a lot of either php-fpm or php-cgi depending on the php
> settings that constantly use loads of CPU. This is happening across most
> sites, not just one causing an issue.
> 
> Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to trace where the
> problem is?

The "php-cgi"-processes are from Vsites that use PHP-FPM to display PHP
pages.

Each call to a PHP page spawns a "php-cgi" child process for the
duration it takes to handle the request.

If you see many such processes, then you have a pretty active Vsite
there or one that gets hit hard with requests. The Apache access log
will shed some more light on what's going on.

PHP-FPM is pretty fast, but that speed comes at the cost of extra CPU
cycles and I/O traffic such as the ones you see there.

If it gets too uncomfortable, then you either need more resources, or
perhaps should "downgrade" the Vsite to use another PHP method such as
suPHP.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber