Thoughts on server load

I was just thinking about all the focus that we and our customers put on server load. I have a server that I have been monitoring for load issues.

Server specs: 1G Celeron
512M Ram
IDE 7200RPM drive


Serverload ranges 1-5 from time to time. Server CPU never peaks and hardly ever runs over 80%...usually in the 20% range. Swap is always lest than 60-80M used.

Server houses almost exclusively php/cgi sites. Very little of the server is actually used for static pages.

Server gets moderate traffic. One of the forums peaks around 40 simultaneous users.

Understanding that server load is the average number of requests waiting to be completed.

If, for example, one of my forum pages gets a request that requires 34 separate mysql queries to build the page before the page is gzipped and sent to the customer. Wouldn't this inherently create processes that are waiting to complete?

I have yet to observe the server, even when load was 3+ experience any poor performace serving pages.

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

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