In computing Load is a measure of the amount of processing a computer system is performing in the form of a scalar and as some variation on a percentage.

The Server Load or Load is basically the CPU load. Its value shows how well the CPU handles the tasks.

The ideal load for a single processor server is 1, which means the CPU is doing all the tasks one after the other smoothly and the processes are not getting queued. As the server load increases the processes start getting queued. Sluggishness is seen if the server load is under 10, though it may not result in failure. But a double digit server load may result in failure.

The servers with multiple processors load is calculated by dividing the load with the number of processors.

Actual load = Total Load / number of processors.

The load gets evenly distributed among the CPUs. If one processor is busy the task can choose another processor to perform computation.

In hosting environment there are many users who use the servers for maintaining the websites. The load may increase rapidly if a user has a big eCommerce website which has lot of traffic. Many users have database driven websites which have a lot of visitors, the number of database connections increases which results in high load.

Many times high loads are caused because the server wasn’t secure and got cracked. Spamming too can be the reason. The processes that is loading the server must be stopped. The origin of such processes must be checked.

Sometimes high load is caused due to maintenance tasks such as Daily stats updates, Daily back ups and Cron schedulers. Even if the load increases it should not sustain for a long time. So it is recommended that such tasks must be scheduled when there is minimum traffic of the website.

Overselling by the Web Hosts too is one of the major reasons for the Server load problems. The problem starts when overselling is done by the Web hosts and sell more resources than what is available. Overselling is not bad provided the Web host checks the Server load and acts upon it if the load increase. Constant monitoring needs to be done. If the load reaches to 2 or 3 on a regular basis then some websites must be moved to new servers.