In UNIX computing, the system load is a measure of the amount of work that a computer system is doing. The load average is the average system load over a period of time.

Explore the use of averages in performance analysis and capacity planning to understand how the load average can be reorganized to do better capacity planning.

Dr. Neil Gunther compares the UNIX load averaging approach with other averaging methods as they apply to capacity planning and performance analysis.

Defining Unix Load Average. November 7, 2005. Went looking for a simple definition of load average in Unix, but alas, simplicity is not in the nature of load.

If you?ve spent much time working in a UNIX environment you?ve probably seen the load averages more than a few times. load averages: 2.43, 2.96, 3.41