check_load thresholds

Question

What is the recommended thresholds for the plugin check_load in the NRPE agent?

It depends on how many cores a system has, but a general recommendation is to never have a load-value over 1.0 per core on a 5 min average.

Example of a calculation to determine what thresholds that should be configured for a Linux or UNIX system:

y = c * p / 100

y = threshold value c: number of cores p: wanted load threshold

Below are recommendations on how check_load thresholds should be configured for the most common CPU configurations.

The path to the plugin check_load might differ between different Linux/unix systems.

On a single core system the recommended thresholds are:

command[check_load]=/opt/plugins/check_load -w 0.7,0.6,0.5 -c 0.9,0.8,0.7

On a dual core (2 cores) system the recommended thresholds are:

command[check_load]=/opt/plugins/check_load -w 1.4,1.2,1 -c 1.8,1.6,1.4

On a quad core (4 cores) system the recommended thresholds are:

command[check_load]=/opt/plugins/check_load -w 3.6,2.8,2.0 -c 4.0,3.2,2.8

On a octa core (8 cores) system the recommended thresholds are:

command[check_load]=/opt/plugins/check_load -w 7.2,5.6,4.0 -c 8.0,6.4,5.6

On a dodeca core (12 cores) system the recommended thresholds are:

command[check_load]=/opt/plugins/check_load -w 10.8,8.4,6.0 -c 12,9.6,7.2