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cpu steal with 2 dedicated cores on well known root server hosting product
silverdawn
Member
in Help
how can this cpu steal time explained with supposedly 2 dedicated cores in place other than that these are not dedicated?
cpu steal fluctuates approx from 0.3 to 13% around this web server load
thx for suggestions
top - 10:24:27 up 19:27, 3 users, load average: 0.64, 0.26, 0.34
Tasks: 118 total, 2 running, 73 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 16.2 us, 12.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 57.5 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.2 si, 13.7 st
KiB Mem : 8168216 total, 3609780 free, 834284 used, 3724152 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 free, 0 used. 6913516 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
24768 digicam+ 20 0 572544 57784 32764 S 45.2 0.7 0:10.63 php-fpm
18653 mysql 20 0 1977208 485312 20060 S 12.3 5.9 6:46.68 mysqld
24767 digicam+ 20 0 572096 55664 31224 R 12.0 0.7 0:13.29 php-fpm
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 3.0 0.0 1:24.88 rcu_sched
Comments
2Core, 8GB? root server? so probably netcup...
the term 'dedicated' is obviously subject to be intrepreted in different ways and marketing departments of different companies make use of that heavily.
It starts with cores usually not really being cores but threads and ends with 'dedicated' meaning you just 'can consume what you get out of'.
for netcup I think they somewhere even officially stated that it's just threads, so on a node with quite some load this already can lead to steal...
PS: did you open a support ticket with the support of your provider? if so, what did they answer?
CPU steal does appear to vary a little depending on the virtualisation used. Logically, virtualisation does have an overhead; how that is presented to the VPS will differ. From experience:
vmware = 0
KVM ~ 0.05 %
Xen-PV ~ 0.1 %
As mentioned, threads, as opposed to cores are likely to influence the outcome.
First of all, name the provider, cut the "well known" b/s. They are scamming you and you are trying hard to "protect their business"? Secondly, what comes to mind, check if the ToS forbids uses such as cryptocoin mining or mentions any sort of "CPU abuse" on these "root" servers. If it does, then certainly these are oversold and "dedicated" was just a lie.
And this is a super relevant answer to a situation when there's 13.7% steal?
I've always thought dedicated core at the price they sell at is just total marketing bullshit, I've had two dedicated core vps in the last year or so both had 10-15%+ steal compared my other kvm which are just sold as shared had zero steal.
The reason I think dedicated cores vps have quite high steal is due to it claiming to be dedicated which causes more user to use it for more cpu intensive purposes.
I agree with @rm_ if they are dedicated then they shouldn't care one bit if you are mining or doing cpu abuse.
Remember: VPS is a fancy term for shared environment especially in lowend market.
What kind of suggestions do you anticipate other than: open a ticket with the provider if you find the steal time to be an issue.
download more ram?
What's with the attitude? OP mentioned it varied from 0.3%; I was citing examples for comparison and to illustrate that it won't necessarily be zero.
I too have experienced a recent CPU steal of similar magnitude to OP and questioned it with my "well-known" provider. Though no explanation could be found (other than node backups), thankfully steal has reduced back down to baseline levels.
Is that enough spelling it out for you?
(EDIT3: My original comments were a continuation of Falzo's remarks)
The attitude here is only from you, rather than addressing the question at hand, you answer with "Oh, I know things!"
urgh....
Virtual Private Steal
If they really were dedicated threads and you were pounding them then I'd expect steal time to be close to 50%, since both threads would be on the same physical core. If you are idling, why do you care?
Be glad you are not really getting dedicated (pinned to hardware cores) threads since that would limit your computation speed to 1 core per 2 threads, basically 100% core utilization per 2 threads. With unpinned threads and 13% steal it sounds to me like you are getting around 170% from 2 threads.
If you can consistently stay at or above 100% then I'd say be happy with what you have. If you got what you are asking for, it would never get above 100%.