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High load during unixbench
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High load during unixbench

vdnetvdnet Member
edited November 2012 in General

I wish it were a joke, but we recently had a refund request because of high loads only to find that the user was running the unixbench test during the high load periods. (His normal load average was close to 0)

He complained that the load average was over 10 and was setting off his alerts and he contributed this to poor performance and wanted a refund. After trying to explain to him that unixbench runs multiple threads and would cause the load average to increase greatly and failing to get through to him, I have granted the refund.

Thought I would share my story and hopefully people realize that load average has nothing to do with performance if you are running a benchmark program that is designed to utilize all available CPU.

Comments

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    What a terrible provider you are! Just like that vps I bought last month. Every time I would turn it off my ping tests would fail. No network connectivity! Better believe I asked for a refund.

  • jhjh Member

    LOL

  • Yes, it is sad that pings don't get through. Don't worry, I've designed a system that drops all pings so it makes it fair.

  • Oh, we're terrible too. We delete your data when you reinstall your VPS! How unfair!

  • Pfft, we don't keep data for 40 days after a user gets terminated then wants to come back!

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Damian That's terrible.

    8 CPU cores
    16GB ram
    1TB storage
    30TB bandwidth
    $1/m with promo code "lolipxcore"
    Order here

  • LIKE A BOSS. Whatever the hell that means. SWAG YOLO? Not sure if any of these are applicable...

  • @jarland said: $1/m with promo code "lolipxcore"

    winning

  • @vdnet Why did that customer feel the need to run UnixBench all the time? How about suspending him for a change?

  • @marcm said: How about suspending him for a change?

    I'm sure that was one of his first actions... providers like to do what they can to keep money.

  • vdnetvdnet Member
    edited November 2012

    @marcm, it actually wasn't all the time. His load graph was small, with two large spikes where he ran unixbench. He posted a screenshot of top with the unixbench processes going to prove the load was high. That was the only reason I knew that was what was causing the load. Other than the two spikes, his load average was well below 1 the entire time.

    We don't usually suspend for short bursts in CPU. If we see consistent high usage, we would warn then cap the CPU limit before resorting to suspension.

  • @Damian said: I'm sure that was one of his first actions... providers like to do what they can to keep money.

    We actually had no issue with his running of unixbench, he didn't have a high average CPU. The customer opened a ticket complaining about the high loads and then requested a refund. No suspension took place.

  • This thread made me lol greatly, thanks! I have seen similar things but related to disk IO instead. AKA customer is running a very busy site on their SSD vps and decide to run FIO and than complain because they don't get the same numbers they had when they ran it on their fresh install with nothing running on it hehe.

  • @vdnet said: We actually had no issue with his running of unixbench, he didn't have a high average CPU. The customer opened a ticket complaining about the high loads and then requested a refund. No suspension took place.

    Maybe he benchmarked it and didn't like what he saw so made up some bs excuse, or he just wanted to benchmark it.. People are pretty obsessed with this benchmarking and serverbear fad.

  • serverbearserverbear Member
    edited November 2012

    @nunim said: People are pretty obsessed with this benchmarking and serverbear fad.

    No reason why you would run it constantly though.

    Being thought of as a fad makes me all giddy.

  • @jarland said: What a terrible provider you are! Just like that vps I bought last month. Every time I would turn it off my ping tests would fail. No network connectivity! Better believe I asked for a refund.

    No autoboot? :P

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @serverbear said: No reason why you would run it constantly though.

    Someone was running it on cron every hour here. I guess wanted to make a chart with results over a certain period...
    M

  • @Maounique said: Someone was running it on cron every hour here.

    That's bound to annoy any host, quite often on larger core cpus it takes longer than an hour to run too. I certainly don't advocate running this stuff excessively.

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