4 ms·

I've been having issues with steal time recently, but what I'm seeing isn't adequately explained by any of the articles and documentation I could find. Here is

I've been having issues with steal time recently, but what I'm seeing isn't adequately explained by any of the articles and documentation I could find. Here is an example from one EC2 node: 19:26:19 CPU %usr %nice %sys %iowait %irq %soft %steal %guest %idle 06:04:05 PM all 14.85 0.00 5.94 0.00 0.00 0.00 14.85 0.00 64.36 For me, when the machine was under load, %steal was almost always very close to %usr. It wasn't always the same, sometimes more and sometimes less. Can anyone explain how these numbers are related to each other?

falcolas 13y ago
They aren't related. Steal is the ratio of how many CPU cycles were promised to your system, but that your system didn't get. User is how much CPU (of the promised maximum) your programs are using directly (i.e. not time which is spent doing system calls (IO being the big one), which falls under the system bucket).
- MattJ100 13y ago
  Then why are they the same in this case? Coincidence? (I won't believe that... but unfortunately I don't have more samples right now to demonstrate the correlation).
  - falcolas 13y ago
    This is pretty old, so sorry if you don't get this, but I have been seeing something similar today: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 0 0 33960 44844 147332 466588 0 0 0 63 130 198 20 2 59 1 18 0 0 33960 44844 147340 466652 0 0 1 66 123 187 19 2 59 1 18 Etc. I believe what's happening here is that the CPU cycles are being requested and subsequently stolen, and then since the system is still idle, they're re-requested and given, all in the same time period polled by the monitoring tool. It's just a theory, but it makes sense (at least to me ;).

falcolas 13y ago

They aren't related. Steal is the ratio of how many CPU cycles were promised to your system, but that your system didn't get. User is how much CPU (of the promised maximum) your programs are using directly (i.e. not time which is spent doing system calls (IO being the big one), which falls under the system bucket).

MattJ100 13y ago
Then why are they the same in this case? Coincidence? (I won't believe that... but unfortunately I don't have more samples right now to demonstrate the correlation).
- falcolas 13y ago
  This is pretty old, so sorry if you don't get this, but I have been seeing something similar today: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu----- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 0 0 33960 44844 147332 466588 0 0 0 63 130 198 20 2 59 1 18 0 0 33960 44844 147340 466652 0 0 1 66 123 187 19 2 59 1 18 Etc. I believe what's happening here is that the CPU cycles are being requested and subsequently stolen, and then since the system is still idle, they're re-requested and given, all in the same time period polled by the monitoring tool. It's just a theory, but it makes sense (at least to me ;).