Meaning of CPU Equal Share?

Yagami

Member
I came from a VPS host that offers VPS plans with certain CPU cores (e.g. 1 core, 2 core, etc.). Now that I'm happily migrated to Knownhost, I want to know how do you define equal share of CPU? I can't really see the real definition of how equal share works in your site, it would be nice if you have illustration or video of some sort.

For example, you say one node have 16+ CPUs and Equal Share, does this mean if there are 10 tenants in the node, each of these tenants are assigned exclusively and can only use 10% of the total processing power of the physical 16-core CPU at any given time?

Or does equal share means the node programmed smartly in such a way wherein say 9 of the 10 tenants are using very little CPU power, and 1 will need a high CPU usage for a few minutes, will that 1 tenant automatically granted a large CPU power, and will automatically be throttled only when other tenants will need the CPU power, but the sharing will be computed equally ?
 
Hello Yagami,

With both standard VPS and SSD VPS plans, CPU is shared so there's no set limit on the amount of CPU available for your use. Processes can burst to use 100% of the CPU cores available; however, we have monitoring systems in place to let us know if you’re using more than 25% of the allocated CPU at any given time for longer than 90 seconds. If this occurs, we contact you in regards to the usage.
 
Hi Chris,

How will I know for example if I am using let's say 10% or 25% of the actual physical CPU of the server?

I tried to check the Stats section of the my.knownhost.com (Load Average section), but that doesn't seem to tell clearly?
 
@Yagami

At this time there is no user side indication. I'd easily say 98% of customers 99% of the time never get anywhere near the limits. We make sure to balance all of our nodes to ensure adequate CPU availability for client accounts to burst to what's needed and to also sustain normal usage. Overall it's a very rare case that someone will consume continually more CPU than is allowed for an extended period of time.
 
I see. I've been monitoring my CPU usage Load Average daily via the Stats graph. What indicates an overuse of the CPU? Is it when I frequently see a Load Average of more than 1.00 ? Based on what I read in the internet, a load average readings of 1.00 means you're already using 100% of the CPU?
 
I see. I've been monitoring my CPU usage Load Average daily via the Stats graph. What indicates an overuse of the CPU? Is it when I frequently see a Load Average of more than 1.00 ? Based on what I read in the internet, a load average readings of 1.00 means you're already using 100% of the CPU?

That can be misleading now in the day of multi-core CPUs. In theory, a load of 10 for example would me 100% of 10 CPU cores. A load of 8 would represent 80% total (of 10 cores), or 100% of 8 cores. In practice, this isn't a perfect science since load averages take into account a few other factors, the big one being disk I/O which is not directly CPU usage.
 
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