High Load Average, how to fix it?

Question

I need to fix my virtual server. What's wrong with it? Needs memory? or else?

4 core with 4GB memory

top - 10:06:13 up 53 min,  1 user,  load average: 31.74, 30.17, 24.79
Tasks: 180 total,   1 running, 179 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.9%us,  0.2%sy,  0.0%ni, 69.3%id, 29.6%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   4194304k total,  2753136k used,  1441168k free,        0k buffers
Swap:  4194304k total,        0k used,  4194304k free,  1060564k cached

Solution

From the information you provided I can only tell your server needs a faster disk.

You could try to use atop to see which program does the most disk IO. If you are lucky you can configure that program to do less IO.

Comments

[Alen Milakovic]

What does your server run?

[Screenager8]

CentOS Linux 6.5. Many online store there.

[Alen Milakovic]

No, sorry. I meant: what kind of jobs does your server do? E.g. web server?

[Screenager8]

Yes... web server

[Alen Milakovic]

An alternative to atop is iotop.