[CentOS] Find reason for heavy load

[Thomas Harold]

On 12/29/2009 11:44 PM, Noob Centos Admin wrote:
> My Centos 5 server has seen the average load jumped through the roof
> recently despite having no major additional clients placed on it.
> Previously, I was looking at an average of less than 0.6 load, I had a
> monitoring script that sends an email warning me if the current load
> stayed above 0.6 for more than 2 minutes. This script used to trigger
> perhaps once an hour during peak periods. Even so, I seldom see numbers
> higher than 1.x
>

You should also try out "atop" instead of just using top.  The major 
advantage is that it gives you more information about the disk and 
network utilization.