Does overall server load matter on a VPS?

My first VPS...

This type of account is supposed to have a 'certain amount of (separate) resources available' (or similar wording)

So other accounts aren't going to affect the speed of mine, right?
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One of my scripts shows the server load in the admin section, and right now it's very high.
My account is new and can't possibly be causing it.

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Here is the question:
The server has a really high overall load, so how can that not affect my account?
I almost understand the concept of separate resources, but it is an overloaded server.
Will my sites still be fast?

 

It's going to depend on how the virtual server is set up.

For instance, you can set up virtual servers to have a certain share of the total CPU time available. Each virtual server is guaranteed an equal amount of the CPU if they want it. If they aren't using it, however, the others aren't limited to what they are guaranteed. One virtual server can use 100% of the CPU if no one else is using it.

Some servers are set up without any quality of service in place. This means that each virtual server will simply be balanced by the kernel. If someone is using a lot of CPU, you may end up with very little.

After CPU percentage, there is also the server's load average which is the number of processes waiting to get on the CPU. Virtual servers can be set up to take this into account and give everyone a fair share or ignore it and let them fight it out. Load average is most likely the one that will make the server feel slow. If one of the guys sharing your real server configures his apache in his virtual server to start 500 children and keep them all alive then your virtual server will feel slower because your 50 processes have to wait until his 500 have all had a go on the processor. This will be true even if he isn't getting any traffic because he is still keeping the children alive. Unfortunately, starting up 500 of your own will give you a larger percentage of the CPU time but will also increase the load average so that the server will feel even slower still.

Load average can also be a little confusing on systems with more than one CPU or more than one core. On some operating systems, this will mean that if you have two CPUs and two cores per CPU that you will have to divide the load average by four. Some operating systems will do this for you. Some will divide it by the number of CPUs but ignore the cores. If your VPS is on a blade system with eight or sixteen CPUs then a load average of eight is not actually all that bad.

The short version of all the above is that there are several resources in a computer and each one can be the cause of troubles if you run out of it: RAM, HD, CPU percentage, Load average, network bandwidth, etc.

In the end, the only people who can answer your question are the admins who set it up. Ask them exactly which resources they guarantee a minimum amount of.

 

I read ~half your post, gave you instant green rep, and promise to read more later.

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Thank you, very much for the huge effort.
I will eventually read the whole thing more than once.
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The other thing with a VPS is disk writes, because you are sharing a disk if someone is doing disk intensive stuff it may slow things down.. As said a lot depends on the configuration and what virtualization environment is being used.

 

Yes, also depends upon the node configuration, virtualization tech and neigbour VPS usages.

 

also the type of script if that hasn't been mentioned. Your script may naturally not be written as effective as it could be. Perhaps there are areas that can be cleaned up.

 

yeah it does affect the VPS, as VPS uses the part of processor, if processor is overloaded, then it is obvious that VPS will be overloaded too.
Im not a professional in the technician field, but i have a general idea about it, as my friend owns 5 datacenters

 

Any idea what virtualisation platform you are on? Xen, OpenVZ, Virtuozzo?