---
title: System-Wide CPU utilization
description: To investigate CPU consumption of the system as a whole, use the vmstat command with a time interval in seconds. For example:
component: pingauthorize
version: 10.1
page_id: pingauthorize:troubleshooting_pingauthorize_server:paz_system_wide_cpu_utilization
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingauthorize/10.1/troubleshooting_pingauthorize_server/paz_system_wide_cpu_utilization.html
revdate: August 21, 2023
---

# System-Wide CPU utilization

To investigate CPU consumption of the system as a whole, use the `vmstat` command with a time interval in seconds. For example:

```
vmstat 5
```

The specific output of this command varies between different operating systems, but it includes the percentage of the time the CPU was spent executing user-space code (user time), the percentage of time spent executing kernel-space code (system time), and the percentage of time not executing any code (idle time).

* If the CPUs are spending most of their time executing user-space code, the available processors are being well-utilized.

* If performance is poor or the server is unresponsive, it can indicate that the server is not optimally tuned. If there is a high system time, it can indicate that the system is performing excessive disk and/or network I/O, or in some cases, there can be some other system-wide problem, like an interrupt storm.

* If the system is mostly idle, but the server is performing poorly or is unresponsive, there can be a resource constraint elsewhere (for example, waiting on disk or memory access, or excessive lock contention), or the JVM can be performing other tasks, like stop-the-world garbage collection, that cannot be run heavily in parallel.