What does %st mean in top?

Posted by Ben on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Ben
Published on 2011-02-03T05:04:30Z Indexed on 2011/02/03 7:27 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 660

Filed under:

linux

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amazon-ec2

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cpu-usage

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top

Here is an example from my top:

Cpu(s):  6.0%us,  3.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 78.7%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.3%si, 12.0%st

I am trying to figure out the significance of the %st field. I read that it means steal cpu and it represents time spent by the hypervisor, but I want to know what that actually means to me.

Does it mean I may be on a busy physical server and someone else is using too much CPU on the server and they are taking from my VM?

If I am using EBS could it be related to handling EBS I/O at the hypervisor level?

Is it related to things running on my VM or is it completely unaffected by me?

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