# What does the load statistic mean?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring\
**Created:** [October 9, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938 "2015-10-09T21:16:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![javadevmtl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/javadevmtl/32/45613_2.png) [@javadevmtl](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/javadevmtl)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2015, 9:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938/1 "2015-10-09T21:16:55Z")

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Hi, as the tittle asks...

What does that metric mean?

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2015, 2:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938/2 "2015-10-10T02:27:07Z")

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It means the load on the node, it's the same as load when looking at top.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![javadevmtl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/javadevmtl/32/45613_2.png) [@javadevmtl](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/javadevmtl)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938/3 "2015-10-13T13:53:53Z")

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Thanks.

So question. What does it mean we are load balancing search requests to each of the nodes, but one particular node shows 36% for the 1 minute average while the rest show 12%?

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938/4 "2015-10-13T20:09:28Z")

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It means there may be a hot spot of data on that one node.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-load-statistic-mean/31938/5 "2017-07-06T13:47:29Z")

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