# What does the 'system load' Metricbeat chart show? **URL:** \ **Category:** Beats\ **Tags:** metricbeat\ **Created:** [February 22, 2018, 12:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-system-load-metricbeat-chart-show/121042 "2018-02-22T12:07:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![muhammadrehansaeed](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/muhammadrehansaeed/32/22835_2.png) [@muhammadrehansaeed](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/muhammadrehansaeed)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 12:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-system-load-metricbeat-chart-show/121042/1 "2018-02-22T12:07:50Z")
What does system load actually mean? CPU? Memory? IO? Disk? A combination of all of these things? If so, how is system load calculated? ---
**Author:** ![jsoriano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jsoriano/32/27920_2.png) [@jsoriano](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jsoriano)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 9:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-system-load-metricbeat-chart-show/121042/2 "2018-02-23T09:39:41Z")
System load refers to the _load average_ of the host, that is a measurement based of its average cpu usage during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. You can see more about this in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load\_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_%28computing%29). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2018, 9:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-does-the-system-load-metricbeat-chart-show/121042/3 "2018-03-23T09:39:49Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.