Bender load problem this morning (resolved)

Starting just after 9AM (Pacific time) today, the “bender” server experienced some very high loads (for about 40 minutes). It seemed to be coming from a combination of severe database, e-mail, and Web server access. Sort of a “perfect storm” of unusual load.

We work very hard to run all of our servers at a reasonable level, with excess capacity to spare. Even though the load was unusual, we don’t consider this type of limitation acceptable. We are reviewing the server’s configuration files to see if we can make changes to avoid this sort of problem in the future.