A system administrator notices that a production server is experiencing significant slowdowns. Upon further investigation using the top command, it's observed that the I/O wait percentage is consistently above 30%. Considering that the server's disk activity is not excessively high, what could be a probable cause for the high I/O wait?
The I/O scheduler is configured for a single-threaded process, leading to a bottleneck.
A misconfigured network firewall is limiting incoming connections.
The hard drive is failing, causing read/write operations to take longer than usual.
Insufficient memory available for buffer/cache leading to frequent disk access.
Having insufficient memory available for buffer/cache can lead to high I/O wait times because the system has to commit to disk I/O more frequently than if it had enough memory to cache operations. This leads to higher wait times as processes are queued while the I/O bottleneck is resolved. Optimizing memory usage or adding more memory can help reduce I/O wait times. A failing hard drive or misconfigured I/O scheduler may also cause increased I/O wait, but these options are less likely if disk activity is not high and the hardware was previously functioning correctly.
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What is 'I/O wait' and why is it important to monitor?
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What are buffer/cache and how do they impact system performance?
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How can one optimize memory usage to reduce high I/O wait times?