Just want to say at the outset that I/we are extremely happy with the new SSD-backed 64bit servers and their performance. The upgrades came just in time (really, another ten days and it would have been too late!) to stop us migrating away after 3 years on Linode. We have upgraded our most performance-critical Linodes and the improvements are clear and very satisfying.

This post is just to note some oddness with CPU steal ... going beyond the discussion in the comments to the blog post that announced the new SSD-backed product range.

In short, where before we had CPU steal, now we have almost nothing recorded as CPU steal but the total amount of CPU recorded no longer adds up to a multiple of 100%. So instead of CPU steal we have missing CPU

The old 32-bit Linode (7 days - check out the CPU steal):


The new 64-bit Linode (24h since the migration: notice CPU no longer adds up to a multiple of 100%):


Overall we're happy but {i} this does seem odd and {ii} it would be interesting to know if anyone else is seeing this.

I've noticed total cpu does not add up anymore in munin even on actual hardware either. I suspect something something kernel changed recently, and munin is missing some new metric.

This is the current "worst case" I could find on my Linodes. Not much to brag about
Performance is stellar, no complaints.