[SZ|TalonKarrde]

Preferably <1.0 for each processor, however, load can get much higher before things really get bad. Honestly, I've yet to see any real marker for when you'll start to have real problems. I've had machines of the same setup differ wildly - One machine will be fine at 10, and the other will have things failing at 6-7, running the same programs to test the stability.

If you're spiking up to 5 for shorts amount of time under heavy traffic, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Theoretically, you should be able to handle that much constantly, but some would question how healthy that is on parts of the machine, especially the hard drives, depending on what's being used that's causing the issue. If you're hitting higher than 5 for more than a few minutes at a time, I'd seriously suggest trying to figure out why that's happening, specificly, and seeing what you can do to optomize the server.

And load isn't always the best guide - Depending on what's causing it, you might see no performance degredation with 20, 30, or even higher.

While load is a good way a lot of the time to check the overall status of the server at a glance, looking at actual CPU and MEM usage is much better.