# What is CPU Load and How Dynatrace measures it?

**URL:** <https://community.dynatrace.com/t/what-is-cpu-load-and-how-dynatrace-measures-it/21228>\
**Category:** Open Q&A\
**Tags:** cpu\
**Created:** [July 8, 2019, 10:54am UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/what-is-cpu-load-and-how-dynatrace-measures-it/21228 "2019-07-08T10:54:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dattatray\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@dattatray\_m](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/dattatray_m)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 10:54am UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/what-is-cpu-load-and-how-dynatrace-measures-it/21228/1 "2019-07-08T10:54:43Z")

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What is CPU Load? and How it is measured in Dynatrace?

 ![21248-cpu-load.png](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/original/3X/2/2/2257f5242fd706930788a1e6dcd3dd4690e1eecd.png)

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**Author:** ![dattatray\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@dattatray\_m](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/dattatray_m)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 12:04pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/what-is-cpu-load-and-how-dynatrace-measures-it/21228/2 "2019-07-16T12:04:31Z")

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[@Babar Q.](https://answers.dynatrace.com/users/5357/view.html) can you help?

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**Author:** ![andrew\_knackste](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/dynatrace/user_avatar/community.dynatrace.com/andrew_knackste/32/35964_2.png) [@andrew\_knackste](https://community.dynatrace.com/u/andrew_knackste)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 1:47pm UTC](https://community.dynatrace.com/t/what-is-cpu-load-and-how-dynatrace-measures-it/21228/3 "2019-07-16T13:47:09Z")

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Hi Dattatray, thanks for your question.

CPU Load is a measure of the active process queue for the CPU. It is a metric pulled directly off of the host OS, meaning that the OS is what reports the CPU Load to Dynatrace. As far as I know, only our \*nix agent can get CPU Load, as Windows does not compute this metric. CPU Load is more of a metric of how much processing has to happen subsequently, rather than the active amount of processing happening at a given time.

Please see [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_%28computing%29) article for more in-depth specifications of how CPU Load is calculated.