CPU Load above 100%

RickNCN

Either I've invented a new supercomputer or Atera is mis-reporting something:

The CPU Load 7,760.79% is greater than the threshold of 99.00% for 9.00 minutes. Top 3 processes triggering the alert: msedge: 0.77% CPU, SRAgent: 0.39% CPU and SRService: 0.39% CPU

tanderson

Is this on a laptop?

RickNCN

Yes it is.

Lenovo Yoga 2 11

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4012Y CPU @ 1.50GHz 1.50 GHz
Installed RAM 4.00 GB (3.90 GB usable)

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Win 10 Home

22H2

19045.4894

tanderson

Atera doesn't directly measure how much of the CPU's power is being used by active processes (which is what we usually think of as CPU utilization). Instead, Atera looks at the Thermal Design Power (TDP), which is a value that represents how much heat the CPU is expected to generate under maximum workload. In Windows, this TDP value changes based on the power plan set in the system (e.g., Balanced, High Performance, Power Saver).

So, when you change the power plan in Windows, the system adjusts the TDP limit. If your system's power plan is set to a lower TDP, Atera might interpret that the CPU is fully utilized (100% usage) even when the actual workload is low, simply because the CPU is reaching the lower TDP threshold. This means Atera might report 100% CPU utilization when the CPU is just operating at the maximum allowed capacity according to the power plan, not because it’s fully loaded with tasks.

Due to this issue, laptops consistently trigger CPU alerts when they switch to battery power. This happens because, when on battery, laptops often switch to a power plan that lowers the TDP to conserve energy. Atera interprets this as the CPU being fully utilized (even though it might not be), leading to frequent false CPU alerts when the device is running on battery.

tanderson

Because of this issue, we created two alerts in our laptop threshold profile:

The first is a critical alert and the other is a warning.

tanderson

Here is the script:

$cpuLoad = Get-WmiObject -Query "SELECT LoadPercentage FROM Win32_Processor"
$avgCpuLoad = ($cpuLoad | Measure-Object LoadPercentage -Average).Average

Write-Output $avgCpuLoad

Save that as a powershell script and it should resolve most false positives.

tanderson

The bigger issue is why atera looks at TDP and not actual utilization! It's pretty stupid on their part, in my opinion.

RickNCN

Ok, I will try that.

The only thing that doesn't match what you described is that this laptop is always plugged in to mains power. But I'm sure this is still the issue.

Thank you

gilgi

@RickNCN I've gone ahead and opened a ticket for this on your behalf after consulting with the product manager, as they may have additional questions.

Thanks for flagging and also thanks @tanderson for your insights, I added them in the note as something we should check and reflect back.