Server Hog - Unexpected Hogs

Unexpected Hogs

More often, the term server hog is used to designate an unusual load condition where the server performance falls short of the culturally accepted baseline. A common scenario in the early years of computing was an overload condition known as thrashing where the aggregate server performance becomes severely degraded, such as when two departments of a large company attempt to run a heavy report concurrently on the same mainframe. In such a situation, the designation of the server hog becomes a political matter of pointing fingers, as the termination of either long-running report would restore the server to normal performance.