# Efficiency trades off against resiliency

DevFeed: [Efficiency trades off against resiliency](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/efficiency-trades-off-against-resiliency-21950.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.nelhage.com/post/efficiency-vs-resiliency/>)

Author: Nelson Elhage

Published: 2023-04-15T23:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Nelson Elhage](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/nelson-elhage.md>)

Topics: [Resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/resilience.md>), [Monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/monitoring.md>), [Server](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/server.md>)

Tags: [cpu](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cpu.md>), [efficiency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/efficiency.md>), [monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/monitoring.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [resiliency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/resiliency.md>), [work](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/work.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines how maximizing CPU utilization can leave servers without capacity to absorb unexpected traffic or added workload. It argues that improving efficiency often requires tradeoffs with resilience, while noting that some performance fixes can improve both.

## Source excerpt

What's the "right" level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from a well-designed and well-run service, what CPU utilization should we hope to see, averaged over a day or two? It's a very general question, and it's not clear it should have a single answer. That said, for a long time, I generally believed that higher is always better: we should aim for as close to 100% utilization as we can.