The term server hog is used to define an unexpected load on the server, wherein the performance of the server gets degraded. The incorporation of deliberate server hog is termed as a denial-of-service attack. At times, when the server becomes too overloaded by too many activities performed on it by a user, system or program, it fails to perform regular maintenance operations.
The performance of the server depends on various parameters. At the time when heavy operations are performed, server gets overloaded ,the performance of the clients contending for that subsystem is compromised. The most known hardware dimensions are: CPU cycles, I/O bandwidth, memory, etc. On the other hand, the performance of the server can be compromised at the software level, such as buffering, spools, queues, and page tables.