This is a small script that can check if server load is too high and start another script.
It is NOT best practice to fix a problem like this but it can get you trough the nights while developers work on the code problem. I called my script /usr/local/bin/damnnastycheck.sh it runs every minute from /etc/crontab yhe only requirement is BashCalc (bc)
#!/bin/bash high=8.1 if [ $(echo $(cat /proc/loadavg | awk '{print $1}')'>'$high | bc -l) == "1" ]; then echo "high load, running fix" /usr/local/bin/damnnastyfix.