Server Load average- forum locked state

[poprulz]

I am getting these "Server Busy" error all the while and the server load is showing around 7-9 these days. My board is open for guests and I see around 100+ users online at any time with just 5-10 members and the rest guests with few bots.

I tried to lock the forums by turning it off to see the effect, but still it s showing a very high server load average with the same users browsing te forums.

I need to find the reason behind such a thing and probably a good solution to optimize the server performance. I tried to optimize the VBSEO as well as mentioned in few posts here.. Is there anyways to deny access to guests and just make it available for members only or maybe for bots as well.

thanx in advance.

[briansol]

First, what kind of hardware are you on? dedicated, shared?
do you have access to root level items like my.cnf ?