too much context switching

[ChadDavis <chadmichaeldavis@gmail.com>]

I'm learning about various tools to monitor performance.  I'm reading
about vmstat right now, and it says that context switching, if very
high, can be an indicator of misbehaving hardware . . . I'm not that
interested in what it can mean, at this point, but I'm interested in
what appears to be "high" numbers on my machine, as compared to the
reading material I have.

When I execute the command:

vmstat 5 5

I get:


procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 2  0      0 5741808 573028 1040628    0    0   122    42   53 1107  4  1 92  4
 1  0      0 5747552 573036 1034488    0    0     0    22   14 2522  1  0 99  0
 0  0      0 5747460 573060 1034488    0    0     0    32   18 2493  1  0 99  0
 0  0      0 5747740 573096 1034488    0    0     0    57   72 4142  1  1 98  0
 0  0      0 5747616 573144 1034468    0    0     0    61   20  687  1  0 99  0


Aren't those context switch number pretty high?  I realize this may be
all relative, but these numbers are WAY higher than I see in the
reference materials, so . . .