CPU steal time is one of those Linux metrics that looks simple until you actually need to diagnose a performance problem. You open top , notice that %st is above zero, and the obvious conclusion seems to be: The host is overloaded. Or perhaps: Another VM on the server is stealing my CPU.
Source: [Dev.to](https://dev.to/aeza__net/cpu-steal-time-explained-what-st-really-means-on-a-virtual-machine-109h)