just hopelessly overloaded
Nope! I had top and atop running exactly at that moment, and the load was pretty normal (some 150% CPU, out of 800% available), and atop didn't show too many I/O operations neither.
reload
There was also no noticeable slow-down of the server in the 30-60 seconds before the "hang". I was monitoring performance using your excellent /request-monitor/...
db-connections
Done.
I'll let you know how things are going next Friday!
Thanks a lot!
Frank