Run a top command
user@ iowa-1$ top
top - 14:18:43 up 160 days, 12:15, 1 user, load average: 0.25, 0.23, 0.14
Tasks: 68 total, 1 running, 67 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 3.5 us, 4.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 91.9 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 583.3 total, 86.6 free, 191.5 used, 305.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 1024.0 total, 997.7 free, 26.2 used. 274.5 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
363 root 20 0 119740 19892 2896 S 10.7 3.3 13612:31 google_os+
1 root 20 0 170544 6656 4216 S 0.0 1.1 3:54.77 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.18 kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_par_gp
6 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0+
8 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mm_percpu+
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:40.55 ksoftirqd+
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:35.94 rcu_sched
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_bh
12 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:17.08 migration+
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/0
15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs
16 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
17 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kauditd
18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:03.46 khungtaskd
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 oom_reaper
user@iowa-1$ ps -ef | grep google
root 363 1 5 2020 ? 9-10:52:31 /usr/bin/google_osconfig_agent
root 365 1 0 2020 ? 00:16:53 /usr/bin/google_guest_agent
user 30646 29679 0 14:18 pts/1 00:00:00 grep google
If you see google_osconfig_agent – need to upgrade the agent
user@iowa-1$ sudo apt-get install google-osconfig-agent Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be upgraded: google-osconfig-agent 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded. Need to get 10.8 MB of archives. After this operation, 582 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt google-compute-engine-buster-stable/m ain amd64 google-osconfig-agent amd64 1:20210217.00-g1 [10.8 MB] Fetched 10.8 MB in 1s (9434 kB/s) (Reading database ... 53306 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../google-osconfig-agent_1%3a20210217.00-g1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking google-osconfig-agent (1:20210217.00-g1) over (1:20201109.00-g1) ... Setting up google-osconfig-agent (1:20210217.00-g1) ... user@iowa-1$ sudo service google-osconfig-agent restart
Hopefully cpu much better and Google will stop telling you need to upgrade.
This apparently is some issue that developed in December 2020