High Load and Low CPU & Memory

[Troy Knabe]

I have some brand new servers with 2 - Dual Core Xeons 3.33 Ghz and  
48Gb of RAM.  Intermittently they are spiking to high load averages 5+  
or sometimes even 10+ and the application (oracle application server)  
becomes unresponsive.  We are moving them from 2 - Dual Core Opterons  
2.4 Ghz and 12GB of RAM, and never experienced this type of  
situation.  Can anyone give me some suggestions on where to start  
looking?

I am using Kerberos/LDAP authentication/authorization for the new  
ones, but the ldap servers do not appear to be the issue.  The oracle  
user is local to each server.

Thanks
-Troy