Where to check VPS order usage?
You can easily find your VPS order usage by opening the VPS dashboard, choosing the server:
And opening the Server Usage page:
Right on top, you will see an ability to choose which period would you like to analyze: last 24 hours, last 1 week, last month, or even last year:
Below the period you will see several graphs with the main metrics for your plan. Keep in mind that graphs use GMT+0 timezone. Let’s take a closer look at the graphs.
Outgoing traffic
Outgoing traffic shows connections going out from the server to a remote location:
Incoming traffic
Incoming traffic shows connections coming into the server from a remote location:
RAM usage
RAM usage displays the amount of memory that is used by your server’s processes:
NOTE:
RAM and PHP memory are not the same, for a comprehensive comparison check this article: Differences between PHP memory limit and RAM
Number of processes
A number of processes display the total number of all processes running in your server:
We recommend keeping the number of processes low, for shutting down any process you can refer to this tutorial: How to Kill a Process in Linux.
Disk space
Disk space shows data your server’s disk is holding:
In case you are worried about the disk space you can always enable disk quota and limit the amount of space your files take 😊
Disk inodes
Disk inodes show items that correspond to the number of files and folders you have on your server:
Keeping the number of inodes low is crucial. Unattended files can fill up your disk pretty fast (for example log files that are being generated on a regular basis).
Load average
Load average displays the average system load on a server for your defined period:
CPU usage
CPU usage displays how much in % was CPU used by the server:
NOTE:
Having this limit high occasionally is completely normal, as it can jump up when you are installing resource-heavy applications. It can also jump up when your VPS is processing a lot of data
How to reduce order usage
High order usage usually comes down to poor website optimization. This can be solved by referring to these points:
The physical distance between you and the server
The bigger the distance between you and the server, where the website is hosted, the longer response time you may expect. To solve this we recommend setting up a CDN for your website. It works by keeping multiple copies of your website’s data in proxy servers worldwide, thus improving your website speed for visitors no matter their physical location.
Although for example if you and your target audience are from the USA, and you chose a server in Asia, CDN might not be able to help much. For that, we recommend contacting our Customer Success team and we will transfer your hosting to a closer location 😊
Poor optimization of database queries
Optimizing how queries are made, seeking only the essential data, or limiting the query results is the way to go when it comes to query optimization. There are tools that help in this matter, like EverSQL as well as help forums, here is an explanatory topic about this.