Understanding Server Load and when to upgrade

Xephius
Xephius
@xephius
8 years ago
93 posts
Hey all, I am watching our server usage and has some questions about when to upgrade. Right now we run all our data storage on the local system, but we plan to change the user data store to Amazon so we can cut down on storage costs when we hit that wall.
When looking at the Server Load and Memory Usage, at what level of usage should I expect to upgrade?
updated by @xephius: 01/16/17 04:08:18PM
michael
@michael
8 years ago
7,746 posts
Its all a balancing act. If your server is at 90% diskspace, then you're going to need to upgrade to get more diskspace or delete stuff to make room.

If your site is starting to throw errors in your activity log about time taken to process stuff, you might need more CPU power, like many people uploading tons of audio. Even if you have space to fit it on the server, the conversion process continuously running while also having many visitors to your site may mean you need more CPU power.

If you had a Ton of content, but not very active, diskspace is your main issue. If you had a ton of visitors to your site, CPU. If your visitors main activity is streaming video, CPU, Memory and Bandwidth.

CPU Cores
Quote: Server CPU (Processor) Cores

This is the number of processors in the server

The higher the number of processors, the larger load the server can handle.
Memory
Quote: Server Memory (RAM)

The amount of memory (in Gigabytes) that the server has

The higher the amount of memory, the more simultaneuous users can be on your site at one time.
SSD Disk Space
Quote: Server SSD Disk Space

This is the amount of Disk Space (in Gigabytes) on the server.

All Jamroom Hosted servers use premium enterprise grade SSD (Solid State Disks) - these can be up to 100 times faster than older hard drives.
Network Bandwidth
Quote: Server Network Bandwidth

This is the amount of dedicated bandwidth (in megabits or gigabits per second) available to the server.

The higher the bandwidth the more simultaneous users can be on your site at the same time. If your site streams media (audio, video) higher bandwidth is better.
Xephius
Xephius
@xephius
8 years ago
93 posts
When looking at my dashboard, it shows Server Load as 0.04 ranging up to 0.19, what does that correspond to? Memory displays as a %, to that is easy to understand. Where can I see the bandwidth usage, I can't find it on the Dashboard.

I believe my issue will be with server load from user activity and storage space for user images.
brian
@brian
8 years ago
10,148 posts
theartsherpa:
When looking at my dashboard, it shows Server Load as 0.04 ranging up to 0.19, what does that correspond to?

A load of 1.00 means your CPU is 100% busy during the time it was checked. Anything OVER 1 and those processes are waiting for CPU time. In your instance this means your CPU has been between 4% and 19% busy.

Quote:
Memory displays as a %, to that is easy to understand. Where can I see the bandwidth usage, I can't find it on the Dashboard.

You can't - Linode does not provide a bandwidth API for us, so we can't show that to you in the dashboard. Since all our servers include unlimited bandwidth hopefully it's not something you need to worry about. If you DO need to know it, you'll have to open a ticket with us so we can check on it in the Linode backend.

Quote:
I believe my issue will be with server load from user activity and storage space for user images.

Just keep an eye on your server dashboard then - we also monitor all hosted servers 24/7 and keep detailed metrics on how every server is performing. In fact we use this information to help us make Jamroom faster and perform better. An example screenshot for your server is attached - it outlines the metrics and checks we are watching on your server. If we see your server is overloaded in any way we also will open a ticket for you and recommend an upgrade.

Let me know if that helps.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net