If you have received an email with the subject "Hosting Account Resources Exceeded" then read on for guidance on how and where to find more information about what resources were exceeded.
All hosting accounts on HOST100’s shared platforms have resource limits in place. These resource limits are designed to safeguard your account. In the past, other users on the server could consume all of the available resources (CPU/Processor, RAM/Memory or Disk Access) and cause a slow down for other websites hosted on the same server.
HOST100 use the CloudLinux operating system that has resource limits set by an LVE system; kernel-level technology embedded in the server to ensure all websites on the server get full access to a fair share of resources. When you exceed any one of the Resources a Fault is logged against the resource for your account.
CPU Usage specifies how much of the allocated CPU resources you are currently using. The amount of CPU resources we provide to each account is the percentage of the server’s resources.
If CPU reaches 100% it means that your account is using all of the CPU resources allocated, and any new processes will be put to sleep until existing processes complete. This can cause your website to slow down dramatically and in extreme cases even time out.
Physical Memory Usage (RAM) is the memory allocated for your account. If this value reaches the limit you may begin to experience PHP errors (if applicable) on your website, or in very extreme cases may see a CloudLinux error page. These errors are typically only brief and once the usage has reduced to below the limit, will automatically clear.
Entry Processes is the number of processes that enter your account. It is also known as "Apache concurrent connections". This value defines how many PHP or CGI scripts you can run at a single time. For example, every PHP page that is accessed by a user will usually generate a single entry process. Many people misinterpret this value as “number of visitors you can have on your website at once”. Whilst it is true that each visitor accessing a PHP page will spawn an entry process, these processes usually end so quickly that it is extremely unlikely that 10 will be spawned concurrently and at a single moment unless you had a significantly large number of simultaneous visitors on your website at once.
Number of Processes is the limit similar to the above but includes all processes generated by the account rather than the specific PHP, SSH, or cron jobs. This number is typically very low, even under high activity, as non-PHP tasks execute and complete even more quickly.
I/O Usage (input/output) represents how much I/O (or disk activity) your account is using. Any task which makes use of the servers disk drive (such as reading or writing to the server) will consume I/O. We limit the maximum disk speed of each account to ensure that no single account can saturate the disk drives which will reduce performance for everyone.
Reaching this limit will cause all processes to slow down (to within this limit) and take much longer to complete. Typically you won’t notice this setting ever increase unless you perform something disk intensive like generating a large backup of your account.
To review the Resources that your account is using right now simply login to your cPanel control panel and look at the Statistics widget in the bottom right hand corner:
To review the historical Resource Usage that your account has used simply login to your cPanel control panel and click on the Resource Usage icon under Metrics:
Once in there, click on "Current Usage"
This will initially show you the resources used by your website for today but you can change the timeframe to any period within the last 30 days. To review the resource usage for yesterday click on Timeframe and choose Yesterday:
When the page has loaded you can review any "faults" that occurred during that period by scrolling down to the bottom of the screen and look for any Blue bars in the Faults chart:
As you can see from the example screenshot above there was a single window of 302 faults that occurred at 01:49am. This means that the server had to restrict the account 302 times. This reason for this burst in resource requirements could be caused by a backup running from inside the account or a search engine that crawled the website at that time of morning. You can review and confirm this by looking at a Snapshot of what was running at 01:49 Yesterday by clicking on Snapshot
Then choose the Date and the time period you wish to review. Snapshots are taken when an increase in resources is detected.
Looking at the example Snapshot for 01:47:51 on 12th October we can see that there were a lot of requests for the index.php page.
This event was probably caused by a search engine crawl for the website in the account.
Looking in the Raw Access logs could confirm that but as these 302 Faults only occurred over a 1 minute window we would not suggest that any action is required.
If you keep getting the Resource Exceeded emails and you see that the Faults are occurring at multiple times during the day then you should look at increasing the resources that are available to your site by upgrading to the next package.
If you need any help reviewing your Resource Usage then please raise a ticket at support@host100.co.uk and we would be happy to take a look for you.
