Monitoring Your VPS Resource Usage

Overview

Monitoring your server resources helps you identify performance issues, plan upgrades, and ensure your applications run smoothly. This guide covers both the Control Panel graphs and command-line tools.

Control Panel Monitoring

Your Virtual Server Control Panel provides real-time graphs for:

• CPU Usage — Percentage of CPU utilisation over time
• Memory (RAM) — Used vs available memory
• Disk I/O — Read/write operations
• Network Traffic — Inbound and outbound bandwidth

Access these from your Client Area > Services > Your VPS > Control Panel.

Command-Line Monitoring Tools

htop — Interactive Process Viewer

A user-friendly alternative to top:

# Install
apt install htop -y    # Ubuntu/Debian
dnf install htop -y    # RHEL-based

# Run
htop

Key information displayed:

• CPU usage per core
• Memory and swap usage
• Running processes sorted by resource usage
• Load average

Press q to exit.

free — Memory Usage

# Show memory in human-readable format
free -h

Output explained:

• total — Total installed RAM
• used — Memory in use
• free — Completely unused memory
• available — Memory available for new applications (includes cache)

df — Disk Space

# Show disk usage in human-readable format
df -h

Key columns:

• Size — Total partition size
• Used — Space consumed
• Avail — Space remaining
• Use% — Percentage used (watch for >80%)

du — Directory Size

# Find largest directories
du -h --max-depth=1 / | sort -hr | head -20

# Check a specific directory
du -sh /var/log

iotop — Disk I/O Monitor

# Install
apt install iotop -y

# Run (requires root)
iotop

nethogs — Network Usage by Process

# Install
apt install nethogs -y

# Run
nethogs

Checking System Load

# Current load average
uptime

# Or
cat /proc/loadavg

Load average shows system load over 1, 5, and 15 minutes. As a rule of thumb:

• Load < number of CPU cores = healthy
• Load > number of CPU cores = system may be overloaded

Check your CPU count:

nproc

Checking Running Services

# List all running services
systemctl list-units --type=service --state=running

# Check specific service status
systemctl status nginx
systemctl status mysql

Log Files to Monitor

View recent log entries:

# Last 50 lines of syslog
tail -50 /var/log/syslog

# Follow log in real-time
tail -f /var/log/syslog

Quick Health Check Script

Run this to get a quick overview:

echo "=== System Load ==="
uptime
echo ""
echo "=== Memory Usage ==="
free -h
echo ""
echo "=== Disk Usage ==="
df -h /
echo ""
echo "=== Top 5 CPU Processes ==="
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -6

When to Upgrade

Consider upgrading your VPS plan if you consistently see:

• CPU usage above 80% for extended periods
• Memory usage consistently above 90%
• Disk space below 20% free
• Load average consistently higher than CPU count

You can upgrade your plan anytime from the Client Area.