Memory is your Web server’s most crucial resource, which serves multiple, related purposes:
- Website data loaded into RAM loads most quickly
- Having more RAM prevents your CPU from having to retrieve data from the hard disk as often
- Scripts that write to memory (e.g. PHP) will have more breathing room before they run out of space
- Increasing a Web server’s RAM means that it will work more quickly and can handle more complicated tasks. This can be accomplished by upgrading to a higher package.
Plugins and scripts
Exceeding your RAM limitation is often caused by a poorly configured plugins or scripts (cron jobs) that floods the memory available to it. Increasing the RAM might improve the website’s performance and stop it from generating errors, but it is possible that they will creep up again (even if it’s less frequently). In this case, increasing the RAM further isn’t the right solution – you need to fix the problematic element of your site.
We will only be able to investigate the cause while the issue exists meaning, if the error no longer shows up then unfortunately we won’t be able to see what caused it.
In the end, your web developer should be investigating the reason as to why the plugins are behaving the way they are.
High volumes of traffic
This simply means that you received a lot of visitors to your website at a particular time which caused high CPU load. To see your traffic statistics, you can log into your control panel and select Awstats
You can also check your “CPU and Concurrent Connection Usage” for more detailed information regarding when certain resources were high at a given time. This includes memory as well.
High volumes of traffic can also be caused by attacks on your website. If someone is trying to forcefully hack your website, they may have picked up that you using outdated addons and are trying to exploit their vulnerabilities. It is best practice to always keep your website up to date to ensure something like this does not happen or at least lessen the chance of it happening.
You’ll receive three warnings regarding resource limits. Should you still exceed the limit by the third warning, your package will be automatically upgraded to the next plan to avoid any impact on your website.
If you are a reseller, host a few websites or simply want better performance, our Business VPS solutions would truly benefit you as we do not monitor resource usage on these services. You can find our current solutions here.