This thread is a continuation from the original, found here:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1203643962

Here's a question for Magoo, or one of you othe Linux guru's ..

Are there things my web host (WiredTree) can do to affect the memory/RAM usage on our VPS account?

Seems memory usage is the limiting factor on an account.

Say, for example, we start running close to our limit (384 MB). Are there things you can do as a Linux admin to bump that up tothe limit (and therefore tell the client they need to upgrade to a pricier ho$ting plan)?

Conversely, are there also things they can do to restrict our memory/RAM usage .. and give some of our memory to another account .. and therefore earn more money from our particular server???

If so, would these memory-restricting techniques affect the performance of our account/server.

Or am I being paranoid?

Just seems like when we first opened the account, there were no problems, and memory usage was steady at around 270-280 MB. Now it down around 200-220, and it seems like we've been experiencing performance issues.

What say ye?

Is there anything I can do to ensure we're being properly served? (small pun there) You know the old adage > "You get what you inspect, not what you expect."

While I'm at it .. here's the WEEKLY view (of server load):



This weekly view shows it going up to only 8 or 9, whereas the daily view shows it hitting 20 or 21. They say the daily view is "most accurate".

The way memory is allocated depends on the virtualization technology.  Some of them statically set aside a certain amount for you.  Some of them just make sure you don't go over your allocation.  Either way, I seem to remember you saying Wired Tree doesn't oversubscribe their host nodes, so you shouldn't have to worry about other sites using your memory.

There's not much they could do to inflate you memory usage, nor do I think they would do it.  It would be easy to detect given the shell access you have and would be a huge risk for them - a potential law suit just to make a few dollars a month.  I don't think either of your hosts have given you false numbers.  Usage dropped on the Lunar Pages server as expected once you moved traffic to the new site, so I think their numbers were real.

It is entirely possible that our intermittent lag is being caused by something other than memory usage.  It could be processor usage, or, most likely it is I/O starvation.  In other words, the hard drive or the front side bus can't keep up with the processor and memory.  From the email Wired Tree sent you, it sounds like another site on your server was causing to much I/O usage and they sent them a warning or some similar situation.  This is all speculation, of course, since I don't have access to either the host node or your site.

Memory usage is back up to 276. (MB)

Memory usage variations probably have a lot to do with cache info.  Apache caches info once it grabs it so that repeated requests for the same page don't cause undue load.  How much memory is used probably depends on how many threads and which ones have been active in the last few days.  I wouldn't worry about it unless you get close to your limit.

Look like our maximum memory usage, so far, is 308 MB:

The final metric WiredTree provides is called TCP Sockets. Again, not sure what this is telling me:



These numbers remain fairly constant .. to what you see here.