Virtuozzo System Usage

[itwasntme]

I have noticed a weird thing lately with two VPS accounts. Virtuozzo's system usage creeps up to 100% over the course of 24 hours of so and stays there, but stays in the green and I don't get any QoS alerts. The servers both seem to be running fine, and I haven't had any crashes. One VPS is running a few Wordpress blogs. The other is running some Joomla sites.

In the past, when the system usage meter in Virtuozzo got anywhere near 100%, it turned yellow or red, I had sites go down, and all kinds of QoS alerts for privmpages were thrown. It turned out back then that I had a bad PHP script eating tons of memory with too many MySQL queries. That doesn't appear to be the case here, since I'm not having any apparent problems with either server. It seems like a "non-problem" but it has me concerned because I'm used to using that system usage meter in Virtuozzo to keep an eye on the health of the VPS..

When I look at memory used in WHM (WHM->Server Status->Server Status) it shows only 31% used, which is what I used to see in Virtuozzo.

When I look in WHM at Server Status->CPU/Memory/MySQL Usage, the memory adds up to the 31% WHM shows.

When I run free, I get:

root@server [~]# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        524288     133804     390484          0          0          0
-/+ buffers/cache:     133804     390484
Swap:            0          0          0

When I run Free, I get:

root@server [~]# Free
Memory limit...: 8388604 MB (burstable: 8388604 MB)
Current usage..: 120 MB (0%) (requested: 264 MB)
Free memory....: 8388484 MB (100%)

Initially, I suspected it was another problem with MySQL, and restarting MySQL does drop the system usage meter down to 31% in Virtuozzo for a while--without changing the actual memory used on the system processes page--but the memory usage for MySQL with Virtuozzo pegged is only 6.23% in WHM.

Here's the really weird thing: If I look at Virtuozzo->System Processes it shows only 0.4% (I think they mean 40%) of total memory used, half of which is mysqld and the rest is spamd.

With no sign of problems, it looks like Virtuozzo is incorrectly reporting memory usage in the system usage meter, but correctly in the system processes list.

[mrugesh78]

I exactly have the same problem since last two weeks and still not able to find solution. My virtuzzoo system usage also reaches to 100% and not showing any error in log and it remains green. Yellow and black zone disappear suddenly.

If i restart mysql, then it becomes down to 40%. But if i do not do so then it remains at 100%. and after 24 hours, abuse admins blocks my VPS saying that "high system usage" on VPS and my site remains down for so many hours.

do not know how to solve this. posted so many tickets and searched lots stuff but did not get any solution.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by mrugesh78

I exactly have the same problem since last two weeks and still not able to find solution. My virtuzzoo system usage also reaches to 100% and not showing any error in log and it remains green. Yellow and black zone disappear suddenly.

If i restart mysql, then it becomes down to 40%. But if i do not do so then it remains at 100%. and after 24 hours, abuse admins blocks my VPS saying that "high system usage" on VPS and my site remains down for so many hours.

do not know how to solve this. posted so many tickets and searched lots stuff but did not get any solution.

Have you offered to pay for some help?

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by mrugesh78

I exactly have the same problem since last two weeks and still not able to find solution. My virtuzzoo system usage also reaches to 100% and not showing any error in log and it remains green. Yellow and black zone disappear suddenly.

If i restart mysql, then it becomes down to 40%. But if i do not do so then it remains at 100%. and after 24 hours, abuse admins blocks my VPS saying that "high system usage" on VPS and my site remains down for so many hours.

do not know how to solve this. posted so many tickets and searched lots stuff but did not get any solution.

I'm not sure you're having the same problem. I'm not getting any "high system usage" notices, and according to the System Processes pages in Virtuozzo, I am only using 40% of memory while the System Usage meter is pegged at 100%. The MySQL restart may be a red herring.

I'm thinking the System Usage meter may be wrong in my case. In your case, it looks like you do have a memory usage problem. Have you looked at the entries in Virtuozzo->System Processes to see how much memory is reported used when your System Usage meter is at 100%?

[dabro]

I have the exact same symptoms, System usage creeps up to 100%. No QOS alerts, CPU resources are very low. MySQL restart drops it back to normal (43%) levels for a while. Symptoms appeared a month or so ago. Everything appears to be fine.

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by dabro

I have the exact same symptoms, System usage creeps up to 100%. No QOS alerts, CPU resources are very low. MySQL restart drops it back to normal (43%) levels for a while. Symptoms appeared a month or so ago. Everything appears to be fine.

Dabro, thanks for replying. I was beginning to think I was the only one. I have been googling and can't find any mention of this anywhere else where it's not related to QoS alerts or server crashes. I don't know what to make of it.

Did you update to 11.23.x of cPanel a month ago when this started? That's all I can think of that's shared on my two VPS accounts.

[lnxcode]

Hey guys,

We use SLM for managing VPSes. This enforces your per VPS limits and doesn't let your VPS use more then it should be. It sounds like you guys may have some memory hogs in your applications.

Have you guys considered cutting down some of the unneeded plugins and stuff?

"What is SLM, “Virtuozzo Service Level Management (SLM) is a system that maintains and allows administrators to configure and control the levels of service (i.e., the set of ‘promises’) provided to VPS owners.”

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by lnxcode

It sounds like you guys may have some memory hogs in your applications.

Hi Denis,

I know that normally high memory usage would imply memory hogs, but we're not seeing any QoS alerts that normally accompany 100% resource usage and the memory usage shown in Virtuozzo->System Processes does not add up to the 100% shown on the Virtuozzo->Resources page. In fact, in my case while the resources page shows 100% the processes page shows only 40% or memory is being used. If we were really at 100%, wouldn't we be getting some QoS alerts?

What we are wondering is whether there might be a problem with the Virtuozzo memory usage reporting after a recent cPanel upgrade because we aren't seeing any problems other than the meter being pegged in Virtuozzo.

I haven't added any plugins or scripts since I noticed this weird behavior with Virtuozzo's memory usage meter. The only thing new I can think of is cPanel updates.

[thnet]

Originally Posted by lnxcode

Hey guys,

We use SLM for managing VPSes. This enforces your per VPS limits and doesn't let your VPS use more then it should be. It sounds like you guys may have some memory hogs in your applications.

Have you guys considered cutting down some of the unneeded plugins and stuff?

"What is SLM, “Virtuozzo Service Level Management (SLM) is a system that maintains and allows administrators to configure and control the levels of service (i.e., the set of ‘promises’) provided to VPS owners.”

lnxcode, I seem to recall there was some "swap" space before; how do we enable & set swap space? why was it turned off?

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by thnet

lnxcode, I seem to recall there was some "swap" space before; how do we enable & set swap space? why was it turned off?

Nice hijack attempt thnet.

Back on the topic, my Virtuozzo memory usage on the Resources page is at 100% and with cat /proc/meminfo I get:

MemTotal: 524288 kB
MemFree: 370840 kB
Buffers: 0 kB
Cached: 0 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 0 kB
Inactive: 0 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 524288 kB
LowFree: 370840 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
Mapped: 153448 kB
Slab: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 0 kB
Committed_AS: 292724 kB
PageTables: 0 kB
VmallocTotal: 0 kB
VmallocUsed: 0 kB
VmallocChunk: 0 kB

With free -m I see:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 512 148 363 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 148 363
Swap: 0 0 0

So, from proc/meminfo that would be 524 - 370 = 154 used and with a guarantee set at 384, 154/384 * 100 = 40%.

Or using free, it would be 148/384 * 100 = 39%.

I still don't see where Virtuozzo is getting 100%. Am I misinterpreting the memory info?