Notifications from Advanced Monitoring in Plesk: The CPU usage status is critical!

Question

What to do if I receive a notification from Advanced Monitoring about critical CPU usage:

Advanced Monitoring
[Alerting] <service_name> CPU usage

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The CPU usage status is critical!
The current value is XX µs.

Answer

The notification informs the Plesk administrator that the CPU resources consumption by one of the server services or processes exceeds the threshold values configured in  Advanced Monitoring > Settings > Thresholds.

There are two possible situations for this to appear:

• The CPU usage is expected but the threshold is set too low.
• The CPU usage is unexpected and requires additional investigation.

How to investigate:

1. Get the current CPU usage threshold values for alerts at Advanced Monitoring > Settings > Thresholds

2. Estimate the current CPU usage:

   For Linux:

   Use the utility top with the key -c when connected to the server via SSH to see the constantly refreshing list of all the processes sorted by CPU usage. Take a look at the column %CPU to find the processes that consume the most CPU resources:

   # top -c

   

   The columns USER and COMMAND will help to understand what the process is and who runs it.

   For Windows:

   Use Windows Task Manager Ctrl + Shift + Esc when connected to the server via RDP. On a Processes tab click on the CPU column to sort the processes by CPU usage. For more details use the Details tab.

   

3. Use the gathered data for further analysis:

   • If the CPU usage is expected define the optimal values that are above average and are not considered to be critical. Adjust thresholds at Advanced Monitoring > Settings > Thresholds

   • If the CPU usage is expected but it causes server performance issues consider increasing the server CPU resources.

   • If the CPU usage is unexpected perform your own investigation to find the cause of the high CPU usage by particular processes. Refer to the open sources for suggestions. Check for articles with known issues and solutions in our Knowledge Base.