When managing your account, you will need to learn how to view your CPU usage in cPanel. Knowing this information will help you understand how your server is performing so you can make changes if necessary. This ensures that your online presence is running smoothly at all times.
For example, if you notice a spike in usage while running a specific cron job, this may indicate there are issues with how it is coded. In this guide, we’ll explain what resource usage is and then explain how to view CPU usage in cPanel.
What is Resource Usage?
When your account requests the server to perform tasks, such as connecting to a database, running a PHP script, or sending email, it requires resources from the server’s CPUs (Central Processing Units), as well as disk access from the hard drive to complete the tasks.
The CPU resource is a limited one, as there are only a set number of processors per server. Depending on the level of hosting that you have, you have a different allotment for cPanel CPU usage that you don’t want to go over.
Going over the CPU limits assigned for your level of hosting could result in an email warning, or a temporary account suspension if the usage is severe enough. So being knowledgeable about the resource usage limits your account has, and how much your account is currently using, is important information to know.
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting generally being the entry-level hosting option, those CPUs are shared with all of the users placed on the same server.
In a shared hosting environment, it’s very important that no one is over-utilizing the CPU, which could lead to other users having their requests delayed or missed altogether.
If you are near or over your account’s CPU limit, we would strongly encourage you to take a look at our account suspensions article, as this goes more in-depth as to what exactly commonly causes high resource usage.
VPS Hosting
Virtual server hosting is a step-up from shared, but you are still sharing the same CPUs as the other VPS clients on that physical node.
On a VPS, your maximum load average should be a 1.00 in short bursts. However, ideally, your load should remain under around a 0.7 for the majority of the day.
Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated servers being the top tier of hosting, you have full access to all of the CPU cores on your server.
On a dedicated server, ideally, you want to maintain a load average lower than the number of CPU cores (and threads) that you have. However, since it’s your own server, we won’t step in if your CPU usage is spiking, since you wouldn’t be affecting any other users.
Dedicated server CPU cores
| Server Class | CPU cores (threads) |
|---|---|
| Essential | 4C/8T |
| Advanced | 4C/8T |
| Elite | 6C/12T |
| Commercial #1 | 12C/24T |
| Commercial #2 | 24C/48T |
Now that you know what CPU Usage is, you may wonder where can you view a cPanel account’s resource usage? This next section will walk you through the steps.
View CPU Usage in cPanel
To view your CPU usage in cPanel, follow the steps below:
- Login into cPanel.
- For a quick view, in the right-hand sidebar, scroll until you see CPU Usage.
- For more information, scroll down to the Metrics section and click on Resource usage to view data on resources your account is using.
With both VPS and dedicated server hosting, you can SSH directly into the server to find out your usage. If you’re on either platform you can read our guide on advanced server load monitoring to determine your resource usage levels from the terminal.
For both VPS and dedicated servers, we also have a large collection of articles on resolving server usage problems that can help you pinpoint what could be causing high usage for you.
If you still need further assistance, contact our support department directly.
Hi,
My server is 4.05, 3.84, 3.65 this is average load taken my server… Please tell me this is ok or not…
I want to know the server maximum and low average load…
I recommend these helpful guides regarding load monitoring:
Server load monitoring
Understanding Server Loads
Advanced server load monitoring
Hi,
There used to be an icon on the cpanel on each child account (reseller), which showed graphs for resource usage in the last 24hours, last 4 hours, last our, last 30 minutes, etc.
I cannot seem to find this icon now. Is there any way to monitor resource usage on child accounts now?
Best,
Nenko
Are you able to access the Server Status section of WHM? That is likely going to be the best option for you.
I ALWAYS GET RESOURCE LIMIT EMAILS
193 Other WebSites On This Server
THIS MEAN SERVER WHICH WE HAVE HOST IS OVER LOADED?
Hello UMAR,
Thank you for contacting us. Our System Administrators do not send these email notifications out unless necessary. Since many people successfully run their websites in a shared setting without issue, it is possible your website is not appropriate for a shared environment.
This is just a public forum, and I cannot provide account specific information here. So, I recommend replying to the email notifications, and requesting additional information. This will open a ticket with our System Administration team, and allow them to provide you with more specific details into the resources you are using.
Thank you,
John-Paul
the link is 404
Hello Peter,
Apologies for the link issues. The article has been unpublished due to changes in the system. I will make sure to remove the link. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.
Regards,
Arnel C.
I am planning to install a php script that will index my entire website. We don’t change pages very often, to the monthly CPU usage should be minor, but the first time it is run, I expect trouble.
Is there anything I should do to avoid issues?
galiziengermandescendants.org
Hello John,
You should be fine for the most part when indexing your website but we generally send out a warning email prior to suspending the account. To take a preemptive action you could email [email protected] and inform our support department that you are doing something on your account and it may be resource intensive.
Best Regards,
TJ Edens
I dont understand what you are saying. I only upload photos etc to my website. How can I have high resource issues ? Nobody can comment etc. Only me can upload / update etc.
Hello Zet,
Thank you for contacting us. High resource usage can be caused by many things. Such as a poorly coded plugin/script, bots intensely crawling your site, or even high traffic to a specific page.
Since this is just our public forum, we cannot provide account specific information. I recommend replying to the email you received, asking for additional information. This will allow them to review your specific account and determine the cause.
Thank you,
John-Paul
how to low resource usage i am keep getting emails
Hello Umar,
I reviewed your account and you are getting emails that specify that you’re having high resource issues on your account. The best way to address them is to review the emails that were included in your email notices. Specifically, make sure to review the What is high system resource usage? The list of articles in that tutorial gives you many ways to troubleshoot your website’s usage of resources and determine what’s happening. The articles also provide possible solutions to your usage issues. Please make sure to read those articles. Additionally, if you would like the technical support team to review your account, then please respond to the email that was sent so that your request can be processed.
Kindest regards,
Arnel C.
The information in the article is a good starting point. We are a small church using volunteer web keepers with limited working skills. As a result of your recent e-mail we will attempt to over-come our problem with accounts resource management. Any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated.
I am using wordpress as well but the website is not live yet. Would I have to uninstall the plugins? to lower my usage levels?
Hello Ana,
You should reply to the email stating you are using too many server resources. Doing this our systems administration team will investigate your website and provide steps to lower your usage.
Kindest Regards,
TJ Edens
Hi
I received a email saying I had high resource usage coming from my account. I read the articles but I am still un sure of what steps I have to take to prevent this from happening again.
-Ana
Hello Ana,
The steps you need to take will depend on what is causing your high resource usage. One of the most common things to do to help is to use caching on your site. WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop, and other programs have either plugins or caching settings you can enable to assist with this.
Kindest Regards,
Scott M
Sorry – I’m not sure what you’re saying. I haven’t used my account lately. I’m thinking of adding something, but haven’t in the last few months. I don’t know many of these things you mention.
Hello Jane,
I sorry that you feel confused after reading the article. When a program runs on a computer, it takes up resources like memory, hard drive space, central processing unit time and processing power. This is the same for the server that runs a website. This article explains that usage and how to see it based on your account type. These resources are NOT unlimited and will vary based on your account type. Therefore, it is very important to understand how your website consumes these resources so that you can plan necessary actions such as optimizing your website (reducing its memory consumption and making it run faster) or planning for a server upgrade.
If you are still confused, you may want to contact our live technical support team if you require further help. Please let us know specifically what is causing your confusion and we would be happy to help.
Regards,
Arnel C.
your email said I had to much usage, nothing on this page shows me my usage.
Hello del,
I apologize if this guide wasn’t clear, maybe it needs to be updated to make relevant information a bit more accessible. If you look under the Shared Hosting section which is the type of hosting your account has you should see a link for view your resource usage with CPU graphs.
Taking a look at your CPU usage in cPanel, you can see that you had a significant spike on 6/17 and then another smaller spike on 7/2. It looks like today so far you’ve used roughly 55% so could possibly be trending towards another high usage day if that usage trend continues.
Taking a look at your access logs, it appears that you had one IP address from Russia that had these requests to your site in the span of just 18 minutes:
901 POST /administrator/index.php
1009 GET /administrator/index.php
I have gone ahead and blocked this IP address for you using my block unwanted users with .htaccess guide.
You might want to password protect a directory in cPanel to setup a secondary password on your /administrator directory. That way only you can even attempt to actually log in because their has been an increase in Joomla brute force attacks.
It also appears that you’re running an older insecure version of Joomla, so you might want to also upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 to help make sure that if your site is attempting to be exploited that it isn’t successful.
Please let us know if you had any other questions at all!
– Jacob
we read your article. we ill come to the conclusion by this month end… until then pl cooperate with us. we are sorry for your inconvenience may cause.
Thank you.
Hello Sudarshan,
Thank you for contacting us. If you are attempting to contact Live Support directly, you can reply to the email that was sent, or see our additional contact information.
If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
Thank you,
-John-Paul