VPS resource monitoring and usage tracking

Monitoring your VPS helps you spot problems before they affect your site-high CPU load, low disk space, or memory pressure often appear hours before an outage. Set up at least basic monitoring on any production VPS.

CustomerPanel graphs

CustomerPanel provides basic resource graphs for your VPS without requiring SSH access:

1. Log in to customerpanel.ca
2. Go to Services → My Services → your VPS
3. Look for Usage Graphs or Statistics

Graphs typically show CPU usage, network in/out, and disk I/O over the past 24 hours or longer. These are good for a quick health check or post-incident review.

Command-line monitoring

Check current resource usage via SSH:

# Interactive process viewer (install: apt install htop)
htop

# CPU load average
uptime

# Memory usage
free -m

# Disk usage
df -h

# Top disk users
du -sh /var/www/* | sort -rh | head -10

# Network connections
ss -tulnp

Netdata dashboard

Netdata provides real-time charts for hundreds of metrics-CPU, RAM, disk I/O, network, running processes, and application-specific metrics (MySQL, Nginx, etc.):

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh
sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

Access at http://your-server-ip:19999. Restrict port 19999 to your IP only in your firewall-do not expose the Netdata dashboard publicly.

External uptime monitoring

External monitors check your site from the internet-they alert you when it becomes unreachable. Sign up for UptimeRobot (free, 50 monitors, 5-minute checks):

1. Create a free account
2. Add a new monitor: HTTP(s) monitor for your domain
3. Set the check interval (5 minutes on free plan)
4. Add an alert contact (email or Slack)

Set up disk usage alerts

Add a cron job to send an email when disk usage exceeds 85%:

#!/bin/bash
THRESHOLD=85
USAGE=$(df / | awk 'END{print $5}' | tr -d '%')
if [ "$USAGE" -gt "$THRESHOLD" ]; then
  echo "Disk usage is ${USAGE}% on $(hostname)" | mail -s "ALERT: Disk usage high" you@example.com
fi

Save as /root/disk-check.sh, make executable (chmod +x), and schedule with cron: 0 * * * * /root/disk-check.sh

Related: How to manage your Cloud VPS | How to resize your Cloud VPS-upgrade CPU, RAM, and disk | Setting up a firewall on your VPS | What is a VPS and how does Cloud VPS work?

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