Server goes down during backup / high loads

[neilio]

I'm having some really frustrating problems with CPanel right now and the backup feature. Probably at least one a month my entire server crashes during the backup process, and if it doesn't, the server serves pages very slowly while the backup is running.

I don't have a lot of domains - around a dozen - with most of them being quite small. My server is a dual processor machine with 512mbs of ram, and I'm backing up over FTP to a remote server.

Does anyone have any idea how I can troubleshoot and fix this issue? It's really driving me nuts.

[AndyReed]

I'm having some really frustrating problems with CPanel right now and the backup feature. Probably at least one a month my entire server crashes during the backup process, and if it doesn't, the server serves pages very slowly while the backup is running.

I don't have a lot of domains - around a dozen - with most of them being quite small. My server is a dual processor machine with 512mbs of ram, and I'm backing up over FTP to a remote server.

You need to check the log files for any errors before the crash took place. It is really difficult to say what causes a crash without error messages.

[jackie46]

With only 512megs and running backups your memory requirements will go up. Are you sure your not running out of memory during the backup?

[chirpy]

One thing to check is that you do not have the laus rpm installed. This is know to cause problems on cPanel servers, especially when the backups run. You can remove if if it's present:

rpm -qa | grep laus

by following this:

http://forums.cpanel.net/showpost.ph...39&postcount=3

If laus isn't the issue, then as jackie46 said, you should check that the server isn't memory thrashing (using up loads of the swapfile) which would indicate either the server needs more meory or needs tuning.

Lastly, it could also be a hardware issue, as under load, they often only reveal themselves. If you think this might be the case then you should ask your datacenter (if you rent) to runs some hardware diagnostics for which they will liekly have to shut the server down.

[lloyd_tennison]

Getting a larger drive and doing incremental backups with greatly decrease the load and the time. There are a few threads on that and using rvm or rdiff-backup also.