Backups causing very high load during transfer.

[Legin76]

Hi

I've recently been getting issues with the backup causing very high load. The backup itself running fine but once it's finished and starts transferring the files it goes through the roof. While I expect an increase during the backup itself transferring the files should be the easy bit. After the transfer has finished it takes five to ten minutes for the load to return to normal.

I have recently changed the OS from RHEL to CENTOS (using the instructions from softlayer Convert RedHat to CentOS | KnowledgeLayer) which does coincide roughly with when the issues started.

It may have been happening for longer as the server in general has been a bit slower so may be making it more noticeable, which I'm also trying to work out. If anything there are less sites than there used to be so it should not be down to more workload.

Last night for instance I received cPanel Service Monitor warnings for most services with loads of up to 51.16 or possibly higher
Load: 51.16 43.30 28.68
Memory:
• Used: 942MB
• Available: 1084MB
• Installed: 2026MB

avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
6.72 4.98 2.65 37.90 0.00 47.74

I don't know if it's related but the cPanel Service Monitor emails appeared to take an hour and 15 minutes to send. The sent time was 6:14/6:15am but the received time was between 7:20 and 7:28am

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

The following thread is a good place to start when troubleshooting load issues:

Troubleshooting High Loads On Linux Systems

This should help you obtain more information to help pinpoint the exact reason for the additional loads (whether it's the backup process or something else).

Thank you.

 

[Legin76]

Hi..

Thanks for that.. There is some interesting information in there.

It appears to have backed up my thoughts that its cpbackup_transporter that's causing the issue. After killing the process the load stays high for a couple of minutes then catches up. It takes ten to 15 minutes for cpbackup_transporter to complete at which time the server often becomes unusable. It does not always go sky high but recently its been at least two to three times a week.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Feel free to open a support ticket so we can take a closer look and attempt to rule out any problems with the backup script itself. You can post the ticket number here so we can update this thread with the outcome.

Thanks.