Servers

Using disk space alerts

Overview

Disk space alerts will send you a (single) alert via your preferred notification channel(s) when the disk of a server crosses the usage threshold you have set. This applies to both space usage, and inode usage. The default threshold is 80% usage but you can choose any value from 0 - 100. Setting a threshold value of 100 will disable alerts for that server.

Changing the disk space alert threshold on a server

By default, servers have their disk usage threshold set to 80%. To change this:

  1. Log into your Cloud 66 Dashboard and click on the application in question
  2. Click through to the server group (under Web or Application in the left-hand nav) and then the name of the server for which you want to set the alert threshold
  3. Click on the bell icon (🔔) at the top right of the Disk panel
  4. Set the percentage at which you'd like to be alerted and click Save Alert

You will now be alerted when the server's root disk exceeds that level of usage. The method by which you will be alerted depends on your notification settings (see below).

We will also display a red warning symbol in your server detail page next to any server filesystem that has breached its usage threshold.

We don't repeat notifications

We will only send you a single notification when your disk crosses its threshold (and when it crosses back). We won't repeat this notification if your server continues to stay above the threshold. Be sure to monitor your disk space notifications as low disk availability will cause unpredictable errors.

Managing your notification channel(s)

To choose the channel(s) through which you'll receive your disk space alerts:

  1. Log into your Cloud 66 Dashboard and click on the application in question
  2. Click * Notifications* in the left-hand nav
  3. Click on the icon(s) of your preferred channel(s) next to Disk Space Alerts

For more detailed help on notification settings please read our full guide on the subject.

Disabling disk space alerts on a server

There are two ways to disable the disk space alert for a server:

  1. Set the alert threshold to 100 (100%)
  2. Turn off notifications for disk space alerts in your notification settings

In general we don't recommend the second method because it will disable disk space notifications for all the servers in an application.

How to diagnose why your disks are full

If your disk is filling up, a great tool to find the culprit is ncdu. Cloud 66 installs ncdu on your servers automatically, and you can run it using the command:

sudo ncdu /

This will give you a breakdown of what files/folders are using up the most disk space.

How to mitigate disk space issues

There are three main approaches to ensuring your servers have enough disk space available:

  1. Identify and (manually) delete unused or extraneous files (e.g. older logs, packages, backups) - see ncdu above for more help
  2. Provision cloud storage with your provider and then mount this storage on your server(s) - this is an advanced topic that we suggest only for experienced users
  3. Deploy a new instance of your server(s) or your entire application with extra disk space provisioned via your manifest file.

More help

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