Digital Ocean - Server loads - Memory use?
I have a droplet on DO… the CPU load is only like 3% max…
The memory is at 50% - 60%… will that be OK? or when would one want to upgrade the droplet?
When the memory gets to what % would it be fair?
Hey Mozzi, its difficult to say. I am not sure how Digital Ocean reports on free memory usage but if you were to log-into the system and do a free -m then you will get a bit more detail. However again its not as simple as saying oh I have 100MB left of RAM because of how Linux utilises the memory (an article here may help explain https://andythemoron.com/blog/2017-04-23/Understanding-Linux-Memory-Usage). You will also probably need to take into account what types of processes are happening and at what time. For example you may have a memory heavy scheduled task that takes place at night where a lot more CPU and memory is being used and if you also get an influx of users at the same time could mean that you are nearing capacity. Whereas if your user base is high but trickle evenly and don’t cross between any heavy scheduled tasks you may never have an issue.
Personally if this isn’t mission critical then I would just sit on it and see how the performance goes in the real world. Its usually very easy to upgrade to higher specs at a later date and even more so if your using Docker because you can just redeploy the web node to a higher spec container.
Thanks @datguru…
I think the best is then to maybe post the link here and get some guys to use the site… 
then ill get some “real” world data…
i have just upgraded the droplet to … 4GB… just wanted to see how easy it would be to scale… and its crazy how fast and easy it is … if required… but 4GB is x2 what i had in mind to pay
Hence i need to get some “real” world users to give it a go…
I always do like to look at the load measurement as well which looks fine in that graph. Yep you can post the site here I’d happily jump on as well but you’d have to try and organise multiple people to jump on around the same time to get an idea. There is also the ability to do some load testing with services as well where you can simulate higher levels of load to get an idea of the concurrency you can support.
Another option have you thought of using Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) instead of Digital Ocean? I mean DO is great as they also have managed DBs which is useful. However if you aren’t using managed DBs Hetzner Cloud is a fantastic system (they have EU and US locations). You’d be looking at 8.21 euros instead of $24 for the server per month for the 4GB option
ill have to investigate… the reason why i went with DO… is because of the tutorials. like this… on how to set the SSL… and so on…
oohhhhh OK… i see one can do this… with Hetzner as well