What should I do about these AutoTune Alerts?

AutoTune notices are just informing you of site "slow-downs," not outages. And these occasional Load Average spikes, or Web Server Connections being maxed out, are not something to be overly concerned about. The important things to know are that your web sites are is still up, running, and serving web pages to your customers, though the pages may be slowed as the server recovers and/or protects itself from crashes.  The key is to pay attention to the frequency and duration of the alerts.

Why is this happening?  These issues can be caused by hack attempts, bots that are quickly spidering your site, or a legitimate traffic spike, all of which are very common on the Internet. To determine the exact cause login to our dashboard and review your performance data (your developer can do this if you are not technical) and pay particular attention to the Raw Data -> Snapshot information.  These detailed VPS snapshots taken every 5 minutes from your VPS and stored for 30 days.

When should I do something about these alerts? Pay attention to the frequency that you receive the alerts. If you only receive these alerts once per week, its likely safe to ignore them.  If the notices increase to say, once per day, have your developer review your "Raw Data" snapshots in your dashboard to identify whether its legitimate traffic or not, whether the sites code can be optimized, and if a VPS upgrade is appropriate.

How do I upgrade my VPS? VPS upgrades are easy, affordable, nearly immediate and costs are prorated.  So you could upgrade your VPS for a few days and see if things go away, then downgrade again, which would likely just cost a few dollars.  Click here for upgrade instructions.