Excessive CPU Usage

[AlexT]

I have a small zen-cart shop with around 200 products. My shared hosting provider has recently sent me a email saying that my account CPU utilisation has reached an excessive level and that it will be suspended unless we upgrade. The upgrade option is VPS. I can not believe this! Admittedly, we use USEO and usercurrency add-ons that can be CPU intensive, but it is hard to imagine that this would go beyond shared hosting. I am looking for an advice whether my shop really needs VPS or it is small enough for shared hosting.

Many thanks,
Alex

[Merlinpa1969]

should be fine for shared hosting as long as its a good box and setup correctly

[AlexT]

I have just checked: the of Number of Queries is often around 650. Is this excessive for shared hosting?

Thanks,
Alex

[Merlinpa1969]

not really
we have several accounts that run over 2000 queries per page

[Website Rob]

I know from experience that USEO is not CPU intensive but never used the "usercurrency" add-on so not sure.

Also, for example, if you are using a Hoster charging less than 30 cents per GB of Data transfer for your Hosting package, they could be lowering many of your Service levels in order to offer them at that price. And their servers are usually overloaded as well.

Both of these are common tactics used by Hosters competing on price.

[AlexT]

I know from experience that USEO is not CPU intensive but never used the "usercurrency" add-on so not sure.

Also, for example, if you are using a Hoster charging less than 30 cents per GB of Data transfer for your Hosting package, they could be lowering many of your Service levels in order to offer them at that price. Servers are usually overloaded as well.

Both of these are common tactics used by Hosters competing on price.

Well, this is far from the cheapest hosting and also is considered one of the better ones, this is why I am wondering.

[AlexT]

Thank you, Merinpa1969, your replies are much appreciated!

[DrByte]

If you're running a store with only 200 products, and you're only hitting 650 queries per page, and your hosting company is saying that's consuming too much CPU and/or using too many database queries, then your hosting is clearly not geared towards ecommerce.

Granted, such a statement assumes that you've not got a lot of *other* things added to your site other than what comes out-of-the-box with a clean uncustomized Zen Cart install. Maybe you've got something *else* running that's pushing it through the roof.

Either way, if you look at the list of Certified Hosts (link at top of the page), you'll see services and pricing where a site with "200 products and 650 queries per page" will not be a problem at all.



Now, before someone goes challenging the "650 queries per page" issue, note that the v2 edition of Zen Cart uses WAY LESS queries per page. But that's not going to fix the problem with your poorly-configured/tuned server limitations imposed by your hosting company.

[AlexT]

The shop is 1.3.7 with the following contributions:

advanced_search_results_fix__optimization_1-0
ask_a_question_1.7
backup_mysql_plugin_v1.3
bettercategoriesezinfo_v1.3.5
blank_sidebox_2.0a
column_layout_grid_for_product_listing_1.3.61.3.7
direct_bank_deposit_0.1
encrypted_master_password_1.1
EP_v1.2.5.4
export_shipping_information_1-2-3
ezpages_on_sitemap_v_1.01
google_adsense_sidebox_1.3.0.2
google_sitemap_1-3-19
image-handler_2.0-zc13
Links_manager
optional_shipping_insurance_module_3.10
order_steps__tableless_2-2
paymate_v2.2
paypal_verified_logo_1.0.6
PPEC-137-patches-March21-2007
printable_pricelist_pricelist_v1.3pre2
privacy__condition_statements_1.1
Quick_Price_Search_with_Multi-currency_Support
recover_cart_sales_3.00
rss_feed_2-1-4
sales_report_rev104
search_log_2-0
security_patch_v138_20080919.php
shopmaniacom_automated_datafeed_generator_1.04
shopping_cart_with_image_sidebox_1.1
short_description_for_categories_1.0
simple_google_analytics_1.1.1
social_bookmarking_1.4
testimonial_manager_v1-4-6
ultimate_seo_urls_2-105
usercurrency_2-13
whats_new__products_v1.2
wlps_feeder_v1.04
ypsf_v1.05
zencart_HoverBox3_rc2

Does this make much difference?

These are the offending processes:
Top Process %CPU 27.6 httpd [matryoshkastore.com] [/index.php?main_pageproduct_info&cPath49&products_id1006]
Top Process %CPU 18.3 httpd [matryoshkastore.com] [/bmz_cache/a/a62c741a1133ee4fc7efa6a5a66d16b8.image.100x80.]

Thanks,
Alex

[kobra]

The shop is 1.3.7 with the following contributions:

With a list like this it really bears asking if you have made sure that each and every file that is a "replicate" or stated differently - If more than one module changes the same file - - If these have been merged properly to contain the alterations for each module?

To reiterate others comments: We also have several shops with many nested attributes generating 4,000+ querries and these run fine at about 1 sec parse time.