Very high physical memory usage for low traffic site

  • Hi Team,

    I have recently migrated a site to A2 Hosting (https://www.theatozjourney.com).
    My baseline physical memory usage is was roughly around 100-200MB. On 28-Apr I started the ‘Force Regenerate Thumbnails’ Plugin to do its job. As soon as it started working, I saw the physical memory usage growing immediately. As soon as it hit 500MB+, I aborted the plug-in process. Now I have deleted this particular plugin and tried 12 different steps, yet, the physical memory usage is nearly 4x what it used to be. Would really appreciate any help, as I’ve tried everything I’ve read.

    Here’s what I’ve already done so far:
    1. Deactivate all plugins – no change in physical memory usage
    2. Deleted the plugin (Force Regenerate Thumbnails) – which was the original cause of the physical memory consumption increasing, when the plugin was running
    3. Installed W3 caching plugin
    4. Set up and activated CloudFlare
    5. Deleted the WP cron process and installed a scheduled specific cron process to decrease wp-cron.php requests
    6. Installed the WP HeartBeat Control Plugin and completely disabled all heartbeat, to decrease admin-ajax.php requests
    7. Added password protection to my wp-login page to reduce bot requests on wp-login.php
    8. Disabled XMLRPC, by adding the required code in the .htaccess file
    9. Installed BlackHole Bad Bots plugin to reduce periodic bot traffic. The plugin also advises 2 settings to be updated regarding Page Caching on the W3 total cache plugin which I have done.
    10. Installed the WP All in One Security plugin to activate all basic security features, including a captcha on the login page, and login lockdown after 3 unsuccessful attempts
    11. Ensured all unnecessary plugins/themes have been deleted, all existing plugins and theme are up to date
    12. Asked my web host to kill/reset all PHP processes active on my account

    So far, nothing has worked.

    Further helpful info:
    1. My webhost is A2 Hosting
    2. My account plan has capacity for 1GB RAM (I recently upgraded)
    3. I am using WordPress version 5.4.1
    4. PhP version: 7.3.6

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • This is just a guess, but you mentioned that you are using A2 Hosting. I believe by default they use MariaDB. And it’s possible that it’s configuration needs to be adjusted as I’ve seen issues with their MariaDB setup that caused high memory usage.

    You need to contact A2 Hosting so that they can enable the “ND (Native Driver) extensions”. In other words they’ll need to enable the nd_mysqli extension as default in PHP 7+ configurations rather than the mysqli extension (MariaDB developers also claim it has better performance anyway).

    Thread Starter theatozjourney

    (@theatozjourney)

    Hi Thomas,

    Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply. I have monitored resource usage over the last 7 days, and it has appeared that the physical memory usage has decreased now close to previous levels of 150-200 MB. I am puzzled because after physical memory usage spiked to 400-500MB, I tried the 12 actions listed above, and nothing material happened for 4 days (28Apr -> 1May). But in the last week, it’s now gradually dropped to reach 170MB or so.

    I have 2 options I have been considering – would you have any thoughts?
    1. Restore the website+database back to the day before the physical memory usage spiked after using the plugin (using Web Host’s daily backup created). I guess this option means I need to believe that the underlying issue that caused the high physical memory usage earlier is not yet resolved e.g. there is some ‘dirt’ or ‘unwanted bits’ left behind by plugins even after deleting it that could have the sustained high physical memory usage, and might cause it again in the future. I’d also need to believe that restoring a back-up would have no unintended consequences of its own.

    2. Leave things as they are. Currently physical memory usage is back down to previous levels. Just believe that whatever caused the issue earlier has now been resolved and nothing is ‘lurking in the background’.

    Thanks also for your tip on MariaDB. Is there anything I should be aware of that could happen as a side effect of asking them to enable ND extensions?

    Thanks a lot for your help, really appreciate the time you took to respond!
    Vin

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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