Monitor a Plesk server with Monitoring and service alerts

Problems are cheaper to fix before customers notice them. Plesk's free Monitoring extension (formerly Advanced Monitoring) shows server and website metrics over time and can email you when values cross a threshold. Combined with Services Management, it covers most day-to-day monitoring for a single server.

Before you start

• Plesk administrator access on a VPS or dedicated server.
• An email address that you check for alerts.

Install Monitoring

1. Go to Extensions → Extensions Catalog.
2. Search for Monitoring and click Get It Free.
3. Open it from the left menu. Graphs start filling as data is collected.

Read the graphs

• CPU – sustained high usage points to busy sites, bots or a runaway process.
• Memory and swap – heavy swap use means the server needs more RAM or tuning.
• Disk usage and I/O – watch free space; full disks break mail, databases and backups.
• Network traffic – spikes may be legitimate traffic, backups or attacks.
• Website response time – per-domain checks, if enabled.

Switch the time range to see trends over days or weeks, which helps with capacity planning.

Set alerts

1. In Monitoring, open Alerts (or Settings).
2. Enable alerts for disk space (for example below 15% free), CPU above 90% for 10 minutes, and memory above 90%.
3. Choose notification by email (and Plesk mobile app if you use it).
4. Save and trigger a test if available.

Avoid too-sensitive thresholds – alerts that fire constantly get ignored.

Restart failed services

Go to Tools & Settings → Services Management. It lists the web server, nginx, PHP-FPM, mail, DNS, database and other services with their status. Restart a stopped service with one click, or use Restart after configuration changes. Plesk's watchdog-style checks can also restart some services automatically.

Find the cause of high load

• SSH in and run top or htop to see which process uses CPU or memory.
• For PHP, the process user shows which subscription is busy.
• Check that site's logs for bots or attacks; see Log Browser.
• Limit heavy subscriptions with Resource Controller; see resource usage and overuse.

External monitoring

Server-side monitoring cannot alert you if the whole server is down. Add an external uptime check that tests your main sites and the panel from outside, and alerts by email or chat. For deeper metrics, see Node Exporter and Grafana.

Troubleshooting

• Graphs empty: the extension needs time to collect data; check that its service runs.
• No alert emails: verify the address and that server mail is delivered; see mail queue.
• Disk full alert: clean logs and local backups, or move backups to remote storage.

Next steps

• Speed up sites.
• Security hardening.
• Updates.