If you have received a notification of excessive server resource usage then this article will assist you understanding the logs we provide. The example below is for the fictional domain rochendemo.com with the username rochendemo.
rochendemo rochendemo.com 3.50 0.52 1.4
Top Process %CPU 142.0 /usr/bin/php /home/rochendemo/public_html/index.php
Top Process %CPU 95.0 [php]
Top Process %CPU 34.0 /usr/bin/php /home/rochendemo/public_html/index.php
The first figure of 3.50 is the average % of CPU usage over a 24 hour period. This is generally the statistic which triggers an excessive resource usage ticket. The second figure of 0.52 is the average % of Memory usage over a 24 hour period. The third figure is not something which we use commonly. It represents the average number of established MySQL connections over a 24 hour period.
Each set of daily statistics will give the top 3 single processes by CPU usage. In the example the top single process uses 142% of the available CPU to execute and output. This typically means 100% of 1 CPU was utilized and 42% of a 2nd CPU. Generally well coded scripts or components will not peak above 35-40%. Any resource intensive script (something which should not be run in a shared environment) or extension/plugin/module/addon will also cause a high spike.
The top process in our example also lists the script which is being executed. In some cases this can be helpful to track down the problem however the top 3 single processes may not be the cause of the overall high average usage. In many cases, like in the 2nd top process, only [php] will be shown. This simply means the spike was from a PHP process under the account. Unfortunately cPanel does not log a great deal of detail. The reason for this is that extensive logging would result in a significant amount of load and thus be counterproductive to overall performance on the server.