# Digital Ocean graphs and upgrading droplet
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** server-resources
**Created:** [May 12, 2021, 9:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174 "2021-05-12T09:44:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 9:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/1 "2021-05-12T09:44:50Z")
I’ve a 2GB 25GB $10 Digital Ocean droplet. My forum is fairly new so all the figures are tiny, except:
- Memory (between 75-80%, and inexplicably jumped to 85% yesterday and remains there). When I installed Discourse I went for the 2GB option rather than setting up swap memory.
- Disk usage (78-80%). Once when rebuilding Discourse it ran out of disk space and had to clear some space before I tried again. Is there any way to clear more space (e.g. permanently deleting “deleted” topics)?
At what sort of percentage levels should I look at upgrading the droplet?
---
### Author:  [@marianord](https://meta.discourse.org/u/marianord)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 12:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/2 "2021-05-12T12:34:09Z")
Ok, you need to understand a couple of things on how Discourse works:
- Discourse keeps as much memory used as it can to improve the response speeds. So, using 80% of the memory will happen in a 2GB droplet and in a well configured 16GB droplet.
- Disk usage shouldn’t be that high unless you have a lot of attachment. You can try `./launcher cleanup` to remove old images, it usually helps a lot if the server has a lot of rebuilds.
> [@Jonathan5](#):
>
> I went for the 2GB option rather than setting up swap memory
The 2GB option should have SWAP, you can start moving out of SWAP at around 4GB of memory.
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 12:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/3 "2021-05-12T12:43:32Z")
Thanks for your advice on memory.
I will try your suggestion on disk space (I don’t have any attachments). I wonder whether it’s Digital Ocean backups/snapshots to blame.
> [@marianord](#):
>
> The 2GB option should have SWAP, you can start moving out of SWAP at around 4GB of memory.
I note from this post, which pre-dates my Discourse installation, that a swap file is set up automatically:
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/create-a-swapfile-for-your-linux-server/13880/60](https://meta.discourse.org/t/create-a-swapfile-for-your-linux-server/13880/60)
Maybe that’s why memory usage stays so consistently at 75-80% How would I check whether I have a swap file?
---
### Author:  [@marianord](https://meta.discourse.org/u/marianord)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 12:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/4 "2021-05-12T12:45:34Z")
> [@Jonathan5](#):
>
> Maybe that’s why memory usage stays so consistently at 75-80% How would I check whether I have a swap file?
You can run `free` command and check. But if you followed the installation guide most probably you have SWAP.
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 12:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/5 "2021-05-12T12:47:28Z")
Your must nearly have sent your reply before my question! Thanks again. I’ll try your suggestions and report back.
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 1:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/6 "2021-05-12T13:27:12Z")
Memory stays at 70 percent because it’s supposed to. It’s speeding up disk access. Don’t worry. You can Google “why is Linux using so much memory” if your care why.
Did you resize your droplet? I thought that the $10/month one had 50gb of storage. You can get by with 25,though, but you’ll need to do
```
./launcher cleanup
```
Fairly often.
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 10:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/7 "2021-05-12T22:03:17Z")
Yes swap was installed 🙂
```plaintext
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 2035548 1509908 94712 159096 430928 200948
Swap: 2097148 171008 1926140
```
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 10:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/8 "2021-05-12T22:14:27Z")
> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> Did you resize your droplet? I thought that the $10/month one had 50gb of storage.
Well funny you should say that… I checked the “resize” tab and was presented with the following options among others:
> Basic Shared CPU 1 vCPU 2 GB **25 GB** 2 TB **$10/mo** 0.015/hr
> Basic Shared CPU 1 vCPU 2 GB **50 GB** 2 TB **$10/mo** $0.015/hr
Thanks for the tip… 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 10:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/9 "2021-05-12T22:24:21Z")
> [@marianord](#):
>
> Disk usage shouldn’t be that high unless you have a lot of attachment. You can try `./launcher cleanup` to remove old images, it usually helps a lot if the server has a lot of rebuilds.
Does any of this help?
```plaintext
# ./launcher cleanup
...
Total reclaimed space: 5.823GB
...
# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 973360 0 973360 0% /dev
tmpfs 203552 1112 202440 1% /run
/dev/vda1 50633164 13236268 37380512 27% /
tmpfs 1017752 0 1017752 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 1017752 0 1017752 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda15 106858 3934 102924 4% /boot/efi
/dev/loop0 56832 56832 0 100% /snap/core18/1988
/dev/loop1 56832 56832 0 100% /snap/core18/1997
/dev/loop2 33152 33152 0 100% /snap/snapd/11588
/dev/loop3 72192 72192 0 100% /snap/lxd/19647
/dev/loop4 69248 69248 0 100% /snap/lxd/20326
/dev/loop5 32896 32896 0 100% /snap/snapd/11841
overlay 50633164 13236268 37380512 27% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/c8513c82acabacccaf50e9ac0f082c1f742639944e8aef980fe3805850b5c1cd/merged
overlay 50633164 13236268 37380512 27% /var/lib/docker/overlay2/d7c85dc8bc2d7922a71795a329a59b44eb507df8896e5baf068384314d0ba1de/merged
tmpfs 203548 0 203548 0% /run/user/0
```
---
### Author:  [@marianord](https://meta.discourse.org/u/marianord)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/10 "2021-05-12T22:27:27Z")
Yes, that command just regain you 5.8GB of space. And according to the second command you only have 27% of the disk used.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 10:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/11 "2021-05-12T22:31:02Z")
Mega. That adds up – I was using about 20GB (80% of 25GB) and now am using about 14GB (27% of 50GB).
This thread has been really helpful. Thank you both very much.
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 5:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/12 "2021-05-13T05:33:38Z")
The price for the 50GB is the same? 🤔
---
### Author:  [@JimPas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JimPas)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/13 "2021-05-13T06:16:05Z")
According to their website tonight, the 25 GB basic droplet is $5/mo with 1 GB CPU, 1 TB Xfer with a rate of $0.00744/hr.
The 50 GB droplet is $10/mo with 2 GB CPU and 2 TB Xfer with a rate of $0.01488/hr.
---
### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/14 "2021-05-13T06:21:52Z")
@JimPas Thats right. Perhaps it was different in October 2020 and they kept me on the old contract but also allowed me to upgrade to the current deal.
@merefield Yes, same price!
---
### Author:  [@JimPas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JimPas)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/15 "2021-05-13T06:24:13Z")
Oh, that would make sense… and was nice of them. They must have had a price change and upped the plan for those who were already customers. Cool.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/16 "2021-05-13T06:27:42Z")
It’s funny to think of a faceless global corporation as being nice. But, yes, I suppose it is an honourable approach! Maybe they didn’t automatically upgrade the account because it would involve disruption – or be too much work to do it for many thousands of customers.
Edit: I think I remember now… you can upgrade CPU/RAM then downgrade again, but with disk space is a one-way street, so I probably went from 1GB to 2GB RAM but didn’t change the disk space so as to be able to downgrade again if necessary.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2021, 6:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/digital-ocean-graphs-and-upgrading-droplet/190174/17 "2021-06-12T06:28:33Z")
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