# Getting extreme load warning while server resources are not being used
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [September 2, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490 "2021-09-02T20:22:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Caliph](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Caliph)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/1 "2021-09-02T20:22:09Z")
We are a game company and use discourse for our community forum.
Each time we release a patch to our game and patch notes on the forum we get a spike in traffic.
We are using DigitalOcean to host and recently increased server capacity to 16vcpu and 32GB ram for the upcoming patch release (which is tomorrow)
We just released patch notes today and it made the forum show the extreme load warning when I checked DO graphs the CPU usage was only at 12% max and ram at 40%
I have already set the unicorn workers to 32 (double the number of CPU cores)
What am I missing here?
We usually get 100k visits the day of the patch, of which ~30% of users are logged in
---
### Author:  [@IAmGav](https://meta.discourse.org/u/IAmGav)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 8:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/2 "2021-09-02T20:25:05Z")
You might want to read this
> [@2.8.0.beta6: Bug fix](https://meta.discourse.org/t/2-8-0-beta6-bug-fix/202470):
>
> New features in 2.8.0.beta6 beta6 is a bug fix update to [beta5](https://meta.discourse.org/t/202357) released yesterday, September 1 Downgrade dependency causing memory issues One of the open source dependencies Discourse relies on appears to have memory issues leading to stuck processes. We’ve downgraded the dependency to a known-working version while we work with the developer to fix. Additional Fixesplay_button Click to expand
---
### Author:  [@Caliph](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Caliph)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 8:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/3 "2021-09-02T20:30:02Z")
I just updated the forum yesterday to beta5 😢 I will update again tomorrow.
But I feel it might be unrelated to our issue as it is happening to us for a long time now.
Edit: Just checked I upgraded to beta4 so this won’t be it.
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 8:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/4 "2021-09-02T20:49:13Z")
After a certain traffic threshold you need to [start collecting performance metrics](https://meta.discourse.org/t/prometheus-exporter-plugin-for-discourse/72666) in order to fine tune your install.
> [@Caliph](#):
>
> We are using DigitalOcean to host and recently increased server capacity to 16vcpu and 32GB ram for the upcoming patch release (which is tomorrow)
That costs $320 right? At that price point you may want to seriously consider [our dedicated hosting service](https://www.discourse.org/pricing), which is both cheaper and faster for this traffic level.
---
### Author:  [@Caliph](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Caliph)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/5 "2021-09-02T21:33:45Z")
I will look into performance metrics, thanks for that. A question related to that - Can I use newrelic for performance metrics?
About hosting, as I mentioned we recently did this upgrade for patch release and will revert it back to basic 4cpu 8gb which is just $40 per month and we serve 1m page views without any problem 🤷♂️
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2021, 9:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/getting-extreme-load-warning-while-server-resources-are-not-being-used/202490/8 "2021-09-02T21:54:42Z")
> [@Caliph](#):
>
> A question related to that - Can I use newrelic for performance metrics?
We only officially support the prometheus plugin. There was an old New Relic one but it wasn’t maintained and broke over the years.