Is Your Server Down or Cannot Be Reached

Getting my VPS back online or getting access again

1. If it's a cPanel server check to ensure it's not reachable through a different internet connection (such as 3g/4g on your mobile phone). If it is it means you have simply blocked yourself in the firewall (most likely by trying to login accidentally using incorrect credentials). To rectify this see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/73/0/locked-out-of-cpanel-vps

2. If you serve websites check to see if they are reachable from elsewhere, a good website to do that is: http://isup.me 

3. If you are in China, most likely the China traffic block is active. This blocks all incoming requests from China and is on by default. To turn off this block see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/188/0/disable-china-block

4. Check the console to see what your VPS is actually doing. Even if your VPS is offline or unreachable you should be able to view the console to see what has actually happened. This is available in our portal system, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/28/0/how-can-i-get-console-access-to-my-vps

5. If you've accessed the console and the VPS is not responding or still not functioning properly, you can easily power off and back on your VPS. This should bring your VPS back online right away, you after powering it back on you can also view the console to watch it booting. See: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/34/0/how-do-i-stop--start--restart-my-vps

6. If your VPS is still not online after a reboot please open a ticket with support.

Why did it go down?

If your VPS was unresponsive and required a reboot, generally the reason is a lack of available memory or very heavy server load.

Linux

Linux VPSs can behave normally but once they are under stress if your usable RAM runs out the operating system will attempt to kill various services, if it runs out very quickly it may hang completely.

1. Firstly make sure you have a file based swap partition, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/131/0/creating-a-file-based-swap-partition

2. Add some more physical RAM to your machine, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/86/0/how-to-upgrade-your-memory--ram

3. Setup a monitor so that if it reoccurs your VPS can be automatically restarted upon detection of failures (we recommend at least 3 failures before you set it to restart however). See: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/244/0/setup-a-vps-monitor

4. Add CPU cores, if your server comes under heavy load at times adding CPU cores can help, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/87/0/how-to-upgrade-your-processor--cpu-cores

5. If cPanel limit your apache configuration in WHM -> Service Configuration -> Apache Configuration. Lower your server limit, max clients, max requests per child and possible timeout values. This should help reduce the amount of RAM apache processes would use if the server comes under heavy load.

6. Change your PHP configuration from suPHP to DSO or CGI. suPHP is a little more secure, however, it uses more RAM than both DSO and CGI and also affects performance.

Windows

Windows VPSs rarely go offline. They can become unresponsive however if you have used all your RAM, this is particularly the case for servers with only 1GB of RAM.

1. Add more RAM, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/86/0/how-to-upgrade-your-memory--ram

2. Monitor your RAM usage in the task manager, when you are logged in open the task manager. Anything more than 80% usage and you will very quickly run into memory issues.

3. If you are using the Windows machine to browse the internet, make sure you have all other applications closed, this includes server management which loads automatically upon login.