Many people encounter persistently high CPU usage when using Japanese servers. High CPU usage not only slows down website or application responsiveness but can also cause service lag or even downtime. If your business targets Asian users, especially latency-sensitive applications like e-commerce sites, game servers, and video streaming platforms, maintaining a stable server CPU load is crucial.
Why is CPU usage so high on Japanese servers?
To reduce CPU usage, you must first understand the cause. The causes of high CPU usage can vary significantly in different scenarios. Common causes include:
Too many concurrent requests: A surge in website or application traffic can overwhelm the processing speed, leading to persistent CPU load. This is common during promotional events, game updates, and peak short video streaming.
Inefficient program code: Issues such as nested loops, poorly optimized algorithms, redundant queries, and memory leaks can cause applications to consume significant CPU resources.
Slow database queries: Missing database indexes, poorly structured tables, and inefficient SQL queries can all cause queries to occupy the CPU for extended periods of time.
Excessive background processes or scheduled tasks: Some services are deployed with a large number of background tasks enabled by default, such as log analysis, file synchronization, and scheduled backups, which consume CPU resources that should be used for business operations.
Malicious attacks or abnormal traffic: DDoS, CC attacks, and crawlers can cause the server's CPU to remain under high load for extended periods.
Insufficient virtualization allocation: If the Japanese server is a VPS or cloud server, the virtualization layer limits the available CPU frequency. Even if the physical server is powerful, insufficient allocation can cause high CPU usage.
How to determine if CPU usage is abnormal?
Before reducing CPU usage, you need to confirm that it is truly abnormal and not a normal occurrence during peak business hours.
Checking real-time load: On Linux, use the top or htop commands to view process usage. On Windows, open Task Manager → Performance → CPU.
Monitoring historical curves: Use tools such as Zabbix, Prometheus, and Grafana to view CPU usage curves over time to determine whether the load is continuously high or transient.
Analyze processes: Identify the processes or applications consuming the most CPU and confirm whether they are within normal business performance ranges.
Combined with business logs: Check the logs of Nginx, Apache, MySQL, Redis, and other systems to see if any unusual errors or request surges occur during peak CPU usage.
Optimization solutions to reduce CPU usage on Japanese servers:
1. Program optimization. Reduce unnecessary loops and complex calculations. Use caching wherever possible in the code to avoid repeated calculations. Process time-consuming tasks asynchronously, moving CPU-intensive operations such as file compression, video transcoding, and image processing to the background for asynchronous execution. Use efficient frameworks and libraries, and for Node.js, use native asynchronous I/O whenever possible.
2. Database optimization. Add appropriate indexes to speed up queries and avoid full table scans. Optimize SQL statements to reduce nested queries and complex joins. Implement read-write splitting to offload read requests to slaves, reducing pressure on the master. Cache hot data: Use Redis or Memcached to cache frequently accessed data.
3. Web server optimization. Enable Gzip compression to reduce data transmission volume and lower backend CPU usage. Limit the number of concurrent connections and use Nginx limit_conn and limit_req to control high-concurrency requests. Separate static resources and offload static files like images and videos to a CDN to reduce the direct processing load on the server.
4. Use cache acceleration. Static caching (HTML page cache), data caching (Redis, Memcached), and object caching (APCu, Opcache) can significantly reduce CPU usage at the application layer and database.
5. Protect traffic by configuring a firewall and enabling DDoS protection (such as high-defense nodes in Hong Kong and Japan) to block malicious crawlers and invalid requests.
6. Upgrade hardware configuration. If your business truly requires high CPU, consider upgrading to a higher-speed CPU, increasing the number of cores (8 or 16 cores), and switching to a dedicated physical server instead of a VPS.
To reduce CPU usage on your Japanese server, you need to first identify the cause of high usage and then implement targeted optimization measures. Program optimization, database tuning, caching applications, security configurations, and hardware upgrades can effectively reduce load. Furthermore, monitoring and alerting mechanisms should be established during operations and maintenance to promptly identify and resolve issues. For most businesses, reducing CPU usage not only improves user experience but also extends server lifespan and reduces hardware upgrade and maintenance costs. In the fiercely competitive internet landscape, those with faster and more stable service responses will win more users.
