Bandwidth vs CPU usage

[puffin]

I have seen people get their web hosting accounts suspended even when are in their bandwidth limit but because "High CPU usage". How does this might happen ?

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[sunken]

Scripts that make a huge amount of requests to the MySQL server are right on the top of the list of causes. MySQL is very good at what it does, but it can get the CPU bogged down with large amounts of simultaneous requests, especially if those requests are multiple table selects or inserts in huge databases.

Bandwidth is not representive of CPU usage. A site with little MySQL interaction and straight HTML pages can be high in bandwidth (if it has pictures), but low in CPU usage. A site with high MySQL interaction and internal processing can be high in CPU, but if it outputs very little, like text, then it can be low bandwidth.

[ScriptMan]

Assuming a legit host who was not looking for a reason to drop you, It is pretty easy to do. Some scripts are poorly written and throw a real load on the server.

One of the 4 things that people need to keep in mind when looking at cheap hosting are:
max disk space
max bandwidth
cpu time or %
max DB connections

All of these items are usually coved in the TOS/Use policies and are used by the "over-sellers" to get rid of people who are using anything above the desired amount.

To be fair, sometimes you might have a bad script that does overload the server. This can happen anywhere.

[puffin]

So lets say if there is a bad script or For some reason a script has started making a huge amount of requests to the MySQL server. How would you identify this as quick as possible ? or what are the things you can do to prevent this ?

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[sunken]

Well first of all, look for reviews of scripts you use. People will usually say if the script is a resource hog or not before installing it.

Other than that, if you have cPanel, you may find this thread interesting:
http://forums.burst.net/archive/index.php/t-198.html

This explains how to get the CPU usage for your account with cPanel.

There isn't always a good solution to a bad script except to replace it with something else, though data isn't always easy to convert. I wish there was a simple answer, but it would depend on the script, etc.