How to monitor and prevent 100% disk usage on a casino game-focused website?

First, look at your server logs – they are most likely the problem, particularly if you have an active forum; just set a cron job to zip the logs every week.

Then, consider user-uploaded content. Are your users uploading images, video, or other media in their game reviews? That traffic might be contributing significantly to your bill. Set hard limits on each user’s total allowance per day, and start using an external provider like Cloudinary for storing large files.

Database bloat is also a problem. Purge old and/or inactive user accounts periodically (make sure to back up!). Use phpMyAdmin or similar tools to find your largest tables and optimize them to reclaim megabytes of disk space.

Set up automated warnings with software such as Netdata or Nagios, so you get notified right away when your hard drive is nearing 90% capacity.

Finally, you can use a cloud infrastructure with auto-scaling storage (e. g., AWS or DigitalOcean), so that you have some buffer without the headaches of having to manually scale them.

Take care of your forum and your members won't even know you're there maintaining the servers. Be proactive now and avoid a disastrous shutdown later. Nobody likes to be off when it's game time!

1. Check disk usage in Nagios, Zabbix, or CloudWatch for peaks.

2. Look for excessive log files – rotate or compress them.

3. Monitor users' contributions (photos and postings) and consider imposing limits.

4. Delete old data; run clean-up tools.

5. Compress assets such as game images and videos. Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for distribution, if available.

6. Compress all static resources.

7. You should either get a bigger hard drive or start storing data in the cloud.

Better yet, prevention: frequent checks and automated clean-ups.

First, look at your server logs – there’s probably some runaway logging going on: game updates, user activity, etc. Get a log rotator. If users can upload guide scripts or images, maybe consider hosting them with something like Amazon S3. And use monitoring tools (Netdata, CloudWatch) to notify you when you’re getting close. We’re using this approach to monitor our slot games site, and it’s been great. Also delete all of those old backups – they accumulate quickly!

First, look at your logs for large bursts of media/cache/upload files, which might indicate users being overly enthusiastic with game guides or screenshots; use `iotop` or `htop` to find what’s causing high disk I/O, and configure alerts with Prometheus or Netdata to alert you if this happens again. You can also set a maximum upload size, disable cache logging, delete outdated log files automatically, and create a cron job to run cleanup tasks. Your daily casino game may be a culprit. Scheduled automatic backups can help here, too. Monitor content created by users – forums and FAQs can grow quickly.

Finally, use commands such as df -h and iotop to monitor where the disk space is going. User uploads, log files, and games’ cache files are the usual suspects. Use Netdata or Prometheus to send you an alert if you’re running out of storage space. Set up Logrotate and make sure that the compression is enabled. For user-generated content, implement auto-pruning of old files on top of soft disk quotas (yes, you need some kind of management for this). Enjoy.