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Server Disk Usage: What It Is and How to Manage It

  • Updated

Server Disk Usage (aka Disk) refers to the active file storage used by all of your live Cloud instances in MODX Cloud. It includes everything inside your project’s home directory, especially:

  • Website files (www/)
  • Error logs (/logs and /www/core/cache/logs/error.log)
  • Any other custom folders or files inside the Cloud instance

Note: Server Disk usage does not include backups, Snapshots, archives, or database size. Server Disk Uage also does include files that are not accessible via SSH, such as mail logs, cron execution logs, or anything that winds up in the /var, /pass, or /etc directories. We have seen multi-gigabyte cron execution logs in some cases. If you suspect this is the case, please open a ticket for assistance.

Where to Check Your Disk Usage

  1. In the MODX Cloud Dashboard, click the down arrow next to your account name
  2. Select Account
  3. Click on the Add-ons Tab
  4. You'll see the usage beneath where it says Server Disk

Tips to Reduce Disk Usage

  • Delete old/unused media (videos, audio, large PDFs)
  • Delete old/unused files from /tmp or cache directories (especially those that start with magick-)
  • Remove zip/sql files used for past backups or migrations
  • Delete logs that have grown large due to site errors
  • Append  >/dev/null 2>&1 to crontab entries to prevent growing crontab execution logs
  • Use object storage for images/videos via MODX Media Sources
  • Archive unused dev sites to move them to Vault Storage

Don’t worry about MODX cache files—MODX Revolution handles cache cleanup automatically. You only need to manage it for non-MODX sites or if you’ve created custom caching that isn’t cleared.

After removing files from disk, it will typically take between 20 and 60 minutes to see the changes reflected in your Dashboard.

Helpful Commands for Figuring Out Usage

Using a terminal via and  a few helpful commands can help you quickly determine where heavy disk usage is from. First, sort your list of sites in the MODX Cloud Dashboard to see which ones are particularly large, and focus on those.

The tmp/ directory sometimes has large thumbnail files left behind. You can get a count of files in the directory, and files sizes using the following. To show all the files in the tmp directory with human-readible file sizes and to get a count of them, for example:

/paas/c9999/home $ ls -lash /tmp

{ file list would be here }
  
/paas/c9999/home $ cd /tmp
/paas/c9999/tmp $ ls -A1 | wc -l
116

To get the size of all the directories inside the current location, in this case, the webroot, or www/):

/paas/c9999/www $ du -sh */.
10.1M wp-admin/.
632.7M wp-content/.
55.1M wp-includes/.

The above two approaches can be combined to see how large MODX Revolution caches are. In the following example, there are 318,419 cached pages in Revo, consuming 77.8 GB (a real example!).

/home $ cd /www/core/cache/resource/web/resources/; ls -A1 | wc -l
318419

/www/core/cache/resource/web/resources $ cd ../../..
/www/core/cache $ du -sh */.
8.0K	auto_publish/.
6.9M	context_settings/.
10.2G	db/.
37.0M	googlesitemap/.
496.0K	includes/.
1.7M	lexicon_topics/.
89.4M	logs/.
84.0K	menu/.
104.0K	mgr/.
8.0K	namespaces/.
68.0K	packages/.
8.0K	pdotools/.
56.0K	registry/.
77.8G	resource/.
132.0K	rss/.
496.0K	scripts/.
16.0K	system_settings/.

Archiving Sites to Save Space

If you’ve got modx.dev or staging copies you’re not using, archive them. Archive Clouds don’t count toward Server Disk Usage and can be restored at any time.

Need More Server Disk?

MODX Cloud plans come with 10GB (Base), 30GB (Pro) or 100GB (Business) of Server Disk. (Check your current plan on the Plan tab of the Account page).If you need more, Server Disk can be upgraded easily.

You’ll find upgrade options in the Add-ons tab of the Account page. 

Server Disk Add-on Pricing

  • $5/month for 5GB
  • $1/GB/month standard rate
  • $0.50/GB/month for usage over 250GB

Need Help? 

If you would like assistance in understanding or optimizing your Server Disk Usage, feel free to click on the green Help button at the bottom right of the MODX Cloud dashboard and we'll happy to help. 

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