Last week a simple webhook queue suddenly tripled in volume and nearly froze the whole setup. Now I’m torn between upgrading the current VM or just moving the busy parts to something more flexible. How do you handle these surprises without constantly babysitting your server?

I used to just bump resources every time traffic jumped, but it got old fast — especially when spikes were short and unpredictable. What helped was splitting services so the ones with bursty behavior could scale separately. Before doing that, I tested how different VPS tiers handle I/O and CPU saturation. When comparing options, I checked configurations here for best hosting because it made it easy to see which plans had faster SSD tiers and guaranteed resources. In my case, moving only the spiky component to a more flexible setup saved both money and headaches.

Whenever I prepare for load changes, I usually audit logs first to figure out whether the spike was organic growth or just a brief anomaly. After that, I run a short simulated load test to see if the server chokes consistently or only in specific scenarios. Keeping a history of these tests helps spot patterns — sometimes the issue is a single endpoint or a misconfigured cron job rather than the whole machine being underpowered.