Issue Health Manager: High Apache CPU alarms (sw-engine)

[Liew CheonFong]

Server: Plesk Onyx 17.0.17 , Ubuntu 16.04

Randomly, Health Manager send high CPU alarm emails and the top processes are "sw-engine". The "Load Average" looks ok (under 0.5) from the report and server serves websites well. No problem except receiving the alarms.

What does sw-engine do? Why is it has spikes loaf? Any idea how to "tame" it? Thank you.

Here's the sample report (part) i received in email:

Server health parameter "Services > Apache CPU usage" changed its status from "green" to "red".

top - 20:01:08 up 13 days, 17:05,  0 users,  load average: 0.23, 0.37, 0.39
Tasks: 184 total,   6 running, 178 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3.1 us,  0.8 sy,  0.1 ni, 95.8 id,  0.1 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.2 st
KiB Mem :  4043436 total,   957996 free,  1034768 used,  2050672 buff/cache
KiB Swap:   524284 total,   333248 free,   191036 used.  2631188 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
 1255 psaadm    20   0  297852  49132  37876 R  44.4  1.2   0:00.08 sw-engine
 1256 psaadm    20   0  297852  49320  37812 R  44.4  1.2   0:00.08 sw-engine
 1257 psaadm    20   0  292512  40748  34420 R  27.8  1.0   0:00.05 sw-engine
 1258 psaadm    20   0  283140  37072  31928 R  27.8  0.9   0:00.05 sw-engine
 1259 psaadm    20   0  282876  36344  31428 R  22.2  0.9   0:00.04 sw-engine
    1 root      20   0  186444   6780   3952 S   0.0  0.2   8:25.74 systemd
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.37 kthreadd
    3 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:18.28 ksoftirqd/0
    5 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:+
    7 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   7:47.57 rcu_sched
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rcu_bh
    9 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:02.97 migration/0
   10 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 lru-add-dr+
   11 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuhp/0
   12 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuhp/1
   13 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:02.96 migration/1
   14 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:20.89 ksoftirqd/1

 

[Liew CheonFong]

found similar thread https://talk.plesk.com/threads/cpu-load-sw-engine.339802/ Watching it.

 

[Bitpalast]

What does sw-engine do?

It is a service that takes commands vom cp-server (the Nginx web server instance of the Plesk control panel) and runs command line utilities to make the configuration changes that a user requests through the graphical user interface.

 

[Liew CheonFong]

It is a service that takes commands vom cp-server (the Nginx web server instance of the Plesk control panel) and runs command line utilities to make the configuration changes that a user requests through the graphical user interface.

Strange. I was not login Plesk control panel at those time periods.

 

[Bitpalast]

Are you using Plesk Mobile Extension?
https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213919445-Process-sw-engine-produce-high-CPU-usage

 

[iA001]

Are you using Plesk Mobile Extension?
Process sw-engine produce high CPU usage

I have the same issue and I am not using Plesk Mobile Extension either. And I wasn't logged in into plesk at the times when I received such emails