How to Get Alerts for High CPU, Memory and Disk on iPhone (and How Reliable They Are)

The problem

The failures that hurt are the quiet ones: a disk slowly filling, memory creeping up after a deploy, a CPU pinned by a runaway process. You only find out when the service falls over, usually at night. Full monitoring stacks fix this, but for a few small servers they’re too much to set up.

What ServerPanel can do

• Global thresholds for CPU, memory and disk (sliders from 50% to 99%, default 90%).
• Per-server thresholds: under Alerts in the server editor, turn on custom thresholds, or mute a noisy server entirely. A per-server setting layers over the global ones, and muting only silences that one server.
• Disk per partition: each mounted filesystem is checked, not just the total.
• One alert per crossing: you’re notified when a value first goes over the limit, not on every refresh. If it recovers and crosses again, you’ll hear about it again.
• Alert history: a log grouped by day, per server or global, kept to the most recent 300 entries.
• Background checks: when alerts are on, iOS can wake the app to sample your servers over SSH.

How to set it up

1. Go to Settings → Alerts and turn on Threshold alerts (Premium).
2. Allow notifications when asked.
3. Set the CPU, memory and disk limits.
4. For servers with special needs, open the server editor → Alerts to customise or mute.
5. Check Alert History later to see what fired and when.

Set it up realistically

• Disk at 90% is the one that matters most. CPU spikes often self-resolve.
• Raise limits for servers that are always busy, or mute them, to avoid learning to ignore alerts.
• Don’t treat it as uptime monitoring. It samples servers it can reach. If a server is completely down, an alert about CPU won’t arrive. It also can’t see from outside whether your website responds.

The honest part about background checks

iOS decides when a background refresh runs. The app asks for a check no earlier than about 15 minutes after the last, and the system may delay it based on battery and usage. So background alerts are good for “the disk filled up this afternoon” and not for “tell me within 30 seconds”.

What else watches while you sleep

The dashboard’s Live Activity and widgets show the latest data; see Live Activity and widgets.

FAQ

Are alerts instant? While the dashboard is open, yes. In the background iOS decides when a check can run, usually every 15 minutes or longer, so an alert can be delayed.

Will it spam me while a server stays over the limit? No. It alerts when the limit is first crossed, not on every refresh. After it recovers, crossing again alerts again.

Can I set different limits per server? Yes. Give a server custom thresholds or mute it, without changing the global limits.

Is it free? Alerts are a Premium feature.