5 Signs Your Website Is About to Crash
The Titanic didn't sink instantly. First came the hit, then water in the holds, and only then — disaster. Your website is the same. It "screams" for help long before it crashes. Do you know how to read these signals?
Checklist: Symptoms of Imminent Death
*If you see this in logs — call NineLab.
1. TTFB Growth (Time to First Byte)
If the server thinks longer than 200ms before giving the first byte — this is the first bell. It means code or database is already working at the limit.
2. "Too many connections" in DB
Every SQL request requires a connection. If the pool is full, new users just get an error. This is a classic scaling problem.
3. Disk Swap
The scariest sign. When RAM ends, the server starts using HDD/SSD as memory. Disk is 100,000 times slower than RAM. The site turns into a pumpkin instantly.
4. Growth of 5xx Errors
One 500 error per day is an accident. Ten errors per hour is a pattern. 1% errors of total traffic is a fire.
5. Log Silence
Sounds strange, but if logs suddenly stopped writing, maybe you just ran out of disk space. This is "silent death".
Advice: Configure alerts in Zabbix or Prometheus. Learn about problems before your users write an angry tweet.
Related services
FAQ for this topic
Focus is engineering metrics and stack—API, DB, CDN, code—not only copy and meta tags.
Prefer metrics and logs; for DB, read-only or a replica-backed staging is often enough.
Both: lab gives reproducibility, RUM shows real devices and networks; together they explain gaps.
Prioritize by impact/effort, define post-change metrics, re-measure; heavy fixes can be a separate phase.
Want to apply this in practice?
Tell us about your system — we’ll propose a work plan and the metrics worth fixing in an SLA/SLO.
Related articles
How to Stress Test a Website?
Stress and load testing before sales peaks and ad bursts: scenarios, metrics, common bottlenecks, and how to bake checks into your regular delivery cadence.
Read Article