The Manage Services section on the Cloudways Platform allows you to control essential server components that keep your applications running smoothly.
From here, you can easily start, stop, restart, enable, or disable services such as Apache, Nginx, PHP-FPM, Redis, Varnish, and database engines — MariaDB 10.11 and MySQL 8.4.
This feature helps you optimize your server’s performance, troubleshoot issues, and maintain application stability without needing complex technical commands.
TL;DR? Read the summary of this article:
Comprehensive service control – The Manage Services section allows you to enable, disable, start, stop, or restart key server services like Apache, Nginx, PHP‑FPM, MariaDB, Memcached, Redis, Varnish, New Relic, and OpenSearch/Elasticsearch.
Cloudways now supports both MariaDB 10.11 and MySQL 8.4 as database options.
Performance tuning – Services like Redis and Varnish act as caching layers; you can purge or restart them to refresh cached content and improve application speed.
Monitoring & insights – Enable New Relic to gain deep performance metrics and identify potential issues proactively.
Quick access from dashboard – Access Manage Services from your chosen server under Server Management to adjust configurations as needed.
Table of Contents:
What Can I Do in the Manage Services Section?
From the Manage Services section, you have full control over essential server services, ensuring optimal performance for your applications. You can efficiently manage the following services:
Apache: This web server serves content for your application(s), handling HTTP requests and responses.
Memcached: Operating as a caching layer primarily for database queries, Memcached enhances performance by storing frequently accessed data in memory. Note that if Memcached is restarted, all cached data is lost and needs to be rebuilt.
MariaDB / MySQL: Cloudways now provides both MySQL 8.4 and MariaDB 10.11 as supported database options for your applications. These database engines efficiently store and retrieve your site’s data, ensuring reliability and performance. While MariaDB 10.11 remains a stable and proven option, MySQL 8.4 introduces enhanced security, performance improvements, and better compatibility with modern applications and plugins. You can view or manage your selected database service from the Manage Services section on your server.
New Relic: Gain valuable insights into your application's performance with New Relic Application Monitoring, allowing you to identify and address potential issues proactively.
Nginx: Serving as a web server for static content, Nginx efficiently handles static files like images, CSS, and JavaScript, improving your site's loading speed.
PHP-FPM: PHP-FPM, or PHP FastCGI Process Manager, provides an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with additional features, optimizing performance for sites of any size, especially busier ones.
Redis: Redis is a powerful in-memory data structure store commonly used as a caching layer, enhancing the performance of your applications by storing frequently accessed data in memory. Redis powers up object caching through the Object Cache Pro plugin in your WordPress application. The supported version is Redis 7.0.x. By default, new servers come with Redis enabled, but you have the flexibility to manage it, including enabling or disabling Redis, through the Manage Services section. If you choose to disable Redis, the Object Cache Pro plugin will be deactivated across all your WordPress applications on that server but will remain installed. Refer to this article for further information on the Object Cache Pro plugin
Varnish: Serving as one of several layers of caching for your applications, Varnish significantly improves performance by caching static and dynamic content. While you can disable Varnish for development or on test/staging servers, it's crucial to keep it enabled on production servers. Note that if Varnish is restarted, all cached data is lost and must be rebuilt.
Search Engine: OpenSearch/Elasticsearch is an open-source, highly available search engine that is custom-built for cloud servers based on the distributed restful API. It can perform searches at an extremely fast rate, actively supporting your data discovery. It has features including support for multi-tenants with multiple types, various sets of APIs, including PHP API, and a host of other features.
Quick Tip: You can restart the database service (MariaDB or MySQL) from this section if you encounter connectivity issues or after performing major application changes.
How to Manage Services
Log in to your Cloudways Platform using your credentials.
From the top menu bar, open Servers.
Next, choose your desired server.
Under Server Management, select Manage Services.
Here, you can enable, disable, start, stop, or restart any service according to your requirements. In the case of Varnish, you also purge the cache. In the case of Varnish, you can also purge the cache, which is ideal for immediate checks after implementing changes.
That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.
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