The top of your LocalNode dashboard displays live statistics about the server's health. Understanding what these numbers mean will help you manage your server and know when it's time to upgrade.
Overview
Unlike a cloud service, the LocalNode is a physical computer sitting in your house. It has finite resources: an Intel N100 Processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The widgets at the top of the dashboard show you exactly how much of those resources are currently being used.
Illustration pending
LocalNode dashboard widgets summarizing CPU load, memory, storage, and Docker health across the top row.
Reserved for a LocalNode product screenshot when available; UI layout may differ from third-party docs.
CPU Usage
The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the brain of the server. The Intel N100 has 4 cores.
Normal Idle: 2% to 10%. When you aren't actively using an app, the server just "idles", listening for requests.
Moderate Usage: 20% to 50%. You will see this when watching a direct-play movie on Jellyfin, or syncing a large file in Nextcloud.
High Usage: 90% to 100%. Don't panic if you see this hit 100%. If you just uploaded 10,000 photos to Immich, the machine learning AI will pin the CPU at 100% for an hour while it detects faces. If Jellyfin has to transcode a 4K movie to 1080p, the CPU will spike.
If the CPU is stuck at 100% for days and everything is running incredibly slowly, you should reboot the server.
Memory (RAM) Usage
RAM is short-term memory. The LocalNode comes with 16 Gigabytes, which is massive for a home server.
Normal Usage: You will almost always see RAM sitting around 40% to 60% full (about 6-9GB used).
Linux is designed to use available RAM to cache files to make the system feel faster. "Unused RAM is wasted RAM." Do not worry if your RAM looks high; the system will automatically clear cache if an app actually needs the memory.
Storage Capacity
This shows how full your internal 1TB SSD is.
If this hits 95%, apps will start crashing because databases cannot write new entries.
The largest culprits are usually movie files in Jellyfin, or massive camera roll backups in Immich.
If you run out of space, you should add an external USB drive and move your movies to it, freeing up the internal SSD for databases and photos.
Network Activity
This shows how much data is actively flowing through the ethernet cable right now.
Up (Upload): Data leaving the server. If this is high, you are probably watching a movie remotely or a phone is downloading a file via Nextcloud.
Down (Download): Data entering the server. If this is high, Immich is probably backing up photos from your phone, or Radarr is downloading a movie.
💡 Tip: If you want incredibly detailed, second-by-second historical graphs of these metrics, open the Portainer app, go to your Containers, and click the "Stats" icon next to any running app.