On the bottom-right of the DSM desktop, the Resource Monitor widget shows that the CPU utilization of your Synology NAS is high. However, you can access your device normally.

Go to Main Menu > Resource Monitor > Performance > CPU to check the utilization distribution. If the utilization mainly consists of "User", go to Task Manager > Services on the left panel to check which service or process is taking up more resources.¹

Below are some common services and processes that may take up CPU resources. In Resource Monitor, expand the services to display processes, locate the ones that consume higher CPU resources, and follow the methods to decrease CPU load.

1. SMB > smbd
• If the network port² for your SMB service (default port number 445) is open to external access, disable it. If it is only open to internal access, check whether it is being accessed normally by internal users.
2. Surveillance Station > sscamerad
• If you have selected By Surveillance Station as the motion detection algorithm source for a camera in Surveillance Station, change it to By camera or Disable. The setting is configurable in Surveillance Station > IP Camera. Select a camera and click on the Edit drop-down menu > Edit > Event Detection > Motion.
3. Hyper Backup Vault > img_backupd
• If you have set up multiple Hyper Backup tasks, make sure to schedule them at different times as well as off-peak hours.
• If you have several shared folders in one backup task and each folder contains many files, we recommend dividing the backup task into several tasks.
4. Synology MailPlus Server > clamd or freshclam
• Clamd and freshclam are the processes for scanning emails and viruses, respectively, in Synology MailPlus. We recommend going to Synology MailPlus Server > Security > Antivirus, change the settings to Manual Update, and schedule the update to only execute during off-peak hours.
5. Antivirus Essential > synoavscan
• If you have installed Antivirus Essential, we recommend going to Antivirus Essential > Settings, and untick Update virus definitions before scanning. Instead, click Update now in Antivirus Essential > Update when you are ready to conserve CPU resources.
• We also recommend going to Antivirus Essential > Settings to enable Smart Scan. This function helps reduce the system resources taken up by the antivirus software. If your Antivirus Essential does not have the Smart Scan function, make sure the package has been updated to the latest version.
6. Universal Search > synoelasticd, fileindexd, or synocontentextractd
• These three processes are used by the package Synology Universal Search. If your CPU utilization is constantly being dominated by these three processes, make sure the package has been updated to the latest version.
• You may likely have a high number of files that are waiting to be indexed. You can pause the indexing and restart it during off-peak hours.
• If synoelasticd continues to excessively consume resources even after pausing the indexing, check whether there are users actively conducting file searches through Universal Search or File Station.
7. Media Indexing > synoindexd or convert
• Go to Control Panel > Indexing Service > Media Indexing > Applications to check which packages are running media indexing.
• Go to Control Panel > Indexing Services > Conversion Setting, and then tick Enable conversion by schedule to set conversion schedule.³
8. Synology Photos > synofoto-face-extraction
• Go to Synology Photos > Account icon > Settings > Global, and then untick Allow users to enable the People album to deactivate automatic face recognition and tagging features.