[cellarius]

You're probably reading it wrong. I'm not quite sure, but your post surely implies that. What I'm wondering: Your host really should know that...

show status like '%conn%';

Returns something like this (shortened):

Connections
4473207
Max_used_connections
33
Threads_connected
4

The value for "connections" is the number of all connections opened to the mysql server, as in: ever, for all times (or, more exact: since the last mysql server restart). This is not the number of sessions currently open. So, the 800.000 connections would be all connections ever opened since restart, but this does not give any information on how many of those connections were closed succesfully. And of course this number is increasing.

The connections currently open would show under "threads connected". See the example? That's over 4 million connections opened since last restart, but currently there's only 4 connections open.
Of greater interest would probably be the all time high of connections open at the same time under "max_used_connections" - in this case 33.

See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/...variables.html

And yes, this server is running vB3.