overselling

[koddos]

What do you think if reseller companies which allow overselling?

[[JSH]John]

Most hosting companies allow their resellers to oversell. This allows the reseller to use all of their allocated space and ugprade to a larger package when the space runs out.

[wswd]

What do you think if reseller companies which allow overselling?

So long as the reseller company is not overselling the servers, you're fine.

[Tracker]

overselling is overselling does not matter if its the datacenter > Server Provider > Reseller > Master Reseller > Super Master Reseller > Alpha Super Master Reseller > ...ect..ect..ect. If you sell more than you pay for then its still the same thing.

Try and think of it as a restrant saying "Unlimited free refils on drinks" and once you drink the first one and ask for another they say "Sorry you broke our policy and can not have anymore". You would be pissed wouldnt you? (I would)

Same thing applies. 5 customers pay for 5gb space each and each use 1gb. BUT the reseller only pays for a 5gb plan. So when one customer tries to goto 2 of their 5gb it all gets suspended because they did not have enough. Then we can move on to "Unlimited" thats just a scam in itself

Just my 0.02

[wswd]

Tracker, absolutely right. I was addressing it more from the performance point of view.

Let's say I have a theoretical server with 10GB of disk space. If I give you 1GB of disk space on my server, and allow you to oversell (as a reseller of mine). You create unlimited plans, or plans with 500GB of disk space, etc. You can't use more than 1GB of disk space, so the server as a whole is going to be healthy and happy, so long as I am not overselling MY disk space for the server. I could care less if the client (or his clients) get suspended. That's their issue. The server is still in good working order for every one of my clients.

That's presently how I handle resellers with our company. We never oversell anything. Every single piece of bandwidth and disk space I sell them is available at any given time. If they in turn want to create ridiculous plans and oversell the space or bandwidth I give them, that's up to them. It's their "company" and website that gets suspended when they reach their limits. But the service I offer to my clients is never oversold.

As a result, the reseller's clients are not on an "oversold" server, so to speak.

[Tracker]

WSWD:

That is acceptable because you dont oversell it but still think about it... A server is not limited only on space or bandwidth but also memory and processor. So if you have a client with a 10gb account but they have 2000 customers on it (being insane here) that all run a small community forum or mysql backed site then that can in theory bring the server to a screeching halt if those sites get any larger.

This can happen even with 1 site tho. But I agree that as long as the MAIN server does not oversell its the customers responsibility to maintain a healthy account and selling 500 times what you pay for is not healthy.

[wswd]

That's what CloudLinux or similar is for. Memory and such is completely limited. You have to proactively monitor the servers too.

[Seraphim]

WSWD:

That is acceptable because you dont oversell it but still think about it... A server is not limited only on space or bandwidth but also memory and processor. So if you have a client with a 10gb account but they have 2000 customers on it (being insane here) that all run a small community forum or mysql backed site then that can in theory bring the server to a screeching halt if those sites get any larger.

This can happen even with 1 site tho. But I agree that as long as the MAIN server does not oversell its the customers responsibility to maintain a healthy account and selling 500 times what you pay for is not healthy.

Out of the box CPanel seems to actively limit CPU and RAM for clients, to the extent that sites that experience rapid growth sometimes slam into these limits and get suspended for it. Responsible configuration there makes a big difference, as does active management and load balancing to prevent resource hogging or overloading. I need to tinker with my Cpanel server more and see what kind of tricks it is capable of, I honestly haven't done a whole lot with it yet.

And bandwidth you kind of have to try to oversell, since it doesn't take much in most cases to buy more bandwidth as long as you haven't maxed out your connection's capability. But I've yet to see a normal server capable of surviving sustained maxed out connections anyway for normal shared hosting, they usually run out of CPU and RAM long before a 100MBit line gives out.

But the real cruncher for overselling always seems to come back to disc space, which is both Finite and inconvenient to add on to. And it always seems like hosts left and right want to give out way more space than people actually need, then recover the unused portions by overselling. Which is all well and good till someone tries to use their full assignment for new site content, only for all of the clients on that server to get knocked out by a swarm of out of disc space errors.

[Tyler]

Out of the box CPanel seems to actively limit CPU and RAM for clients, to the extent that sites that experience rapid growth sometimes slam into these limits and get suspended for it. Responsible configuration there makes a big difference, as does active management and load balancing to prevent resource hogging or overloading. I need to tinker with my Cpanel server more and see what kind of tricks it is capable of, I honestly haven't done a whole lot with it yet.

And bandwidth you kind of have to try to oversell, since it doesn't take much in most cases to buy more bandwidth as long as you haven't maxed out your connection's capability. But I've yet to see a normal server capable of surviving sustained maxed out connections anyway for normal shared hosting, they usually run out of CPU and RAM long before a 100MBit line gives out.

But the real cruncher for overselling always seems to come back to disc space, which is both Finite and inconvenient to add on to. And it always seems like hosts left and right want to give out way more space than people actually need, then recover the unused portions by overselling. Which is all well and good till someone tries to use their full assignment for new site content, only for all of the clients on that server to get knocked out by a swarm of out of disc space errors.

I don't really see why anyone has to oversell bandwidth. Pay for a 100Mbps unmetered connection -- done. The odds of ANYONE using 31TB in a given month is slim to none for web hosting.

As far as disk space goes, you'll have to worry about the disk I/O usage long before you run out of disk space, especially for any site streaming videos or hosting a image host.

All in all, this overselling debate is pointless -- yes, you and your clients can get away with it. But performance will suffer in the end if you oversell enough, which will likely drive a good percentage of your client base away.

Plus if you have to oversell to make ends meat, your business is already on a very rocky road and you may want to go back to your business plan and re-evaluate it. (everyone reading this who runs a host did make one correct?)

[wswd]

I don't really see why anyone has to oversell bandwidth. Pay for a 100Mbps unmetered connection -- done.

Truly unmetered, dedicated connections are not cheap. That's why most people don't do it. You're talking about a considerable amount of money added on to each server.

[Webcs-Peter]

Overselling is provided by the greater part of the web masters. That's one more attractive feature.

[Tyler]

Truly unmetered, dedicated connections are not cheap. That's why most people don't do it. You're talking about a considerable amount of money added on to each server.

Not necessarily. A few datacenters will offer 100Mbps unmetered for $100/month extra. I actually know a datacenter that was willing to go down to $50/month and it's not burst or FDC.

You can find some pretty good deals out there. You don't need tier-1 carriers for web hosting -- Hurricane Electric / Cogent is really all you need.

[wswd]

Oh yeah, it's anywhere from $100-150 for good providers. That's around what I pay. $50 is a great price! At $5/mo. you're talking an additional 25-30 clients just to break even on the server. That really isn't a big deal in the grand sceme of things though.

[jcarney1987]

allowing a reseller can be sometimes server unfriendly. All though most resellers will have reasonable orders but if you find somebody who offers dirt cheap orders on your reseller server you might find your self with 100's of accounts on the server causing instability. Which may find the reseller getting the boot. But in most cases the reseller with overselling allow if done right he can make a good profit with out server harm. I personally offer overselling allowed on my server and I don't have to many issues with it. It all boils down to server management.

[lagoon70]

i think there is no problems in allowing the reseller to oversell as long as your own server has a good balance share according to total accounts on it