I'm liking this topic

A reasonable amount for a Quad/8GB at SoftLayer is $250-$500, and varies greatly based on bulk/reseller discount, other factors, etc.

While I agree on your definition of overselling, burst memory is a conditional allocation:
http://www.jiltin.com/index.php/web-...-ram%E2%80%99/ "with a condition that the host server has enough free memory"
http://forums.solidhost.com/showthread.php?t=458 "IF there's enough free memory on the host server"

This may be a bad example, but it's like saying "all you can eat - until the food's gone" So I disagree that it's lying. However as a result of this topic I'll be adding an in depth explanation of burst memory to our knowledge base.

It is lying if you cannot provide it.

Your all you can eat buffet analogy is wrong because it is equal to "unlimited hosting".
No restaurant can determine how much I can eat and there is not such thing as unimited.

Both are lies.

Telling a client that they have burst abilities to 1gb of ram or whatever the amount, when in fact they know the server is loaded to the point where said ram is not available, is a lie. No ifs, ands or buts. It's a lie.

The "sounds pretty awful" should have had a little more information I guess. What I was trying to say was that since a company doesn't have to actually provide the burst (since it's not guaranteed and it's there only if available), if that company decided to load up the server so there was no burst really ever available, that's a pretty awful situation. If a host loaded up the machine and left a TOTAL of only 1GB availble to be then shared among all nodes (since it did say up to 1GB burst), they'd still be technically RIGHT. RAM is usable, when available - but in all honesty, good luck getting a piece of it.


Artashes that Softlayer is notoriously higher than most data centers. But then again, they do ALL the work for you - no server management needed or system admins etc. Just plug in and you're done.

Dual Xeon Quad Core (Gainstown) - that's 8 cores, 12GB memory - starting about $600. Increase that to 24GB memory and it's only $850/month. Again this is with leased hardware from companies.

As stated earlier, you can get bulk discounts, run software that is opensource (reducing overhead fees) and then strip off management and do it yourself, and you can really start to reduce prices when needed. It can be very expensive if you're just starting out and you only have one or two machines and you're trying to compete against companies that have hundreds or even thousands of systems under their belts. Your prices HAVE to be higher just to cover costs.

While I disagree, I'd like to understand: So you're suggesting that a VPS host should either only allocate 1:1 on "burst" memory, or not offer burst memory at all?

I'm saying that if you offer burst memory, your servers should not be so overloaded as to never allow any user to utilize the burst memory.


Advertising 1gb of burst memory while at the same time knowing that your server cannot support it for a single user is lying. It is dishonest and I would avoid any company that makes such false claims.

If you can't offer the so called burst memory than don't. Just offer guaranteed memory.

Not sure I follow. You give each customer their guaranteed quotas, you put aside say 1GB for bursts, shared by everybody. At any point, somebody may be using it all or a part of it, but it is beyond any doubt a pitiful amount of memory to be shared by the 10 or more VPS accounts on that server. But on paper, IMHO, the host has done what it has promised, even if barely so.

The burst amount isn't guaranteed in any way, it may or it may not be available, depending on how many users need to tap into the shared pool at once.

The only real pressure to do more in terms of availability of burst memory comes from competition among providers, to which the customer might flee if word goes out that they're better.

From what I have seen most providers doing shared hosting will experiment with different loads, number of accounts, disk space and eventually learn that overloaded constantly crashing servers aren't fun for anyone and your customers just run away as fast or faster than you can get them. Once the host figures out what's going on they generally wise up and back off of that overloaded limit.

I would put 300-500 shared accounts on a box at the most and feel good about it. I know that a lot of hosts might put 1000-3000 accounts on a box depending on resources and resellers.

With VPSs I think that you really have to know how much the hardware can push and be prepared to shell out for lots of ram.

The ability to oversell and get away with it is one of the reasons that hosting and telecommunications have always been profitable, I mean, why expend twice as much capital when you can just not do so and make nearly twice the money?

I think the only way you could get away with not overselling is by delivering a brand that is HIGH end and justifies higher pricing and margins.

What happens if you have a server with 4 GB of RAM, you sell exactly 8 packages with 512 RAM each without any burst RAM. But all 8 clients at most only use 256 RAM worth of RAM power each, so you have 256 RAM * 8 = 2 GB of server RAM free... so you undersold the server and minimized profit margins. As long as your customers receive the best care possible, why is maximizing profit (sensibly) a bad thing? Most companies (even public) always try to maximize profits, and often that is done at the expense of consumers.

I am not sure what the reality is but I don't think most clients even use the resources allocated to them?

Personally when it comes to the only ethical method of offering burst able servers is that when used in Cloud computing as the whole point of this technology is to support the expansion and contraction of websites requirements. Meaning that there will be a lot of redundant performance available and it can by a provider be easily expanded.

That would be my stand point when supporting Blues argument as I am of the same impression however from a provider standpoint underselling servers to ensure that an unguaranteed resource was available is especially from the accountants view is unethical.

Though unlimited offers regardless even of cloud computing still is unethical and it has lead to the consideration of such offers as “unlimited email, database” offers that we ourselves provide, which are like any provider limited to the package size (diskspace) of the user meaning a user could have a 1GB disk space and use 1000 (1mb) email accounts however they could also use 1,048,576 email accounts at 1KB each however does a provider list 1,048,576 as the amount or 1000?

Thus what if a provider lists the email account limit at 5 on the 1GB package as the above example but instead what if I have 5x 1GB email accounts, what happens?

Is that ethical?

Possibly a different point of view however very closely related

Some analogies - Internet connectivity - Years of stats tell providers how saturated their backbone is in sold plans versus expected bandwidth usage. Airlines overbook seats based on known trends of no shows and cancellations. CLEC's resell less expensive metered lines as unmetered, knowing the odds favor them.

Let's face it - an awful lot of web hosting providers oversell their resources. Successful providers have figured out either how NOT to oversell (and still turn a profit), or oversell with minimum customer churn.