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Web hosting articles
What does server
overselling mean?
There is
an old
saying –
“you
can’t
get a
quart
out of a
pint
pot”.
Well,
server
overselling
is one
way of
trying
to
achieve
just
that.
Server
overselling
means
that the
web
hosting
company
sells
more
disk
space or
bandwidth,
or both,
than the
server
can
actually
accommodate.
The
reasoning
behind
this is
quite
simple.
Most web
sites
hosted
on
shared
servers
do not
use
their
entire
allocation
of
either
disk
space or
bandwidth.
This can
leave a
lot of
unused
capacity.
Web
hosting
companies
see
this,
and try
to add
extra
web
sites to
under-utilized
servers
in order
to use
up this
excess
space.
It is
very
similar
to the
practice
of
airlines’
over-booking
flights,
in the
expectation
that not
all
passengers
that
book
seats
will
actually
take the
flight.
However,
when
airlines
find
that too
many
passengers
turn up
for a
flight,
they are
able to
bump
some
off,
offer
seats on
later
flights,
and cash
or other
forms of
compensation.
Unfortunately,
an
“overbooked”
server
is not
able to
do this.
Instead,
the
performance
of the
server
is
drastically
slowed,
affecting
all of
the web
sites
hosted
on that
server.
There
may also
be
service
interruptions,
and
possibly
the
whole
server
may
crash,
with the
result
that all
of those
web
sites
will be
unavailable
until
the
situation
is
resolved.
The
reason
that web
hosting
companies
oversell
is
purely
economic.
If they
are able
to host
more
sites
than
their
hardware
should
theoretically
be able
to
handle,
then
they
will
make
more
money.
For
example,
a
company
may have
a server
with a
120 GB
hard
disk and
1000 GB
of
bandwidth.
Their
standard
plan may
offer 4
GB of
disk
space,
and 50
GB
bandwidth.
Based on
these
figures,
the
available
bandwidth
would
only
allow
the
server
to host
20 web
sites.
However
this
would
leave 40
GB of
disk
space
free,
enough
to host
another
10
sites.
If the
web
hosting
company
oversold
all of
this
space,
their
monthly
income
would be
50%
higher,
at no
extra
cost to
the
company.
If a
hosting
company
does a
limited
amount
of
server
overselling,
it is
probable
that
none of
their
clients
will
ever
notice.
It is
true
that
most web
sites do
not use
all of
their
allocated
resources.
It is
also
true
that
overselling
means
that web
hosting
companies
may be
able to
offer
lower
prices
to their
clients.
It is
difficult
to tell
which
web
hosting
companies
oversell,
and to
what
extent
they do
this.
Companies
certainly
don’t
advertise
the fact
that
they use
overselling.
You may
find
that a
particular
web
hosting
company
has a
reputation
for
unreliability,
which
may be
an
indicator
that
they are
overselling
excessively.
Or you
may be
able to
get some
information
on a
particular
company
through
message
boards
or
forums,
but this
may not
always
be the
case.
However,
if you
see
deals
that
seem too
good to
be true,
maybe a
company
offering
prices
way
below
those
offered
by
similar
companies,
then you
will
need to
tread
carefully. |