# Reserving Disk Space you Purchased from the Oversold VPS providers



## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

So, you bought one of those super duper under-priced and guaranteed to be oversold VPS packages.  You know, one of those featuring 50GB, 100GB or even more disk space.

Wisely, you bought it on a special, and now are letting it idle and season to see if it is reliable before deploying it.

All while your provider is busy noticing the node is empty, the CPU is idle and continues to oversell the server more.

Or perhaps your provider lost your data, took ten days to reply to tickets and finally informed you that you are screwed, the data is gone.

What to do?   Claim some of your resources for the rest of your stay as a customer: Consume disk, eat up your backup space, etc.


sudo su
mkdir /home/workfiles
cd /home/workfiles
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/workfiles/music_edit1.wav bs=100M count=100

What we are doing:

*sudo su* = become root

*mkdir /home/workfiles* = creating a new directory under /home for our stash files

*cd /home/workfiles *= changing to our newly created directory

*dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/workfiles/music_edit1.wav bs=100M count=100*

- this creates a file from random data (/dev/urandom).  The file is 100M in chunk size before the write to disk happens.  We keep this small so as to not run out RAM.  We do 100 of these to create a 10GB file.

*Outcome:  *We just chewed up 10GB of disk space or reserved it for your future use.

To reserve larger blocks of disk space for later use, adjust the *count= *to larger values (i.e. 200 = 20GB) or smaller values (i.e. 50 = 5GB).  Be sure to adjust the *of=* end file name for each file (i.e. /home/workfiles/music_edit2.wav).

I'd create a number of these files so you can "recover" disk space as needed.  For instance, if you have 50GB of disk:

Create files that are 5% of total available disk in size or 2.5GB per file.

music_edit1.wav

music_edit2.wav

music_edit3.wav

music_edit4.wav

music_edit5.wav

music_edit6.wav

music_edit7.wav

music_edit8.wav

music_edit9.wav

music_edit10.wav

=================

10 files @ 2.5GB each = 25GB or 50% of the available storage provided in your package.

When you decide to put your VPS to regular good use and need disk space, delete reserved space files as needed.

Yes, you can create one big reserve file (say if 50GB of disk allocated,  create a 40GB single file).

*Note:*

Since we are populating these files with random data, the files will not show any size in savings when compressed.  Meaning backups and other disk reduction methods will not succeed in reducing your use footprint.   You will use every byte of disk you have reserved in these files on that disk and same will be true of the provider backups.


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## rds100 (Jun 26, 2013)

Excellent idea. I'm thinking of also writing a small daemon for "reserving" all that memory that you bought but don't use.


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## peterw (Jun 26, 2013)

Nasty idea. I will do that on my low end vps too. Maybe the backup space of the weekly backups is oversold too.


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

peterw said:


> Maybe the backup space of the weekly backups is oversold too.


 

Oh, you can bet that is true.  

If we take the recent mass failing of a provider and start adding VPS accounts directed to backup nodes, it is quite a traffic jam.  I haven't done the math but it is many hundreds of accounts backing up to a single backup node. 

Providers bank on the VPS instances themselves being tiny and unused.  Certainly can envision disk compression and disk deduplication being used to save on backups.  Original data like this is full usage and nothing to dedupe.


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## rsk (Jun 26, 2013)

The the thing, budget providers cater to a market that is willing to pay $7 max for the mona lisa.

Really, if you want guaranteed non oversold resources why not choose a proper host? Pay the additional charges and get a descent KVM and purchase exactly what you require, the way it is meant to be done?

This method here, which you posted, is to be honest "unfair". You want low prices, yet you want guaranteed resources at all times. It wont happen in the budget/overselling market.

PS. you, doesn't literally mean you or the OP. This doesn't imply to us all. (please do not bash me )


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

rsk said:


> The the thing, budget providers cater to a market that is willing to pay $7 max for the mona lisa.


 

While this is true, who says the Mona Lisa is truly worth more than $7?  That's the position of the low end providers (most of them).

If someone is trying to sell the Mona Lisa at $7, it is either a print, a forgery or some other form of fraud.  False advertising all day.

The situation where people will say anything to get customers and do so by devaluing resources and mocking the legitimate industry reminds me of the years of "unlimited" with cellular phone providers.  To say unlimited would mean one could talk on their phone and/or use data 24/7 during the data period and be limited only by time in the month and maximum throughput of their connection.

But, as we know, unlimited there has never meant unlimited in any manner. Read the fine print.

VPS providers do not have fine print typically.  As log as you do not run CPU burning tasks (i.e. 100% CPU for extended periods of time) there aren't many genuine use gotchas in terms (aside from DDoS and other outright crummy behavior).

Now, if VPS providers want to boot folks for using their paid for services, they'd be out of business in no time.

They'd have a very hard time catching this stash of "data" too.  It's random, so no really identifiable pieces and you can name the files anything.

Hey, wouldn't be the first time I've been a customer on a node where disk wasn't available although my plan was to include it.


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## MartinD (Jun 26, 2013)

Sometimes the providers can't win.

People scream they want low prices with decent resources so providers have to oversell to a degree. Then you get people saying that overselling is bad and you should make sure you use all of your resources. These same people will then complain, openly, about the service being poor.. then hop to the next provider.

"I WANT LOADS OF RAM AND SPACE AND I WANT TO PAY YOU $5 A YEAR FOR IT. DEADPOOL IF YOU CANT DO IT LULZ"

Have a word with yourself.


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## Ash (Jun 26, 2013)

I welcome any of our customers to do this, obviously


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

MartinD said:


> "I WANT LOADS OF RAM AND SPACE AND I WANT TO PAY YOU $5 A YEAR FOR IT. DEADPOOL IF YOU CANT DO IT LULZ"


 

No one started truly wanting say 2GB of RAM + 50GB of disk + 2TB of transit.  (well realistic folks didn't).

Sly providers created the largest packages they could and slowly ratcheted up the specs.  It was 512MB, then 1GB, then 2GB, now 3GB+.  The market didn't dictate that, cutthroat corporate serial killers did that.

I stopped buying large RAM plans on the low end because providers couldn't deliver it with any real performance.

Disk is arguably the single weak link in the entire low end house of cards.  Moreso than RAM, since idle VPSes aren't using much RAM.  But, they can and more often do use their disk space.


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## rds100 (Jun 26, 2013)

rsk said:


> Really, if you want guaranteed non oversold resources why not choose a proper host? Pay the additional charges and get a descent KVM and purchase exactly what you require, the way it is meant to be done?


Are you implying that KVM VPSes can't be oversold? Because i don't agree with such statement.


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

Any VPS platform can be oversold and already has been by someone.  Limited resources coupled with creativity will always prevail while pursuing monetary gains.


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## Jack (Jun 26, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> No one started truly wanting say 2GB of RAM + 50GB of disk + 2TB of transit.  (well realistic folks didn't).
> 
> Sly providers created the largest packages they could and slowly ratcheted up the specs.  It was 512MB, then 1GB, then 2GB, now 3GB+.  The market didn't dictate that, cutthroat corporate serial killers did that.
> 
> ...


CVPS Started 2GB/$7/mo so everyone followed.. 

Why would someone sit and sell 256 for $7/mo when can go get 2GB/$7/mo? or even 3GB/$7/mo now..


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## jcaleb (Jun 26, 2013)

I did a similar thing with DireVPS. But not random, I uploaded media files from my desktop. This tutorial is cool!


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

Jack said:


> Why would someone sit and sell 256 for $7/mo when can go get 2GB/$7/mo? or even 3GB/$7/mo now..


 

Well you asked 

Because there is a difference in selling something you have and can provide vs. selling something you may have and certainly don't want to provide.

By my math, if you are following the CVPS cash cow, the 2GB plan price point is down to around $2 a month.  Let me know when you figure out how that math works   Clue: it doesn't.

Now imagine if 25% of the customers actually started using their resources


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## Ash (Jun 26, 2013)

rds100 said:


> Are you implying that KVM VPSes can't be oversold? Because i don't agree with such statement.


As i always say HDD cant be oversold, with KVM/SolusVM at least. And even with KSM, you can only ever oversell a GB or so of RAM and its not really worth the CPU overhead it creates. Just my thoughts.


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## Jack (Jun 26, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Well you asked
> 
> Because there is a difference in selling something you have and can provide vs. selling something you may have and certainly don't want to provide.
> 
> ...


That's stupid at $2/mo, $7/mo is actually a decent price to spec ratio where as $2/mo is just ... 

You have CVPS's solus DB don't you? I swear I saw an 'ATL' box with 200 odd VMs on?

Note: All CVPS nodes are 32GB E3's ...  opcorn:


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## peterw (Jun 26, 2013)

If I need 2GB of RAM I do need decent CPU und IO loads too. Overselling is working because people who bought 100GB shared hosting accounts now buy 2GB vps to run Apache and MySQL on it. They do only use 200-300MB of RAM but they think they need the 2000MB RAM package. Overselling customer meets overselling host.


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## rds100 (Jun 26, 2013)

GetKVM_Ash said:


> As i always say HDD cant be oversold, with KVM/SolusVM at least. And even with KSM, you can only ever oversell a GB or so of RAM and its not really worth the CPU overhead it creates. Just my thoughts.


 

lvcreate --virtualsize 1T --size 5G --snapshot --name something vg1

Will create a 1T logical volume which can only use 5GB real space. But to the customer it looks like 1TB.


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

Jack said:


> Note: All CVPS nodes are 32GB E3's ...


 

Oh, I long thought they were.

The head of CVPS was on here claiming that ATL box(es) were 128GB servers.  I can't say either way, but I highly suspect that is false.

| nodeid | name    | vservers | ram          |

+--------+---------+----------+--------------+

|    110 | atl2    |      183 |          372 |

|    109 | atl1    |      161 |          317 |

 

 

Is $7/mo for 2GB sustainable? In a massive underuse scenario.  I don't expect providers to pack a node 1-for-1 accounts vs. real RAM.  A 32GB of RAM server = 16 2GB accounts  --- then factor underuse... 50 2GB accounts gives you roughly 3-to-1 sold vs. real RAM. 

 

$7 x  50 accounts @2GB = $350 / server

 

compared to:

 

$4 (mixed avg income CVPS) x 183 accounts @2GB = $732 / server

 

Seems like #winning with CVPS.  But, 3-4 times customers competing for resources.  3-4 times more support.  3-4 times more pi$$ed off customers.

 

I'm still over here in reality with pricing that is something like:

256MB = $2-3/mo

512MB = $4-5/mo

1GB = $7-10/mo

2GB = $10-15/mo

 

Anything above those is trouble unless you are running huge RAM servers and know how to manage the servers very well.

 

Mind you, I am not a provider, just an often unimpressed buyer.


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## rds100 (Jun 26, 2013)

GetKVM_Ash said:


> As i always say HDD cant be oversold, with KVM/SolusVM at least. And even with KSM, you can only ever oversell a GB or so of RAM and its not really worth the CPU overhead it creates. Just my thoughts.


And to continue about the RAM. Here is an example from a mostly idle test KVM machine i have. This is what is seen inside the VM:

 top - 13:21:23 up 22:43,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Tasks:  52 total,   1 running,  51 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.7%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si, 0.0%st

Mem:    514728k total,    85604k used,   429124k free,    19556k buffers

Swap:   498680k total,        0k used,   498680k free,    50376k cached

 

 

On the node the KVM process for this VM has vsize of 584868 KB and RSS of  96652KB.

So this 512MB KVM virtual machine is consuming slightly less than 100MB real RAM on the node.


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## Ash (Jun 26, 2013)

rds100 said:


> And to continue about the RAM. Here is an example from a mostly idle test KVM machine i have. This is what is seen inside the VM:
> 
> top - 13:21:23 up 22:43,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 
> ...


I can only speak from my own experience here rds100. Maybe my customers decide to actually use what they purchase.


In regards to the HDD overselling, sure you can do it manually that way, but SolusVM doesn't support doing that via the GUI, i guess i should have been more clear.


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## Francisco (Jun 26, 2013)

GetKVM_Ash said:


> I can only speak from my own experience here rds100. Maybe my customers decide to actually use what they purchase.
> 
> In regards to the HDD overselling, sure you can do it manually that way, but SolusVM doesn't support doing that via the GUI, i guess i should have been more clear.


Thank fuck too.

Francisco


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## Damian (Jun 26, 2013)

Jack said:


> Why would someone sit and sell 256 for $7/mo when can go get 2GB/$7/mo? or even 3GB/$7/mo now..


 

Because quality sells. We haven't ran a sale or advertised anywhere in over a month, and people are still beating down our door to buy product at our regular prices. I'd much rather sell 1-2 plans at a price that's self-sustaining than to sell 50 plans at some price that's obviously not going to be sustainable. This also causes people to not complain as much when we have an issue, since they know that we're here to help and respond, instead of treating them like livestock.

I feel sorry for any of these new hosts that are relying on heroin addiction to effect their basic revenue, especially with Solus being offline for over a week now.


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

I not only dont care if customers do this on my service I would not even notice if they did, Xen+SolusVM = you get what you pay for, the resources are isolated in terms of physical allocations i.e. if you have 2GB you can use it all day it has been pre allocated at purchase and same with disk space.

I am now more convinced than ever that people just buy cheap VPS's to have an excuse to destroy, complain and self delude.

You think your getting 2GB guaranteed from 90% of the people offering it then your smoking to much crack.... put the pipe down and walk away from this thread.

I sell 2GB Xen packages for $6.95 on special offer at the moment, however on nodes with 128GB Ram and no more than 50% of a node gets sold at that rate, anyone selling you 2GB on an E3 node running OpenVZ for the same price is laughing at you when they see your order come in I promise.


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## vanarp (Jun 26, 2013)

*@*, Thank you for the nice tutorial. I think it will be cool to have a script that can do all the job based on an input of how much GB I want reserved 

Now waiting for someone to write a tutorial for ways to keep my guaranteed RAM (not the burst) reserved


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

vanarp said:


> ways to keep my guaranteed RAM (not the burst) reserved


 

The script is call Xen 

Seriously, don't buy cheap OpenVZ based servers and kid yourself, it really is that simple, don't reserve your Ram on OpenVZ that is about the only selling point for OpenVZ over others, this is what keeps it so cheap, if everyone does this and it becomes common you will be kissing good bye to the ultra insane OpenVZ offers.


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## rds100 (Jun 26, 2013)

Xen is a deadend IMHO. Go KVM instead.


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## SkylarM (Jun 26, 2013)

AnthonySmith said:


> The script is call Xen
> 
> Seriously, don't buy cheap OpenVZ based servers and kid yourself, it really is that simple, don't reserve your Ram on OpenVZ that is about the only selling point for OpenVZ over others, this is what keeps it so cheap, if everyone does this and it becomes common you will be kissing good bye to the ultra insane OpenVZ offers.


Pretty sure you can overcommit memory in Xen as well no?


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## rsk (Jun 26, 2013)

SkylarM said:


> Pretty sure you can overcommit memory in Xen as well no?


Yep, ballooning ...


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## JDiggity (Jun 26, 2013)

You can overcommit memory and cpu in KVM via KSM.  So don't let the KVM providers state it can't be oversold.


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

ffs, not the stupid ballooning argument again, even with ballooning you cannot ever commit more ram than the physical node has and it can be turned off inside a domU so it would never be used for hosting anyway.

Also Xen is not at a dead end, it was just a few days ago introduced back in to the official repo's for CentOS 6 and will be native in RHEL 7.

anyway,... before replying to this post I want you to hold both hand in front of you.

count down your fingers from 10 on the left hand

10, 9, 8 , 7 , 6 now add the 6 fingers you just counted to the 5 fingers on your right hand... you just openvz'ed your hands bitches!


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## MartinD (Jun 26, 2013)

Why are you condemning OpenVZ while having it advertised, all pretty, in your signature?


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

MartinD said:


> Why are you condemning OpenVZ while having it advertised, all pretty, in your signature?


I know that cannot be aimed at me, I did no such thing. in fact I am actively trying to get people not to be dicks with OpenVZ hosts.


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## MartinD (Jun 26, 2013)

Just re-read your post and I understand what you mean, sorry.

I'll get me coat.


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

Nice one, here is 10p, ring your mother and tell her your not coming home tonight..... does my handkerchief smell like chloroform to you?


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

vanarp said:


> Now waiting for someone to write a tutorial for ways to keep my guaranteed RAM (not the burst) reserved


Well we could take that RAM and throw it into a RAMdisk and then populate that RAMdisk with some more "original" and uncompressable data   That should keep the RAM reserved.  

This may work.... Someone who fusses with RAMdisks can confirm and tweak:


mkdir /tmp/ramdisk; chmod 777 /tmp/ramdisk
mount -t tmpfs -o size=512M tmpfs /tmp/ramdisk/
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/ramdisk/music_edit1.wav bs=100M count=5

Adjust the *size *value in the mount command to equal the "spare" unused RAM.

Adjust the *dd* line *count *value to nearly equal the value specified in mount / 100 (i.e. 512 / 100 = 5)

Look at top/htop/free prior to running this and after running this.


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## acd (Jun 26, 2013)

tmpfs is allowed to be pushed to swap by the kernel. That's not to say there isn't something that does this, but I'm leery of contributing positively to your efforts, even in jest.

I've never run Xen, but doesn't xenpaging allow any amount of overcommit you want in HVM (with proportionately crappy performance)? Same with KVM without hugepage backed memory; overcommitted ram gets pushed into swap. ESXi appears to do this by default unless you set reserved to max.

As far as force-reserve resources, I don't see why you want to do this; having shared burstable resources is pretty good as long as you're aware of how much your guaranteed allocation is. It allows the host to provide less expensive service while letting the users consume more when they need it.


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## scv (Jun 26, 2013)

both Xen and KVM support overcommit. On Xen the driver will allocate the memory that's being ballooned inside of the VM, while in reality that memory is actually being assigned to another VM. On KVM it actually reduces the amount of available 'physical' memory inside the VM.



AnthonySmith said:


> ffs, not the stupid ballooning argument again, even with ballooning you cannot ever commit more ram than the physical node has and it can be turned off inside a domU so it would never be used for hosting anyway.


There's a large number of hosts doing exactly that though.


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## AnthonySmith (Jun 26, 2013)

scv said:


> There's a large number of hosts doing exactly that though.


 

Name 3


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## BlueVM (Jun 26, 2013)

My general rules for selling VPS are:

1. Make a profit (or at least break even). If we can't our servers won't be online long and it doesn't matter.

2. Make an offer I personally would buy if I was looking for a VPS.

3. Provide something I would be happy with using, if I would not be happy with it I need to fix it.

4. Maintain a 20% profit margin on a stable node. Overloading a server to make MOAR money just means you'll loose money in the long run from unhappy clients.


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## JDiggity (Jun 26, 2013)

Keywords make a profit.  I am not doing this to just break even.  I need to make profit.  I have always asked for LEB KVM providers to provide me thier magic formula for making money.


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## drmike (Jun 26, 2013)

24khost said:


> I have always asked for LEB KVM providers to provide me thier magic formula for making money.


 

I've actually heard you ask/pose that before and usually only the sound of crickets chirping thereafter


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## SkylarM (Jun 26, 2013)

24khost said:


> Keywords make a profit.  I am not doing this to just break even.  I need to make profit.  I have always asked for LEB KVM providers to provide me thier magic formula for making money.


MAGIC!

I'm only doing my prices temporarily, but with owning the equipment and my low colo rate it still nets a decent amount. I'm planning to double prices in the near future on my KVM plans though.


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## JDiggity (Jun 26, 2013)

Just priced out a rented server.

2x E5620 (16 threads)

4 x 1tb disks

32gb ram

1gb  uplink

30tb bandwidth

30 ip's

$416.30 for that server. 

+1 extra ip $1.50

need extra ip as need one for the server itself.

alone each of the containers in KVM would have to be $13.92 on this machine right now.

Putting 30 vps on raid 10 on 4 disks?  not even gonna start with the low i/o I expect from this machine.

Just don't see it.


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## JDiggity (Jun 26, 2013)

*@**SkylarM*,  What are the specs of your servers?  Which DC are you using?


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## SkylarM (Jun 26, 2013)

24khost said:


> Just priced out a rented server.
> 
> 2x E5620 (16 threads)
> 
> ...


Eh I look at profit margins different because I own the equipment. You end up spending a buttload more renting than owning

Server equipment isn't anything fancy yet, working on that  Dual Xeon L5520 36GB ram 4x2TB disks

Datacenter is GoRack, but I'm not with gorack directly -- separate network and such. Have 4 servers and a /24 worth of IP space at the moment. Anyways, back on topic:

The super-budget end market is based off the assumption that (using basically a random number here, don't use this as a baseline for any services from any provider, no way to know who does what without a database leak *cough cvps*)50% or more of the client base won't come anywhere close to using all of their resources, and balancing around those that DO use their resources. While I agree the low end market needs to be kicked up and not really exist in the capacity that it does today, I don't think this is necessarily the best approach at doing that.

If you are after saving a quick buck whilst having the resources you are paying for, find a solid provider that WILL work with you if you end up needing to use those resources based off of their overselling methodology. A provider that simply says "we don't expect anyone to use this, so if you do you get the boot" isn't worthwhile to host your data with. Appropriate balancing and monitoring can easily deal with clients that DO use their resources, without causing a negative impact -- those are the providers you want to be with anyways because they know what the heck they are doing (for the most part) anyways. 

Some overselling, when possible, is almost guaranteed to happen (at least with OpenVZ, less so with KVM and so forth) as it's somewhat logical to do it within reason (talking like at most 20-30% overcommitting of resources max) -- the low end scene has just tried to mash too much into one space on rented servers. if you own your equipment, and you don't have a huge overhead on costs then lower cost per VPS resource is easier to do with minimal overselling simply due to the costs, you aren't "forcing" yourself to over-commit to huge margins to compensate for that $300/m rental fee.

I've been on both ends of the marketing scheme. Renting equipment and owning equipment. Doing it right with owned equipment it ends up fairly reasonable profit margin wise. I would NEVER go back to renting servers and trying to compete in the low end market though, that's just attempting suicide.


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## Patrick (Jun 26, 2013)

You can oversell KVM disk space as well using thin provisioned lvm though won't work with the majority for example who use Solus


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## JDiggity (Jun 26, 2013)

Still *@SkylarM*,  still even at $7.00 a month for a 1gb kvm  with your 36 gb ram leaving 2gb for your hostnode. 

that is 238.00 a month

lets figure $0.83 per ip address = 28.22

so now were down to 209.78 a month

$10.00 for solusvm slave license  = 199.78

cost of rack space $75  = 124.78

now that is just what is brought in monthly.  What about cost of hardware? assume this comes with 36gb memory.  Other wise it becomes more bleek

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-DL160-G6-Quad-Core-2-26GHz-4GB-4x-1-TB-Server-1U-NEW-/350364852451?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item51935f60e3

$2299.00 so lets spread that out over 24 months that is $95.79 per month

Leaving $28.99 a month

Just not seeing where the profit is really at.  That wouldn't even pay for me to eat.


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## earl (Jun 26, 2013)

@24khost you should be looking at the Dell PE C6100, it's like 4 nodes in a 2u form factor! for around $1000 on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWEREDGE-C6100-XS23-TY3-2U-4-x-NODES-8-x-2-26GHz-QC-L5520-128GB-4-x-TRAYS-/111092557377?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item19dda1e641

If you colo, I think gorack had a special for $25 for 1U or even get a 1/4 rack at dacentec for $150/mo

Here is GoRack colo:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1277401&highlight=gorack


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## SkylarM (Jun 27, 2013)

24khost said:


> Still *@SkylarM*,  still even at $7.00 a month for a 1gb kvm  with your 36 gb ram leaving 2gb for your hostnode.
> 
> that is 238.00 a month
> 
> ...


I can't exactly tell you the details of my colo pricing, but it's nowhere near that bad  hardware prices nowhere near that either. I got a bunch of 1u Dual Xeons for $600 including disks. As far as KVM, it's introductory only. I won't be offering KVM at that rate for long, more to see movement in the area before going more full scale.


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## Francisco (Jun 27, 2013)

SkylarM said:


> I can't exactly tell you the details of my colo pricing, but it's nowhere near that bad  hardware prices nowhere near that either. I got a bunch of 1u Dual Xeons for $600 including disks. As far as KVM, it's introductory only. I won't be offering KVM at that rate for long, more to see movement in the area before going more full scale.


I saw those the other night  They're pretty nice little units.

If he's in gorack he's looking at like...$500/m for a full rack and 100mbit/sec. We priced out with them but they're so scared of DDOS we decided no.

Francisco


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## kaniini (Jun 27, 2013)

rds100 said:


> Excellent idea. I'm thinking of also writing a small daemon for "reserving" all that memory that you bought but don't use.


Here ya go!  Have a lot of fun:


```
/*
 * memwaste - a non-deterministic memory waster
 * Public domain.  Absolutely no warranty.
 */

#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/queue.h>

#ifndef PAGESIZE
# define PAGESIZE 4096
#endif

#define KB		(size_t)(1024)
#define MB		(size_t)(1024 * KB)

#define UPPERBOUND	(size_t)(4096 * MB)

struct page {
	void *base;
	time_t allocat;
	size_t length;
	LIST_ENTRY(page) entries;
};

LIST_HEAD(pagehead, page) pages;

time_t currtime;
size_t total_alloc;

struct page *
page_alloc(void)
{
	struct page *out = calloc(sizeof(*out), 1);
	unsigned char *it, *base;

	out->allocat = currtime;

	out->length = (rand() % PAGESIZE) * PAGESIZE;
	if ((size_t)(out->length + total_alloc) > (size_t) UPPERBOUND)
	{
		free(out);
		return NULL;
	}

	out->base = mmap(NULL, out->length, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0);

	/* couldn't map the page, try again later once a GC run happens */
	if (out->base == ((void *) -1))
	{
		free(out);
		return NULL;
	}

	/* ensure the memory manager actually allocates the pages as RSS by touching
	   each page. */
	for (base = it = out->base; (it - base) < out->length; it += PAGESIZE)
		*it = rand() % 255;

	/* for extra evilness, we try to ensure these pages cannot be swapped. */
	mlock(out->base, out->length);
	total_alloc += out->length;

	LIST_INSERT_HEAD(&pages, out, entries);

	return out;
}

void
page_free(struct page *page)
{
	/* unlock and unmap the pages */
	munlock(page->base, page->length);
	munmap(page->base, page->length);

	total_alloc -= page->length;

	LIST_REMOVE(page, entries);

	free(page);
}

void
page_gc(void)
{
	struct page *p1, *p2;

	for (p1 = pages.lh_first, p2 = p1 != NULL ? p1->entries.le_next : NULL;
		p1 != NULL;
		p1 = p2, p2 = p1 != NULL ? p1->entries.le_next : NULL)
	{
		if (currtime - p1->allocat > 60)
			page_free(p1);
	}
}

void
page_alloc_many(void)
{
	int i;
	struct page *page;

	for (i = rand() % 30; i > 0; i--)
	{
		page = page_alloc();
		if (page == NULL)
			return;
	}
}

int
main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
	(void) argc;
	(void) argv;

#ifndef DEBUG
	daemon(0, 0);
#endif

	while (true)
	{
		currtime = time(NULL);

		page_alloc_many();
		usleep(500000);
		page_gc();

#ifdef DEBUG
		fprintf(stderr, "total memory allocated: %zu bytes, upper bound: %zu bytes\n", total_alloc, (size_t) UPPERBOUND);
#endif
	}
}
```


----------



## AnthonySmith (Jun 27, 2013)

And so the slaughter of OpenVZ hosts begins.... that script has dick head written all over it.


----------



## peterw (Jun 27, 2013)

kaniini said:


> Here ya go!  Have a lot of fun:


This is not funny. You always leave some free RAM for things like updates.


----------



## JDiggity (Jun 27, 2013)

*@**SkylarM*, Those must be used units and not new.  I am sure I could get the cost of hardware down going used with used disks.  Are those hardware raid?

I see the need for higher returns.


----------



## Reece-DM (Jun 27, 2013)

Well this is definitely going to cause the destruction of some hosts seriously overselling.

*@* The L5420's are good units, even if they are going dirt cheap at places don't mean they won't perform up to spec.

However i do hope your not using *used *drives. ;|


----------



## Ash (Jun 27, 2013)

24khost said:


> Just priced out a rented server.
> 
> 2x E5620 (16 threads)
> 
> ...


Your getting ripped off.


----------



## JDiggity (Jun 27, 2013)

*@*,

1st I wouldn't buy that.  2nd Not going to start with CC/CVPS hardware.


----------



## Ash (Jun 27, 2013)

24khost said:


> *@*,
> 
> 1st I wouldn't buy that.  2nd Not going to start with CC/CVPS hardware.


Why is that who that spec was based on? 'Cos we're not using anything from them


----------



## JDiggity (Jun 27, 2013)

No the spec was based on I believe it was staminus who I got that quote off.


----------



## acd (Jun 27, 2013)

Pretty easy to keep users of @kaniini's program from assing a host node. Allocate a cgroup with memory.limit_in_bytes set such that the host node has some breathing room to do what it wants and set lockedpages to something stupidly low like 32. Then whenever you spin up an ovz, start it in the cgroup so they're all bound by a shared memory limit. So long as you're careful about to which disk you swap, your oversold cra---platform willl keep on rollin'.

That way I can see your lockedpages are low and know to avoid you as a host.

best regards,

-tw

edit: oh, I didn't see that the gc was stirring the memory up, I don't know if it's bad enough at .5 sec w/ 60 second turnover to make a complete mess.


----------



## SkylarM (Jun 27, 2013)

Francisco said:


> I saw those the other night  They're pretty nice little units.
> 
> 
> If he's in gorack he's looking at like...$500/m for a full rack and 100mbit/sec. We priced out with them but they're so scared of DDOS we decided no.
> ...


I am in gorack, but I'm on a separate network all together with a good friend of mine.




Reece said:


> Well this is definitely going to cause the destruction of some hosts seriously overselling.
> 
> *@* The L5420's are good units, even if they are going dirt cheap at places don't mean they won't perform up to spec.
> 
> However i do hope your not using *used *drives. ;|


God no not used drives. Dear god no. I should have specified. The L5520's went for ~320 per unit, and then the new drives ontop of that


----------



## earl (Jun 27, 2013)

SkylarM said:


> The L5520's went for ~320 per unit, and then the new drives ontop of that


If those are the Dell  C6100 for $320.. That's a really good deal, even if it did not include the drives.


----------



## SkylarM (Jun 27, 2013)

earl said:


> If those are the Dell  C6100 for $320.. That's a really good deal, even if it did not include the drives.


I didn't go C6100, those can only hold 3 3.5" drives unfortunately. The C1100's hold 4.


----------



## earl (Jun 27, 2013)

SkylarM said:


> I didn't go C6100, those can only hold 3 3.5" drives unfortunately. The C1100's hold 4.


There is a 2.5" model that will take 6 drives per node but then it gets kinda expensive, for the drives and the unit..

here is a nice article:

http://www.servethehome.com/Server-detail/dell-poweredge-c6100-xs23-ty3-cloud-server-2u-4-node-8-sockets/


----------



## SkylarM (Jun 27, 2013)

earl said:


> There is a 2.5" model that will take 6 drives per node but then it gets kinda expensive, for the drives and the unit..
> 
> here is a nice article:
> 
> http://www.servethehome.com/Server-detail/dell-poweredge-c6100-xs23-ty3-cloud-server-2u-4-node-8-sockets/


yeah the drives at 2.5 get expensive if you want to go larger drives, which is frustrating. Not entirely feasible.


----------



## coreyman (Jun 27, 2013)

This is the nastiest rudest thing I've ever seen, no real way to justify this.


----------



## notFound (Jun 27, 2013)

coreyman said:


> This is the nastiest rudest thing I've ever seen, no real way to justify this.


What are you refering to?


----------



## coreyman (Jun 27, 2013)

Infinity said:


> What are you refering to?



The thread title. Reserving disk space you purchased from oversold vps providers.... and someone else mentioned building a daemon for RAM.


----------



## Zen (Jun 27, 2013)

24khost said:


> Just priced out a rented server.
> 
> 2x E5620 (16 threads)
> 
> ...



Would like to add to this thread, since it hasn't been mentioned yet as far as I can tell..

Everyone is talking about the income per node, please take a moment to think about the COST per node.

30TB bandwidth? Bandwidth scales, it is not a dedicated resource, so don't purchase 30TB at once.. deploy a new node on 1,5,10TB etc - scale all the way up.

$1.5 per IP at DC level? Dodge. (srsly, when you're losing $1.5 on a $7 deal just from the IP alone, you should not be running it, from what I've seen you should be aiming for $0.50-0.90 per IP and many DC's will do this)

30 VPS on 4 disks? Most providers throw 100 VPS on 4 disks.. here it comes again, scale up. You put 4 disks in a node with space for 8 and see how it goes, why not? There is no reason to not scale based on usage.

These rented quotes I see providers getting are pretty horrendous.

So I think a big thing that customers AND providers are overlooking are their costs.


----------



## Pete M. (Jun 27, 2013)

24khost said:


> Keywords make a profit.  I am not doing this to just break even.  I need to make profit.  I have always asked for LEB KVM providers to provide me thier magic formula for making money.


*@* operate on low margins or no margins until you make a name for yourself (I am speaking in general terms, not specifically about your company). Then you increase the prices a bit, but not by an obscene amount. No one likes price increases, so be polite about it. That is our philosophy. I work at Phoenix VPS with my older brother Marc, in case anyone's wondering, and we are getting ready to launch a budget KVM hosting service. It's not easy and it's hard work, and you always run the risk that it might not pay off, but you have to keep at it. There is no simple recipe for success, and I think that luck has allot to do with it, not just hard work.


----------



## drmike (Jun 27, 2013)

coreyman said:


> This is the nastiest rudest thing I've ever seen, no real way to justify this.


 

No way to justify overselling to the degree some providers do either.

For the few of us that are tired of the ghetto a$$ providers and are in a long term relationship with Satan, the provider, it's time to get a refund    Oh that's right, no refunds or $25 billing fee to get a refund.   Sure, fine, I'll continue being your customer


----------



## nunim (Jun 27, 2013)

I feel like this topic turned into How Do You Operate Your VPS Company...  

So to get back on topic, as far as writing blocks to the disk to "reserve" your disk space, well I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to do it, but if you're using a provider where you feel it's necessary to go to such lengths, your best bet is probably to just find a better provider.  Don't buy the CVPS style "deals" and you shouldn't have a problem....

I don't see the point of trying to "reserve" your memory at all, if you're running out of memory/processes getting killed before you're at your specified limit then you should probably talk to your host to see what's up.  Overselling is a balancing act, unless you're CVPS and it's a way of life.

Or am I the only one around here who has never bought one of those crazy oversold style deals?  I don't know what you'd use 2 or 3 GB of ram for anyhow without heavily using other resources (CPU/IO).


----------



## sleddog (Jun 27, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> What to do? Claim some of your resources for the rest of your stay as a customer:


Probably a waste of your time.

If the host is overselling this much, you're going to encounter all kinds of disk i/o problems.

100 GB of disk space "reserved" on a container with crappy i/o is useless. Just go get a better vps.


----------



## drmike (Jun 27, 2013)

sleddog said:


> 00 GB of disk space "reserved" on a container with crappy i/o is useless


 

It's useful, for filling up the trashed disk with files and putting a dent in more overselling.

Every plan I have languishing from a provider I haven't been happy with are getting space reserved files stored this weekend.  It is the least I can do to get my value or prevent someone else from not getting theirs.  

Just a matter of time before other folks take note and start doing some of the same.


----------



## coreyman (Jun 27, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> It's useful, for filling up the trashed disk with files and putting a dent in more overselling.
> 
> Every plan I have languishing from a provider I haven't been happy with are getting space reserved files stored this weekend.  It is the least I can do to get my value or prevent someone else from not getting theirs.
> 
> Just a matter of time before other folks take note and start doing some of the same.



If you are unhappy with your provider just leave. If your intent is to say that overselling is making a deal with satan then you have a lot to learn about business. It seems like you think EVERYONE should be 'reserving' all of their resources. The fact is, if everyone was doing this you wouldn't have ANY lowendboxes period.


----------



## acd (Jun 27, 2013)

coreyman said:


> ...The fact is, if everyone was doing this you wouldn't have ANY lowendboxes period.


This has to be a gross exaggeration. I'm willing to bet the oversell factor at places like BuyVM and RamNode isn't nearly as bleak as you make it out to be, especially in the KVM & Xen HVM areas (in fact, I bet the advertised resources sold/available ratio is < 1 for hardware virtualizers)


----------



## drmike (Jun 27, 2013)

coreyman said:


> If you are unhappy with your provider just leave. If your intent is to say that overselling is making a deal with satan then you have a lot to learn about business. It seems like you think EVERYONE should be 'reserving' all of their resources. The fact is, if everyone was doing this you wouldn't have ANY lowendboxes period.



I have dozens of providers.   Most of them do a good job. The bad ones, leaving just means more free dollars for them.  Nah, I'll linger.



> then you have a lot to learn about business


I've been involved in business for over 25 years.  Not much escapes me.

Calling some low end providers, like the unlimited cellular illusionists, SATAN is what I do.  Both convince you that you are getting a whole lot of service at a low price.  The cellular companies at least have to provide services to some minimum level or face regulators, consumer advocates, etc.  What they do like $60 for 2GB of wireless transit a month is legalized highway robbery.

Are some low end providers just as bad?  In some ways.

Me, if I buy something, I am using it or stopping it as customer (i.e. discontinuing service). Outside of a two month, watch and see period, it gets used or goes bye bye.

Nothing nice about providers that argue refunds or refuse refunds (had one company I looked at today saying they never provider a refund because of the amount of time each account takes?!?!?!).  That's a damn lie and doesn't reflect what real businesses do.



coreyman said:


> It seems like you think EVERYONE should be 'reserving' all of their resources.


I want to encourage folks who are dealing with oversold and underutilized plans and who are stuck in a non healthy provider-customer relationship to give those providers a thank you since they won't refund and part ways civilly.



coreyman said:


> The fact is, if everyone was doing this you wouldn't have ANY lowendboxes period.



Cheap snake oil salesmen always devise new scams to divide rational people from their money.  

The same argument and outcome could be envisioned for other scenarios.  Like, if we all went to the bank to withdraw our funds (oops we don't have your money and can't even wire credits elsewhere).  Heck if 25% of us did that it would fall down.

The low end reminds me of insurance carriers with customers who have paid rates for years and never used/claimed anything.  Allstate I believe it was saw the wisdom to not only lower their rates, but to start offering partial refunds/rewards to those customers.

When I see a $180/mo server being whored out with ungodly numbers of VPS accounts in that $3-10 range on said server it raises my ire.  Providers like that would be better to stick back there in the older generation servers and reduce their costs.  Have a better cost vs. income ratio. 

I can't control providers, but the bad ones, I can certainly make it increasingly more expensive to pull the same scam-like skits on customers.  Most of those providers are so insanely stupid about business that they continue the hardware spec nuclear arms races with the other skid providers (50GB of disk + 2GB + 2TB transit + + + for $2-7 a month).   So they up the resources or pretend they have the resources and keep buying "exotic" overpriced servers to compete the Jones'.  It's laughable.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

nunim said:


> Or am I the only one around here who has never bought one of those crazy oversold style deals?  I don't know what you'd use 2 or 3 GB of ram for anyhow without heavily using other resources (CPU/IO).


I wrote a Java program to eat lots of Heap space and run multiple instances of it. so just to reserve 3.5gb or the 4gb i bought. but thats just because i was reviewing


----------



## tdc-adm (Jun 27, 2013)

I hope both customers and providers play fair. As a customer, I will never do a "reserving disk space". I try many providers and stay with the good ones. I even install zabbix in my VPSes to monitor their performance. If I spot something weird about performance, I will review my website sourcecode first (I'm a developer) before contacting my provider for their hardware oversold...


----------



## GVH-Jon (Jun 27, 2013)

I'm not for this idea at all as a provider and as a consumer. Why?

*1) *If you'd have to even consider doing this, then you've obviously chosen a horrible host.

*2) *You've purchased an OpenVZ VPS. Knowingly (I'd assume). You're defeating the main purpose of offering OpenVZ: To generate larger venue and offer larger allocations for lower prices. If every consumer is to think like this, then does that mean every host should ditch OpenVZ, switch to Xen, VMWare, or KVM and raise their prices?

I'll put in a scenario:
 

As you said yourself, a lot of people would go for those cheap OpenVZ plans. What if a considerable chunk of people on the same node started doing this?

*Result: *Hosting company isn't able to generate income, runs out of business, cheap pricing no more.
 

My God this industry is getting more shameful by the second...


----------



## drmike (Jun 27, 2013)

GVH-Jon said:


> as a consumer. Why?


As a consumer, why not?  First and foremost, you are paying for resources you don't use too much already.  The low end banks on totally idle accounts with empty installs.  No difference to me loading up some place holder files or wget'ing to disk 500 speed test files or putting some of "real" data on the VPS.  Space is space.



GVH-Jon said:


> 1) If you'd have to even consider doing this, then you've obviously chosen a horrible host.


  

9402 VPS instances at ChicagoVPS.  What percentage of their customer base do you think should be due a refund this time?  Last time?  They are real impossible about refunds / they don't refund.  I see thousands of their customers that should start using some resources  (NO! I am not a customer there thank the heavens)



GVH-Jon said:


> You've purchased an OpenVZ VPS. Knowingly


The oversold resources that aren't there isn't a specific OpenVZ defect.  It is a defect and business model of the company using it at gross scale.

Up until recently, you really had to go out of your way to find anything besides OpenVZ, so it remains by far the most common virtualization type.

You can still oversell things on all other virtualized systems.   Give the creatives some spare time and the need to do such and there will ten different ways.


----------



## Pete M. (Jun 27, 2013)

What's the point of subscribing to a provider that you suspect of overselling disk space in the first place? While this idea has merit, I'd rather not play the roulette with my data.


----------



## drmike (Jun 27, 2013)

Pete M. said:


> What's the point of subscribing to a provider that you suspect of overselling disk space in the first place?



Well it happens.  Overselling is certainly getting more mature and better hiding it from novice end users.  Especially with the emergence of cheap SSD technology.



Pete M. said:


> While this idea has merit, I'd rather not play the roulette with my data.



So rather than playing roulette, while idling the VPS, watching and waiting before putting it in production (I do this for 3+ months typically). Load some of my filler data    See if they lose that.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

In my opinion, as long as you are not abusing CPU and disk io, it is okay to consume disk and ram. what is the difference of uploading your backup file to your vps and creating ramdom disk files? why cant you do what you want to do with your vps, as long as its not illegal and not affecting other clients?


----------



## ErrantWeb-Travis (Jun 27, 2013)

This is a funny way to reserve space. I've never been worried about HDD space on any nodes, I'm not sure why anyone would oversell HDD.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

Pete M. said:


> What's the point of subscribing to a provider that you suspect of overselling disk space in the first place? While this idea has merit, I'd rather not play the roulette with my data.


it is not i think about suspecting. it is about testing your host. what kind of service they provide. what is their attitude. etc.

when i tried DireVPS and consume 3.5GB/4GB RAM, 92GB/100GB RAM, and 24/7 CPU, I thought I will get kicked out. To my surprise, it was okay for 1 whole month. I ended up having tons of respect for them.


----------



## john (Jun 27, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> 92GB/100GB RAM


 

Sign me up .


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

john said:


> Sign me up .


http://direvps.com/


----------



## jarland (Jun 27, 2013)

I oversell disk space on OpenVZ. Sorry but 30% average usage is a waste. Prices are brought down by this and everyone wins. I don't have a problem with people *using* what they buy and I'm happy to roll out the red carpet for anyone who finds a way to legitimately hit a wall prior to capping the resources that they've paid for (and good luck because almost no one uses their disk space or memory) but attempting to retaliate over an open, admitted method of selling high performing products at a price that a lot of people want would certainly have me considering a cry of "abuse" over a client who admitted to taking more than they need "just because it's there." It's my job to make sure the client has what they need, not the client's job to make my job as hard as it can be for no reason and zero benefit to anyone including themselves.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

I think all clients to start using up all resources they paid, will not happen. or if it does, it will not be in an instant. it will be gradual increase, and host can react accordingly.


----------



## Pete M. (Jun 27, 2013)

jarland said:


> I oversell disk space on OpenVZ.


 

*@**jarland* you guys are really good at what you are doing, so anyone who buys OpenVZ hosting from Catalyst should not be worried, however someone who just got started in this business with the intent to make a quick buck can end up messing things up pretty badly.


----------



## Magiobiwan (Jun 27, 2013)

However, clients using methods like this can ALSO mess stuff up very easily. If you want stuff for $2 per month, doing this shit WILL make prices rise, and make new hosts die fast.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 27, 2013)

Magiobiwan said:


> and make new hosts die fast.


that's not bad, right?


----------



## jarland (Jun 27, 2013)

Magiobiwan said:


> However, clients using methods like this can ALSO mess stuff up very easily. If you want stuff for $2 per month, doing this shit WILL make prices rise, and make new hosts die fast.


I can honestly say it'd cut down on promos that we would do if people used what they're allotted. Which is totally fine. I'd just much prefer them to benefit from the resources rather than just trying to cause problems.


----------



## Pete M. (Jun 27, 2013)

Magiobiwan said:


> However, clients using methods like this can ALSO mess stuff up very easily. If you want stuff for $2 per month, doing this shit WILL make prices rise, and make new hosts die fast.


*@**Magiobiwan* not everyone who has the ability to install OpenVZ should become a provider. When Marc told me about summer hosts I laughed, but when I saw that serious look on his face I realized that it was something ... well serious. To me the part where some of these hosts run off with the customers' money is not as bad as wasting their data as well.


----------



## kaniini (Jun 27, 2013)

peterw said:


> This is not funny. You always leave some free RAM for things like updates.


That's why you have the UPPERBOUND setting


----------



## kaniini (Jun 28, 2013)

GVH-Jon said:


> I'm not for this idea at all as a provider and as a consumer. Why?
> 
> *1) *If you'd have to even consider doing this, then you've obviously chosen a horrible host.
> 
> ...


Are you really trying to justify a broken business model?  You see: selling things that _aren't real_ is called _dishonesty_ or perhaps, legally, _fraud_.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

honestly, i can't understand why it is an issue using and maximizing the disk and ram you bought


----------



## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> honestly, i can't understand why it is an issue using and maximizing the disk and ram you bought


 

Cause... drumroll... many providers are mass overselling.  Especially resources that aren't typically used.  It use to be CPU 'abuse' the providers whined about.  They started limiting what you can run and defined CPU abuse and set limits on what you could access CPU wise.  Problem solved.

Then they started bumping disk + RAM on plans pretty fast.   RAM use is well, subject to actual use of the VPS.  Lots of these large RAM oversolds seem to have disk IO issues (depending on server load).  The use of SSD as cache and even mapped as RAM, yeah expands things on the cheap but again, hits the disk IO.  Comes down to one ugly thing typically --- if the VPS is subpar, laggy, slow drive, etc. folks let them sit empty.

Empty VPS due to unusable production quality lacking.  So storing random data, well, that's part of the medicine I think to bottom up fix/change the low end.

*Scaling properly and morally:*

There is a big difference @Jarland in having idle servers due to true underuse vs. massive stack and pack others do.  I always have good things to say about Catalyst.  

*Providers surprise:*

I am surprised by the interest in this howto / concept by providers.   I see some camps of thought on the matter and general industry practices.  Glad to see more discussion about the balancing act of resources and maximizing servers, while not selling vapor.


----------



## MannDude (Jun 28, 2013)

I don't see why this is such a big deal.

You're attracted to an offer due to it's advertised resources. You may not need all of these resources today, but you may in the future. Either way, it is assumed that these resources exist and are yours to utilize so long as your usage falls within the TOS/AUP of the provider (not pounding on CPU, basically). Afterall, it was advertised that you'd receive access to X amount of resources for Y amount of money per month (or year, or whatever lured you in).

Different providers have different costs of operation yet they continue to compete on price. Those who own their hardware or make special deals with colocation providers are often much better suited to provide you what you actually pay for with reduced overselling and reduced costs. Those who are stuck renting servers and continue to compete based on price with those other companies who have a lower operating cost are doing it wrong. But they do it anyways and oversell to break even and then oversell more to make the venture worthwhile for them.

And what most of you fail to realize is the simple fact there are a ton of people who will not touch the lowend market. They see a $7/mo 1, 2, 3GB VPS and laugh. They understand value, and they're not strapped for cash. They feel that they'll get better service and quality paying $30/mo for a service some of you complain about if it is $8/mo. Whether the service is actually 'better' or not, that's debatable, but it gives businesses and other professionals peace of mind with the thoughts that they're spending decent money for a decent service from a provider they feel to be professional. It's like comparing a $25 pair of sneakers from Wal-Mart and a $100 pair of sneakers from anywhere else. Both keep your feet covered, both are comfortable, but some people would prefer the higher-end one due to thinking it's better quality.

In all honesty, if I were to start a new company I would stay far from the low end market as possible. I'd not cater to this market. I'd have prices deemed 'expensive' by most of you here and I'd much rather have half as many clients paying twice as much for their services as compared to the next guy. Easier to manage, easier to provide support for, resources that always exist for them and idle resources available in the event someone wants to upgrade so I don't have to shuffle them node to node to 'fit them in' somewhere.


----------



## Pete M. (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> honestly, i can't understand why it is an issue using and maximizing the disk and ram you bought


*@jcaleb* you are right, and that is why it is usually a good idea to purchase a Xen or KVM server or if you want OpenVZ then get it from a reputable provider. Actually you should use a good provider period :lol: .


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

MannDude said:


> They see a $7/mo 1, 2, 3GB VPS and laugh. They understand value, and they're not strapped for cash.



So true.

There are plenty of virtualized offers at higher price points masking themselves as clouds.  

Those cloud solutions differ greatly.   Needless to say, there is plenty of oversold and underperforming there.

Frankly, shared resources aren't something I am willing to pay much for.  When a shared resource creeps up to $25 and above that gets into dedicated server land.  Sure, minus fancy RAID and certainly on a slower processor.  But the resources are dedicated and there aren't unknowns and random performance issues.  The only real remaining concern there in dedicated land is the quality of bandwidth/throughput (an issue that is even larger in virtual lands).

Cloud vs. VPS provider (low end especially) = no clear winner.


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## MannDude (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> So true.
> 
> There are plenty of virtualized offers at higher price points masking themselves as clouds.
> 
> ...


But, even then you _do_ get what you pay for.

A <$50/mo less dedicated server, I don't expect much other than some dated processor and dated recycled hardware in a location that may not be ideal for my visitor base or a network not really ideal for what I want. Perfect for development, testing, learning, etc but not always perfect for the user's needs.

You may be ordering a dedicated server that is this:



located in a facility that looks like this:



Staffed by people who resemble this:


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## Pete M. (Jun 28, 2013)

*@**MannDude* your post made me laugh pretty hard. Fact is that the best humor has some truth at its core. When you get a dedicated server you are not only paying for specifications, but also for the facility, staff, fast response time, fast hardware replacement, a good SLA and so on. If you insist on being cheap then be prepared to get what you pay for and don't complain about it. If something sounds too good to be true then it usually is. B)


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

^ all that said @MannDude   nothing stopped a VPS/cloud operation from being equally as, umm, disturbing.

I don't buy just one of anything and am particular somewhat (i.e. I've already tried FDC servers and won't be there any time soon for any reason -- that covers at least one of your pics  ).

< $50 dedicated servers?   They exist.  Quickpacket has them, WSI,  other common discount places. 

I buy them here and there since  the cost and trouble of shipping colo units and retrieving them in the future gets annoying.

$25 and under dedicated.  Yeah, certainly older CPUs, 2-4GB of RAM + whatever on drive.   They still probably will be competitive with that slice on a VPS.

I'm waiting for $10 dedicated servers.   ARM chips are fine by me.

I don't need performance, I need predictability - baselines that don't move too much.  VPS landers. well, they are all over the place.  I feel like I am in constant check/setup/burn in for sanity sake.


----------



## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> honestly, i can't understand why it is an issue using and maximizing the disk and ram you bought


It's not, but consider this.

1. People want low prices.

2. People don't use what they buy.

This enables an option in which a host can do three things:

1. Cause less unnecessary usage of real resources like power.

2. Provide low prices.

3. Get better use out of existing equipment.

This has proven to be effective in providing wonderful performance for low cost from many providers. People want low prices and they want quality performance. By utilizing a truth that remains constant we can achieve both of these things through the overcommitting of resources.

That truth? A painfully simplistic one that goes even farther than "no one uses everything they buy." These are linux admins purchasing server slices to use for hosting some type of service or content. They should *almost always* be purchasing more than they plan to use. The most common uses, from my angle, are web servers and game servers. If you want these to scale up based on usage then you'd better have idle resources or you won't scale. Now, when we're talking about massive servers with more RAM than the average single user will ever need in a server and we're looking at something like a 2:1 ratio of sales, what is the statistical probability of every user needing to burst their full allotment at the exact same time? For that matter, what is the statistical probability of 50% of the users needing to burst their full allotment at the same time?

Quite simply it is a dice roll, but all four of your dice need to land on the same corner of the available 8 corners and all line up in a 100% perfect symmetrical row. We're talking about fractional percentage chances here. I'm not going to sit here and unload every number I've ever calculated because that is the kind of thing I call equivalent to a trade secret (mostly in reference to average usage patterns obtained not only from Catalyst), but it's more likely that your entire family will die in a plane crash when every one of them is on a plane from a different location than it is that more than 50% of users on my nodes with a 2:1 oversell ratio (generally I aim for 1.5:1) will require a burst of 100% of their allotted resources in the same time frame.

What people need to realize is that overselling is not a summer host idea. It is an idea exploited by summer hosts. That's fine and all, but what I want to stress here is that people should not be attempting to punish their host. If you're looking at a massively overselling summer host, you don't need to make things harder on them, they will bring themselves down.



kaniini said:


> Are you really trying to justify a broken business model?  You see: selling things that _aren't real_ is called _dishonesty_ or perhaps, legally, _fraud_.


It's not broken if it works. The only issue with overcommitting on OpenVZ is theory and conversation. In practice, when done responsibly, I challenge anyone to show me solid proof of a single issue caused by overcommitting disk space on a 2:1 or less ratio under OpenVZ. Give me one solid example in which it actually occurred from client allotment and not personal allotment with intent to create an example. Just one.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> I'm waiting for $10 dedicated servers.   ARM chips are fine by me.


this would be nice


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> this would be nice


I don't disagree with overselling. I just disagree when someone say I cant use the resources in the plan bought.


----------



## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> ^ all that said @MannDude  nothing stopped a VPS/cloud operation from being equally as, umm, disturbing.


*@* it depends allot on the provider, facility, hardware, virtualization technology and so on. Xen is awesome for balanced performance, and the results are very predictable. We set up all our Xen packages to progresively double the resources for the previous package and we have also switched to the CPU priority model, where everyone gets the same number of cores but different priority. This means that customers get very good CPU performane, in sync with the rest of the resources. When I read the term "burst" ocassionaly on an offer or hosting web site I think about what it means in Cisco terminology: "discard eligible". It's like everyone is driving on the highway at the speed limit (65MPH) and then one car bursts to 120MPH. That vehicle is discard eligible and it won't be long before there is a packet sniffer behind it with the blue lights on, pulling it over. If I would apply an analogy to RAM overcommiting with OpenVZ then it's like a bunch of people climbing up a mountain, and each one of them is carying a 20 pund backpack, but then here comes one with a 100 pound back pack. Sure enough he's dead tired and wants to kill that process... err drop 80 punds from the back pack, which is discard eligible as you know.... but this being OpenVZ he might need to drop the entire back pack in order to avoid a herniated disc.


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I don't disagree with overselling. I just disagree when someone say I cant use the resources in the plan bought.


See the key there is the word "use." To me, artificially ramping up to 100% of your allotment with intent to remain there purely to impact my system administration is not actual use.


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> 2:1 oversell ratio (generally I aim for 1.5:1)


 

You Catalyst folks are insane.  2:1 ratio?   32GB physical RAM = sell 64GB.  2TB usable = sell 4TB.

You guys are clinging to the very lowest side, barely touching "overselling".  It is overselling, but your customer use pattern dictates the resources aren't being used.

If I were betting, I'd put the low end average OpenVZ shop at a 4-5 to 1 ratio.   One popular punching bag provider has been proven to be 9-10 to 1 ratio on RAM (who knows about their disk abuse).


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## Pete M. (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> You Catalyst folks are insane.  2:1 ratio?   32GB physical RAM = sell 64GB.  2TB usable = sell 4TB.   You guys are clinging to the very lowest side, barely touching "overselling".  It is overselling, but your customer use pattern dictates the resources aren't being used.   If I were betting, I'd put the low end average OpenVZ shop at a 4-5 to 1 ratio.   One popular punching bag provider has been proven to be 9-10 to 1 ratio on RAM (who knows about their disk abuse).


Wow


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> See the key there is the word "use." To me, artificially ramping up to 100% of your allotment with intent to remain there purely to impact my system administration is not actual use.


so if i do that, ramp up my disk and ram. what did i violate?


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> See the key there is the word "use." To me, artificially ramping up to 100% of your allotment with intent to remain there purely to impact my system administration is not actual use.



FYI:  I proposed an initial file reservation of 80% of account disk allocation.  You know, typical headroom reasons


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> so if i do that, ramp up my disk and ram. what did i violate?


Nothing until you tell me you did. If you tell me that you have reserved 100% of your resources with zero intent to use them I would stand by this policy:

"Server Abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server or customer of Catalyst Host is strictly prohibited. As our customer you are responsible for all your accounts. This includes abuse of the server's CPU and RAM resources to a degree that effects the performance of other customers on your node. Should you violate the Terms of Services outlined within, your account will be cancelled without chance of refund. If you abuse system resources, you will be contacted and offered options for accomodating or reducing usage prior to having your service terminated. Abusive processes, however, will be shut down prior to our attempts to contact you."

 

Now of course I'm not talking about you directly, as I know you wouldn't do that in the first place. We're just talking theory here.


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> Nothing until you tell me you did. If you tell me that you have reserved 100% of your resources with zero intent to use them I would stand by this policy:
> 
> "Server Abuse
> 
> ...


okay that's a catch all phrase. I wonder what @Francisco 's stand on this matter

edit: how do you tag a user here?


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## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

> *@ [ member = ' jcaleb ' ]*


^ Like that 

*@**jcaleb* but remove the spaces.


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> Server Abuse


For me, abuse should be something objective.

boss @Francisco what is your stand?


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> This includes abuse of the server's CPU and RAM resources to a degree that effects the performance of other customers on your node.


Don't mind me and my legal beagle nose 

Please append that policy to include disk... CPU, disk and RAM resources.  Guess I created the appending of disk 

Bit perplexed though how using services constitutes abuse!?!  All of those items are quarantined and boxed in by default.  No user can exceed their disk allocation in any way.  RAM is limited to account settings.  CPU is limited too.

 " to a degree that effects the performance of other customers on your node."

One could say that any use constitutes effects on the performance.

All theory and nitpicking.  Friendly chat.


----------



## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> okay that's a catch all phrase. I wonder what @Francisco 's stand on this matter
> 
> edit: how do you tag a user here?


"Don't be a dick".

We have lots of users that use all of their RAM *and* diskspace. We overbuild our nodes these days just to give extra room. Infact we're chatting right now about bumping disk & bandwidth in the summer after a trip to Vegas to pump up the nodes some.

CPU is a fair share basis. If you're running all 4 cores on your VM? you're going to get capped. Monbot handles that all and gives us amazing reports like this:



> [09:00:26] ny-node04 says:
> 
> Process ID 215916 (java) from CTID 22131 using 139.64% CPU. Triggered action cpulimit (80%)


We plan to merge those reports into stallion 2 so end users have access to them.

Francisco


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> For me, abuse should be something objective.
> 
> 
> boss @Francisco what is your stand?


It is though. It is a very bad idea to have policies that are so direct and targeted that they have to be adjusted every time someone finds a new way to abuse something. A good policy outlines an idea or concept and tries to confine it with limitations as best as possible while leaving room for application to new forms of abuse when discovered. We are in a market that changes often enough for this to be a big deal.

But keep in mind that my servers aren't meant to be toys for people to try to mess up. They're for hosting real content and services. When someone comes along and just wants to play games with my business plan just for the sake of doing it and seeing if they can negatively impact myself and my other clients, how would I not be forced to view this as abusive intent?


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## john (Jun 28, 2013)

Jarland put it very eloquently. A key advantage to virtualization is over provisioning (overselling) resources to more effectively use said resources and reduce cost.  When hosts start doing a 10:1 ratio using SSD as swap, that's when it gets ugly. Even if your host does not oversell on RAM or disk, your bandwidth commitment is oversold by A LOT. Overselling done responsibly is not bad.


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

Francisco said:


> "Don't be a dick".


i cant remember. but is that phrase really in the agreement i checked "agree" when i signed up with you guys? i just find it cool.


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## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

john said:


> Jarland put it very eloquently. A key advantage to virtualization is over provisioning (overselling) resources to more effectively use said resources and reduce cost.  When hosts start doing a 10:1 ratio using SSD as swap, that's when it gets ugly. Even if your host does not oversell on RAM or disk, your bandwidth commitment is oversold by A LOT. Overselling done responsibly is not bad.


They already have though.

There has already been one person that has stated CVPS for instance had a pair of SSD's in RAID0 for swap just to try to keep up with memory usage.

Francisco


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Don't mind me and my legal beagle nose
> 
> Please append that policy to include disk... CPU, disk and RAM resources.  Guess I created the appending of disk
> 
> ...


I'll file that in my list for the next update. I think I'm adding bittorrent soon (will be dated, excluding signups before that date) so that'll be a good time.

As for how it would be considered abuse, I think intent is the focus here. I can't prove intent, so I'm not seeking people out and asking them why they're using their resources. However, if they told me that they are forcefully reserving 100% of their allotment purely because they believe I oversell and they want to make sure they have what they bought, with no intent to use it for any actual use, I would call that borderline malicious intent. It isn't painful, but when they're attempting to make it painful for me then I think I'm looking a client who might be happier elsewhere and I'm happy to give them a vzdump full of empty block files


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

I wonder how many hosts uses e5 with 128gb ram


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## john (Jun 28, 2013)

Francisco said:


> There has already been one person that has stated CVPS for instance had a pair of SSD's in RAID0 for swap just to try to keep up with memory usage.


 

I was referring to CVPS subtly. How well does SSD as swap to substitute for real RAM even work, I'd imagine things would become very slow..


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## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I wonder how many hosts uses e5 with 128gb ram


Probably not many.

Even the E5's we've built we only did 64GB in them. We didn't increase our load outs just because we have more resources to abuse. The limits we keep now are predictable. We know on average how many inodes are going to be used, RAM usage, actual bandwidth usage, etc.

Francisco


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

Francisco said:


> There has already been one person that has stated CVPS for instance had a pair of SSD's in RAID0 for swap just to try to keep up with memory usage.


 

Broken record mode:  Multiple people were presented the idea of using SSDs for expanding RAM by Colocrossing (when inquiring about renting servers).

It's a bad and evil idea.  Someone right now is working to improve the concept.


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## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

john said:


> I was referring to CVPS subtly. How well does SSD as swap to substitute for real RAM even work, I'd imagine things would become very slow..


Sure.

On most linux boxes you'll get 2 - 3GB/sec in memory bandwidth (I usually test by writing a file in /dev/shm). 2 SSD's may give you something in the 1GB/sec mark. You're going to burn them out hard though if you start smacking on them hard.

Francisco


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## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> i cant remember. but is that phrase really in the agreement i checked "agree" when i signed up with you guys? i just find it cool.


Nope but we've had a TL;DR section for a long long time:



> Resource Abuse
> 
> - Affecting other clients will affect your tenacy.
> 
> ...


Francisco


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I wonder how many hosts uses e5 with 128gb ram


Good ol' Taylor 

(no overselling allowed here)

CPU model :  Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz

Number of cores : 24

CPU frequency :  2000.169 MHz

Total amount of ram : 129033 MB


----------



## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I wonder how many hosts uses e5 with 128gb ram


*@**jcaleb* we do and they are amazing machines, very robust


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> Good ol' Taylor (no overselling allowed here)


sure you could, thats a lot of ram


----------



## acd (Jun 28, 2013)

Just curious, how many providers would object if I ran, say UML in an OVZ? That would pretty much behave exactly like an eat-resources daemon, except doing potentially useful things.


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## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

acd said:


> Just curious, how many providers would object if I ran, say UML in an OVZ? That would pretty much behave exactly like an eat-resources daemon, except doing potentially useful things.


I mean as long as it didn't hammer I/O and CPU all the time for no reason I'd say sounds fun!


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## kaniini (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I wonder how many hosts uses e5 with 128gb ram


When I was working for Enzu (after they bought SIP's virtualization business), BudgetVM was running e5's with 192gb RAM.

I'll let that sink in a bit.


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## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

kaniini said:


> I'll let that sink in a bit.


*@kaniini* we run e5 2620 and e5 2609 nodes with 128GB RAM with SSD caching (Cache Cade Pro 2.0) for both Xen and KVM, and they are great. From 128 to 192 it's just one step  IMHO small nodes aren't worth the money anymore, especially for Xen.

[edit]

*Microrant*:

It just kills me when I see providers adverise "RAID 10 Protected Storage"  - as RAID 10 is meant for high IOPS with minimal redundancy. Speed it's the only purpose why it exists, because otherwise it's the most inneficient way to group multiple drives into an array as you loose 50% of your cappacity no matter what and kind of play lottery because "what if the wrong two drives fail?".

Hmm... I have to run some tests with SSD cached RAID 50. See how it performs under high load. Anyway, rant over :lol:


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

Francisco said:


> There has already been one person that has stated CVPS for instance had a pair of SSD's in RAID0 for swap


that much oversold?


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## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> PU model :  Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz Number of cores : 24 CPU frequency :  2000.169 MHz Total amount of ram : 129033 MB


 


What is that a quad CPU E5-2620?

6 cores on that CPU.. But i see 24 cores on your output...


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## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> that much oversold?


*@**jcaleb* lol, I magine them swapping out 'them burned out SSDs like Tony Stark was swapping out his smoking Polonium powered Arc Reactor from his chest in Iron Man 2.


----------



## john (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> What is that a quad CPU E5-2620?
> 
> 6 cores on that CPU.. But i see 24 cores on your output...


Hyperthreading. 12 threads per processor.


----------



## jarland (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> What is that a quad CPU E5-2620?
> 
> 6 cores on that CPU.. But i see 24 cores on your output...


Dual 6 core with HT. I love that CPU.


----------



## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

john said:


> Hyperthreading. 12 threads per processor.


Yes, it's HyperThreading so it's 12 cores. Linux shows 24 because that's what HT does, lies to the OS that you have more cores than you do basically. Even Intel said that HT by itself takes a minuscule area of the CPU die. On the first P4 that it was released on it took only 15%... compound how much transistor size haz decreased since then and it may take ~1% to 2% of the die area per core. Just sayin'.... B)


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## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

Marc M. said:


> @jcaleb lol, I magine them swapping out 'them burned out SSDs like Tony Stark was swapping out his smoking Polonium powered Arc Reactor from his chest in Iron Man 2.


that will not be economical


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## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> that will not be economical


*@**jcaleb* I know, it's all assumption and gossip and who really cares. The bottom line is that if you care about what you're hosting and you rely on it you go with something more reliable. Heck, even CVPS offers Xen at reasonable prices, so why not just go with that instead?


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 28, 2013)

Marc M. said:


> @jcaleb I know, it's all assumption and gossip and who really cares. The bottom line is that if you care about what you're hosting and you rely on it you go with something more reliable. Heck, even CVPS offers Xen at reasonable prices, so why not just go with that instead?


are their servers unused CC servers?


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## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> are their servers unused CC servers?


*@jcaleb* that I don't know, however I think that lots of people make lots of assumptions about them and I don't understand why. Just vote with your wallet  - because a product doesn't sell the provider will discard or change it.


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## peterw (Jun 28, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Nope but we've had a TL;DR section for a long long time:
> 
> Resource Abuse
> 
> ...


Hard but plausible rules. How many "second accidents" do you have?


----------



## Marc M. (Jun 28, 2013)

peterw said:


> Hard but plausible rules. How many "second accidents" do you have?


Meh, *@**Francisco* at BuyVM knows his stuff when it comes to virtualization and he does things well. It's the providers that are trying to exploit OpenVZ in order to make a quick buck that screw the pooch and give OpenVZ a bad reputation. A rotten apple can spoil the entire barel... that's how the saying goes.


----------



## drmike (Jun 28, 2013)

jarland said:


> Dual 6 core with HT. I love that CPU.


 

I *wish* they'd stop counting hyperthreading as cores.  Tired of looking at CPU spec sheet to decode things -daily-.

They need some clear processor labeling already: Hiss!

Nice machine @jarland.  I need to  Start running some bigger RAM servers for projects.


----------



## earl (Jun 28, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> I *wish* they'd stop counting hyperthreading as cores.  Tired of looking at CPU spec sheet to decode things -daily-.
> 
> They need some clear processor labeling already: Hiss!
> 
> Nice machine @jarland.  I need to  Start running some bigger RAM servers for projects.


I wonder if linode offering 8 cpu cores of which how many of that is just hperthreading.. comparing linode 8 cores to digitalocean 1-2 cores I found this result form a review source

UnixBench results
*DigitalOcean1G:*


UnixBench (w/ all processors) 1387.1


UnixBench (w/ one processor) 1386.6

*DigitalOcean2G:*


UnixBench (w/ all processors) 1873.1


UnixBench (w/ one processor) 1183.7

*Linode1G:*


UnixBench (w/ all processors) 1860.7


UnixBench (w/ one processor) 491.4


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## Francisco (Jun 28, 2013)

peterw said:


> Hard but plausible rules. How many "second accidents" do you have?


Rare but they happen. We've had a few people come into IRC screaming about getting suspended a 2nd time. They then straight up say "I didn't feel like fixing my table scans/super abusive scripts". They were sent packing.

We're pretty reasonable and the monbot system helps out a lot. It keeps things in check and in a few weeks when I commit the next revision it'll monitor IO abuse on OVZ.

You pretty much have to be Robert Clarke to get canned around these parts.

Francisco


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## maounique (Jun 28, 2013)

If you want to use the resources to be a jerk, fine, but look at a provider that accepts jerks for the higher price.

We dont accept jerks.

I believe in maximizing the output fromt he limited resources.

I.e. if you purchase a car during warranty you do not come up with schemes to leave the car running around in circles in your yard just to test if the car will last during said warranty.

We have OVZ servers using 10% of the resources. KVMs even 5%.

Is this good ? I dont think so, this is why we came with OVerZold brand. There usage varies between 30 and 70 percent, usually, with occasional spikes from abusers.

All are overcommitted.

It allows minecraft servers, hosting, many usage types to scale up during day or evening in that part of the world and down during night while others use the free resources.

If you need price increase, you do not need to force it on providers, you can achieve the same goal by buying from Linode/Amazon, they have higher prices, therefore better services and you can allocate there all the disk you want, all the ramdisks, etc.

You are unhappy with low prices ? Fine, you can go find higher.

You like pollution, energy and hardware waste ? Fine, buy american, allocate allt he resources you want. Complain about 200 MB/s dd result and force new underused drives upon providers, it will cost more, but at least you can waste the resources as you like.

Just because is cheap does not mean it should be wasted. Someone's livelihood in India may depend on those 2 dollars. If you can buy 200 hamburgers a day, doesnt mean you need to stuff them in the garbage bin, perhaps donating to the hungry is a more beneficial idea ?

This can only be imagined by americans, everyone in the world tries to use less resources for the best output, they try to use more fo rthe garbage dump of for harming themselves (getting fat).


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## kaniini (Jun 28, 2013)

Marc M. said:


> Microrant: It just kills me when I see providers adverise "RAID 10 Protected Storage"  - as RAID 10 is meant for high IOPS with minimal redundancy. Speed it's the only purpose why it exists, because otherwise it's the most inneficient way to group multiple drives into an array as you loose 50% of your cappacity no matter what and kind of play lottery because "what if the wrong two drives fail?". Hmm... I have to run some tests with SSD cached RAID 50. See how it performs under high load. Anyway, rant over :lol:


I've been nearly bit by that several times in the past.  Also dodgy 3ware firmwares.

Rebuilding a failed RAID-10 from a finnicky array is really bad.


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## wlanboy (Jun 29, 2013)

Mao said:


> We have OVZ servers using 10% of the resources. KVMs even 5%.
> Is this good ? I dont think so, this is why we came with OVerZold brand. There usage varies between 30 and 70 percent, usually, with occasional spikes from abusers.
> 
> All are overcommitted.
> ...


Totally agree with your arguments.

I know some providers that are using timezones to load balance their clients. This is working if your clients are spread around the world.

The managment might be not that easy, because you have to migrate clients if they change their "hours of load".

But why should a client demand the whole resources if he/she needs it only between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. CET?

It is like the idea of car sharing. Why buy a car if you only need it two days a week?


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## Marc M. (Jun 29, 2013)

Here is a simple way to look at things:


provider should make sure that safeguards are in place for customer not to be able to abuse node
CPU abuse, I/O abuse, network abuse and so on are wrong and provider has to deal with abusers
disk space is a finite resource that a customer is paying for, and as such he is entitled to use all of it, regardless for what; occupation of disk space that a customer has paid for cannot be considered abuse under any circumstances


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## willie (Jun 29, 2013)

1. Cpu, bw, ram, disk, ddos response, support tickets with dumb questions, etc. are all finite resources that the customer pays for.  Despite this there are usually not codified limits on most of these except for ram, bw, and disk (and bw is way overpromised for most users).  Instead, hosts rely on behavior of normal clients doing normal things statistically averaging out to result in costs that the host can set prices by.  Some people use all their ram or disk (rarely both), others underutilize, it evens out.  Trying to codify too much invites obnoxious behavior.  Better to tell people to just be good neighbors.

2. Ram and bw use tend to be low or bursty for most users and steady (high) for some.  E.g. my ram usage is usually low but sometimes I run a compilation or something that uses a lot temporarily.  Someone running a database probably uses their whole ram allocation most of the time.  This all averages out.

3. Cpu also tends to be low/bursty or steady/high, but steady/high cpu users are basically not allowed on vps's.  I run multi-day analysis tasks at 100% cpu which is why I got into dedicated servers. 

4. Disk is not really like the above.  There are few bursty users of disk space.  Clients tend to use a steady and maybe gradually increasing amount, that may or may not be much of their allocation.  But it won't fluctuate much.  So here, hosts can observe total usage and add capacity as needed.  I had thought LEB wisdom of last year was "don't oversell disk" but I guess it is a normal practice.  I have a $15/year Ramnode vps with 50gb disk, that's probably oversold.  I have it almost empty at the moment.

5. Having underprovisioned ram/cpu/bw on a host node results in crappy vps performance which is the usual complaint against overselling.  Having underprovisioned disk has no effect unless the host actually runs out of space, which results in vps's not being able to save files, creating disruption.  I think this it's relatively rare for any host to ever let this happen.  They monitor total usage and buy more drives if they have to.  So "reserving" space isn't protecting from shortages, it's just increasing host costs and therefore (indirectly) prices.  Thanks a lot bro.

6. Hosts generally offer multiple sizes of plans, so if you didn't buy the smallest one, that probably means you probably DO use more of some resource than the smallest one offers.  It's unusual though to use more of EVERY resource than the smallest one offers.  If I buy a 500GB storage kvm, chances are I'm going to really use most/all of the space, or else I'd have bought a 250GB or a normal VPS.  But there's less likelihood that I'll use the 512mb ram that comes with it.   If I buy a 128MB $15/y vps, there's good chance I'm running a vpn/proxy/small server and don't need a lot of disk, but maybe I do.  So it's nice if they say "50gb allocation" and it's there if I need/want it, like the 500gb bw allocation (I might use 10gb tops).  Again it's fine for hosts to figure out the average case and provision for it.  Storage server disks will probably be more fully utilized than normal vps's, etc.  I have a 1gb ram, 150gb disk vps at ipxcore and I'm using most of the disk but very little cpu and ram, because it's mainly a storage server.  If ipxcore observes this is typical for users of these plans, it's fine if they provision their box accordingly.

7. The oversold underperforming vps's from certain notorious hosts are just crap to begin with, I don't see why anyone buys them.  None of this discussion really applies to them much.

8. I do like the idea of lots of people storing cryptographic random data on VPS's, and transferring it over the internet between servers, as a way to confuse PRISM.  But I think it's a bit unsociable to actually fill VPS allocations of substantial size this way.


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## maounique (Jun 29, 2013)

wlanboy said:


> It is like the idea of car sharing. Why buy a car if you only need it two days a week?


Even worse, you want to rent the car for 2 days a week but use it 24/7 and be pissed if the rent-a-car company shows you the door.


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## wlanboy (Jun 29, 2013)

@Mao

My argument was pro overselling. Why do we all use OpenVZ? Because we do not need a dedicated server!

Heck most of the stuff runs fine on a RaspberryPi.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jun 29, 2013)

wlanboy said:


> But why should a client demand the whole resources if he/she needs it only between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. CET?



Because they paid for the resources.  If you're not prepared for a client to use what you advertised and they paid for, then be less shady with your setup. I'm seeing a whole lot of "it's 'understood' that OVZ is oversold to X extent"... and yet NONE of you actually mention that to clients on your websites/ads/etc.  If you want to oversell and get pissed over a client wanting the resources they paid for?  Fine.  At least have the decency to be honest with them in the first place.



> With our OpenVZ package, you might sometimes get what we advertised!  Sure, there will likely be a slow time of day when you can use your full resources.. what's that, you need them available some other time too?  HAHA, well that's too bad, you'll have to fight everyone else for first use because we weren't up front about what we were actually selling you.  But you're the client, it's YOUR responsibility to know what assumptions we make about the tech we use that we don't bother to tell you about.


Seriously, that's what some of you are sounding like right now.


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## jcaleb (Jun 29, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> Seriously, that's what some of you are sounding like right now.


Will you warn/discipline/suspend/kick me if I pad my OVZ disk space upto 80% with random data, and run a custom app to consume 90% of my RAM? Assuming I'm not hitting I/O and CPU. Maybe 0.1 load average.


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## maounique (Jun 29, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> Will you warn/discipline/suspend/kick me if I pad my OVZ disk space upto 80% with random data, and run a custom app to consume 90% of my RAM? Assuming I'm not hitting I/O and CPU. Maybe 0.1 load average.


No, this is not the point.

I mean, the customer paid and should be able to use resources at any time, but if he wastes them in purpose to do harm, then probably doesnt like the host (us) and I will make sure they understand the feeling is mutual.

We go to great lenghts for customers, but, if they are jerks, we can make exceptions and treat them the same they treat us and our other customers.


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## jcaleb (Jun 29, 2013)

Mao said:


> No, this is not the point.


i understand.  but i am actually asking Aldryic's stand


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## vanarp (Jun 29, 2013)

Mao said:


> I mean, the customer paid and should be able to use resources at any time, but if he wastes them in purpose to do harm, then probably doesnt like the host (us) and I will make sure they understand the feeling is mutual. We go to great lenghts for customers, but, if they are jerks, we can make exceptions and treat them the same they treat us and our other customers.


 

How do you identify usage and wastage as a provider? If not filling random data, I might consume the additional free space (whatever left over from my webserving needs) to store my photos or videos. Will you consider this as usage or wastage?

I can agree to that customers on your OverZold plans should avoid reserving resources. But what about those on regular OpenVZ plans that cost higher than OverZold?

Even though I do not see Verified Provider under your name, I see that you are representing Prometeus/Iperweb in your responses. So the questions being your customer


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## maounique (Jun 29, 2013)

We do not go through files to find people wasting space in purpose or even memory, nor did I see anyone doing this yet, however, if I will, then will be added to my blacklist and at slightest tos breach will get terminated directly.

We never had a problem such as resources not there when needed, perhaps some CPU rarely on overzold due to abusers and runescape botters but that has been fixed in ToS. therefore "reserving" resources is not necessary and only done to increase the prices and harm the provider and other customers (through said price increase).

Since this is not needed even if the customer wishes to pay more in the hope of getting a better service (I see that many people think more expensive=better) and tries to force a price increase this way, I can simply tell those that there are other really expensive providers, they can go there if they feel the urge to pay more.


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## jarland (Jun 29, 2013)

Mao said:


> No, this is not the point.
> 
> 
> I mean, the customer paid and should be able to use resources at any time, but if he wastes them in purpose to do harm, then probably doesnt like the host (us) and I will make sure they understand the feeling is mutual.
> ...


Pretty much this. If everyone legitimately used 100% of their resources tomorrow, we'd be forced to migrate some users to a new node at our expense and compensate for any inconvenience. Every business has a risk factor. We, as hosts, know our job and we know what we've sold. It's economical and extremely reliable within reasonable parameters.

I'm not real sure what Aldryic is going on about. No self respecting provider wants to punish someone for using their resources. What we want to do is punish someone for trying to punish us for some personal game they feel like playing. Motive is the key here. Now, sure, you can't prove motive. I wouldn't try. But give me a client who casually mentions somewhere that he just likes to watch the resource bars in solusvm cap at 100% to express a personal issue with my business plan and I'll give you someone looking for a new host.


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## rds100 (Jun 29, 2013)

I don't mind if any of our customers uses 100% of their resources all the time - every hour, every day, every month, etc. This includes the RAM, HDD and bandwidth.

About the CPU it's different and we specify in the ToS what's acceptable long time contention ratio of the CPU.


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## jarland (Jun 29, 2013)

rds100 said:


> I don't mind if any of our customers uses 100% of their resources all the time - every hour, every day, every month, etc. This includes the RAM, HDD and bandwidth.
> 
> 
> About the CPU it's different and we specify in the ToS what's acceptable long time contention ratio of the CPU.


Neither do I, but "uses" is the key word there.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jun 29, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> Will you warn/discipline/suspend/kick me if I pad my OVZ disk space upto 80% with random data, and run a custom app to consume 90% of my RAM? Assuming I'm not hitting I/O and CPU. Maybe 0.1 load average.


Nope.  You're paying for the resources, use them.  (But if you have 95% random data, don't ask for a migration )



jarland said:


> I'm not real sure what Aldryic is going on about.


  

tl;dr - it irks me when a host sells a specific amount of resources, then gets annoyed when someone actually wants to use them.  Yes, I realize most folks oversell their OpenVZ deployment.. but like you said, _ we'd be forced to migrate some users to a new node at our expense and compensate for any inconvenience _.  That's a risk that the folks overselling knowingly take, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The problem is when a host oversells, and when a client does want to use their purchased resources but can't, the host throws a tantrum about "openvz is supposed to be oversold, they're not supposed to get it all".  That's just bullshit - be honest with your clients, don't sell them something you can't provide.

Something else that picked my interest:



> nor did I see anyone doing this yet, however, if I will, then will be added to my blacklist and at slightest tos breach will get terminated directly


That's a very, very slippery slope.  You'd best have some public smoking gun before you go after a client, otherwise people are going to start wondering why you're using *vzctl enter* and digging through their VPS.  Sure, it's obvious to everyone here that OpenVZ is insanely insecure, and that a provider can rifle through your personal stuff at any time... but the vast majority of clients don't know this.  And if you get caught?  Heh.



jarland said:


> But give me a client who casually mentions somewhere that he just likes to watch the resource bars in solusvm cap at 100% to see if it'll hurt me and I'll give you someone looking for a new host.


I agree 100%.  And don't misunderstand, I'm not being supportive of these "use all the resources" scripts (personally, that sounds pretty damn abusive to me).  Nor am I hating on providers that take advantage of OpenVZ's capacity for over-commitment and *wisely* (key word there) balancing the line between efficient use and oversell.  But every provider that I see say "Of course it's oversold, they're not supposed to be able to use it all"... they need to get out of this business.  They're the ones that give the rest of us (and OpenVZ as a platform) a bad name.


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## SkylarM (Jun 29, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> I agree 100%.  And don't misunderstand, I'm not being supportive of these "use all the resources" scripts (personally, that sounds pretty damn abusive to me).  Nor am I hating on providers that take advantage of OpenVZ's capacity for over-commitment and *wisely* (key word there) balancing the line between efficient use and oversell.  But every provider that I see say "Of course it's oversold, they're not supposed to be able to use it all"... they need to get out of this business.  They're the ones that give the rest of us (and OpenVZ as a platform) a bad name.


I cannot agree more. Whilst the idea behind what the topic seems wrong to me, technically you are well within your rights to use your resources. We run a transparency policy on overselling for a reason -- while we don't expect clients to use all of their resources and provide cost-effective solutions as a result of overselling, we do monitor nodes and balance accordingly for those that DO use their resources. If you want to buy a VPS from us and use all of the disk space and ram, by all means feel free to do so. Any host that looks at a client and goes "oh you want to use your resources? Well we have a 'we can kick you for any reason' clause in our TOS, bye!" needs to seriously re-evaluate what they are doing.

I'd just much prefer clients that are using their resources be using it for legitimate reasons, not "reserving" it -- but I'm definitely not going to go snooping through a client's data just to verify it's legitimacy. It's sort of like waiting in a line, but putting a piece of paper on the ground saying this is my spot, move me when the line moves I'll come back when I'm ready. If you pay for 100GB of disk space with us, please do use it for legitimate means. Just don't do something with the intent of "reserving" space. You shouldn't have to. If you feel like you have to reserve the resources, then you're simply with the wrong provider -- the host is responsible to make sure that the resources are there if and when a client decides to use it.


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## Marc M. (Jun 29, 2013)

I wonder what Duncan MacLeod has to say about this...


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## SeriesN (Jun 29, 2013)

All of a sudden, my business plan sounds good.


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## drmike (Jun 29, 2013)

> "Of course it's oversold, they're not supposed to be able to use it all"... they need to get out of this business.  They're the ones that give the rest of us (and OpenVZ as a platform) a bad name.


+100.  Time for a great purging.


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## Marc M. (Jun 29, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> +100. Time for a great purging.








... nothing is going to be okay ... again ... :lol:


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## tdc-adm (Jun 29, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> +100.  Time for a great purging.


I hope everyone with "reserving resources" thinking can read this whole topic. Happy ending


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## jarland (Jun 29, 2013)

tdc-adm said:


> I hope everyone with "reserving resources" thinking can read this whole topic. Happy ending


Valuable topic and conversation for sure.


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## maounique (Jun 29, 2013)

To risk a conclusion:

If you feel like there is a risk your disk space will not be there tomorrow when you neeed it, then, you should "reserve" it (though I am not sure if this is the best method, most likely when you delete something to make space for something you need, the space will just not be available the next second, or, at least a part of it).

If you do this to harm the host and push for a price increase just because you like pollution and wish to help hardware vendors, then you are wrong to do so.

If you do it just because you can and this is to prove your point, you are probably abusing with something else too, such as DDoS and the like.


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## vanarp (Jun 29, 2013)

Great discussion indeed! I learned how different providers think about their OpenVZ offerings.

I still have two questions in relation to this discussion:


Do providers consider usage of OpenVZ VPS for backup purpose as abuse (assuming disk space is consumed to full)?
Getting a KVM/XEN is the right solution if one intends to keep the allocated Disk & RAM fully/almost consumed?


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## SkylarM (Jun 29, 2013)

vanarp said:


> Great discussion indeed! I learned how different providers think about their OpenVZ offerings.
> 
> I still have two questions in relation to this discussion:
> 
> ...


1. This would depend on the provider. TOS/AUP etc.

2. Outside of overly extravagant means to oversell KVM/Xen, yeah it's rather hard to oversell so there's no reason you CAN'T use your resources, they should be there no matter what -- unlike some cases with OVZ where it might not be available.


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## jarland (Jun 29, 2013)

vanarp said:


> Great discussion indeed! I learned how different providers think about their OpenVZ offerings.
> 
> 
> I still have two questions in relation to this discussion:
> ...


For us at least, I would say...
1. Not abuse at all, fairly common use.


2. Perhaps with some hosts that value low price over quality (rather than a balance as is, I hope, more common). I welcome anyone using 100% of their resources so long as they're actually using them and following the acceptable use policy. Whereas with this discussion my position was that this is intentionally attempting to cause a host difficulty for no possible gain on either side and performs no actual function. If you need the resources, I'm happy to see to it that you have them.


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## NodeBytes (Jun 30, 2013)

Coming at this from the IT point of view and not related to hosting... we frequently over assign resources to our servers total use in terms of ram. However we always leave dedicated cores and disk I/O is watched very carefully. If you need the full ram on most of these servers, you most likely are going to be biting into the cpu as well.

I don't use VPSes from LEB providers very often anymore. I only have RamNode, IPXCore, and Versatile IT 128mb VPS right now. Generally these are great and have very little if no issues. In fact I haven't had a single problem from any of them in the past 6 months besides the RamNode solus thing, but I don't blame RamNode for that. The performance on most of these providers servers is really good.

This all going to say, over allocation of resources can be done well if you know what you are doing. Many of the hosts that have been around for a while understand this and oversell properly. RamNode, IPXCore, and Catalyst are great examples of these providers.

If you don't like your VPS being oversold, don't buy a LE box.

If like me you appreciate dedicated resources and to know exactly what's going on with the server, be willing pay more for a dedi. It's worth it.


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

bcarlsonmedia said:


> If like me you appreciate dedicated resources and to know exactly what's going on with the server, be willing pay more for a dedi. It's worth it.


If I were selling VPS services, I'd be shopping for low cost tiny dedicated style servers.

The low end price wise on dedicated servers is mainly around $25.  By end of year, I suspect there will be a few $10-$15 real dedicated offerings.  Can't wait


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## rds100 (Jun 30, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> If I were selling VPS services, I'd be shopping for low cost tiny dedicated style servers.
> 
> The low end price wise on dedicated servers is mainly around $25.  By end of year, I suspect there will be a few $10-$15 real dedicated offerings.  Can't wait


There are dedicated offers in the $10-$15 range even now (i.e. Kimsufi) but it's only practical for older hardware that has already paid for itself. It's hard to do it for brand new hardware unless the hardware prices drop more. You know, the idea is not just to sell something, you need to return your investments too (hardware and other).


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

rds100 said:


> There are dedicated offers in the $10-$15 range even now (i.e. Kimsufi) but it's only practical for older hardware that has already paid for itself.


True.  Kimsufi  and OVH though seem to be bottom, but uptick for everything --- like "business" usage.

There was one $10 dedicated server based on Raspberry Pi or similar ARM I found a bit back.   Hoping to see more offers like that.  Ideally with a real SATA connector to the drive, or eSATA or maybe USB3.


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## rds100 (Jun 30, 2013)

Well, there is the CubieBoard for $49 before shipping, it's ARM based and has a SATA port. Add the cost of a HDD, custom power solution, custom casing, etc. Then the needed software development for a custom system for reinstalls, management, etc.

The math says it will be more than $10-$15/month, unless the provider wants some very long ROI.


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## maounique (Jun 30, 2013)

jarland said:


> For us at least, I would say...
> 
> 
> 1. Not abuse at all, fairly common use.
> ...


Same here, if you need the resources, fine, running serverbears, dd tests by cron, filling the disk with junk, doing traffic for the sake of it clogging not only one, but 2 providers and or your home connection, that is not only abuse, but also imoral.

I have the right to cross the street on a busy crossroad presumably without green/red lights of any kind, just a sign on the road and painted strips, if I go to the cornerstore and back, that is ok, but if i cross it nonstop from one end to another and bring a few friends along just to block traffic, then that is a problem for the general public. It is not technically illegal, but borders sabotage.

The drivers will have to stop because that is the law (priority have the pedestrians) and will not be going anywhere if the pedestrians keep crossing non-stop, so, a productive activity (presumably those ppl are not burning gas and using cars just for the sake of burning gas, using the cars and clogging the roads too) is blocked by a few people which want to prove a point. It is not acceptable.


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## ShardHost (Jun 30, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> If I were selling VPS services, I'd be shopping for low cost tiny dedicated style servers.
> 
> The low end price wise on dedicated servers is mainly around $25.  By end of year, I suspect there will be a few $10-$15 real dedicated offerings.  Can't wait


Can't see it happening on a wide enough scale.  Also picking up one of these $10-$15 servers you're likely to see less performance than on a VPS solution utilising high quality processors and RAID arrays.

Bottom line of all of this should be:

If you end user experience is a good one and when you want to you can use all of the resources available to you, then should it matter if your host is overcommitting them?  Nearly every shared utility/service/resource in the world is based on a fact of predictable utilisation with enough capacity to handle spikes (Gyms, Roads, Power, Water).  Reserving these resources so normal utilisation is now where the spiked utilisation was forces your provider to change their business model and your prices to rise.

At the end of the day if you are having such an experience with a provider that you feel the need to reserve resources it's probably time to end that relationship anyway. 

From reading between the lines it seems this was intended to point directly at ChicagoVPS and to support Buffalooed's agenda against them.


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

ShardHost said:


> Nearly every shared utility/service/resource in the world is based on a fact of predictable utilisation with enough capacity to handle spikes (Gyms, Roads, Power, Water).


 

Well, power is planned based on use and factors that will increase use.  Prior load is based on whatever people actually use.  I might pull 10Kw an hour while the greenie next door pulls 10 watts.   That might be the usage pattern 80% of the days M-F.  I use mine and pay for mine,  he uses his and his is umm less.  My bill $1 his one cent.   

Aside from gyms, every other service you picked is a regulated, metered and usage based billing service.  Even roads, although less apparent --- unless you use a regular toll or high occupancy lane or have to pay for single occupancy in vehicle.



ShardHost said:


> f you are having such an experience with a provider that you feel the need to reserve resources it's probably time to end that relationship anyway.


No doubt about that, and I've said that before.  But for some reason, many providers seem to hide behind this 'we have your money and  you aren't getting anything back'.   So a forced relationship like that should have mutual consequences and risk then.



ShardHost said:


> this was intended to point directly at ChicagoVPS


Not really.   CVPS is the textbook example (via their own failings in the database dumps parts one and two) of oversubscription of servers and underprovisioning of resources to accounts.  I know what they have done isn't unique.  They've just been busted in the act multiple times and many people have brought up the inconsistent disk and sever speeds lending itself to SSDs as RAM to continue such overzealous overselling.  

Go back and read this thread and see the many turns it has taken and who is selling what and who is concerned by this oh so simple idea.


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## MartinD (Jun 30, 2013)

So, what was the point of this thread?


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## ShardHost (Jun 30, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Well, power is planned based on use and factors that will increase use.  Prior load is based on whatever people actually use.  I might pull 10Kw an hour while the greenie next door pulls 10 watts.   That might be the usage pattern 80% of the days M-F.  I use mine and pay for mine,  he uses his and his is umm less.  My bill $1 his one cent.
> 
> Aside from gyms, every other service you picked is a regulated, metered and usage based billing service.  Even roads, although less apparent --- unless you use a regular toll or high occupancy lane or have to pay for single occupancy in vehicle.
> 
> ...


I've followed the thread from the start.  Your opening post directly refers to CVPS and seems like an attempt to punish their business over their business practices.  A lot of your other posts are directed at ChicagoVPS and having seen the database dump I would say you have some legitimate concerns.  Not refunding over recent events when signing up for annual plans is appalling I agree; however signing up with a provider who has such an abhorrent refund policy in their ToS in the first place was probably an indication of things to come.  We were contacted just under two years ago about the swap as RAM scenario so can believe that this might be the case.  

When we entered the VPS market we were surprised by the amount to which you can oversell OpenVZ.  Typically nodes do not bat an eyelid at 2x overcommitment, 3x?  No issue.  This is part of the reason we are moving all of our VPS services to KVM only.  We're repurposing our VZ nodes as KVM.  It was actually upsetting to have been exchanged in a PM recently with a potential client questioning the fact that we put 30 1GB VPS on a 32GB node.  If only they knew what was going on elsewhere.


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

ShardHost said:


> ...punish their business over their business practices.
> 
> Not refunding over recent events when signing up for annual plans is appalling I agree; however signing up with a provider who has such an abhorrent refund policy in their ToS in the first place was probably an indication of things to come.
> 
> ...


Thanks @ShardHost!

Yes, CVPS is a pet project of mine.  They aren't unique.  Just scamming folks and playing games in Buffalo. I have no love for Colocrossing either and that's where the party is and the plans originate.   Refer to the VPSACE, ServerMania, etc. all being one shell company on another thread.  More fun in the mistake by the lake.

If anything, my ax grinding is to protect folks like you who are spending good money to buy from Colocrossing, just to be pummeled by the house VPS brand with $2/2GB VPSes and have low visibility on LEB since that other cartel (VPSACE, ServerMania, etc.) are hogging up the offer space and flooding the market with Buffalo offers.

It's a screwed up business  when your colo provider goes and competes with you via their subsidiaries and their friends companies they overlook running multiple offers at same time under different company names on a predominant site they own.

And, yes I've actually tried CVPS' offerings, meh.  Yes, I've been/am a customer of other folks on CC's network.

---- I BITCH ABOUT CVPS/CC MODE REDUCTION ----

No one reads ToS.   If we did, we would get nothing else done.  I am pretty sure, most providers when they lasso you in on a an annual don't say in the process "NO REFUNDS".   Nah, it's buried in a 5-10 page legal document.  That process is dishonest.    Losing data when you said backups were part of the offering, because you weren't backing them up.  Well that is false advertising and fraud.  No refunds or credits?  Just a matter of time before someone does something about it.  Ahh, how about that 99.9% uptime guarantee?  Another breech of contract 

SSD = RAM = sales offer to multiple VPS sales inquiries at CC.  Why? Cause 32GB maxed servers they have ample inventory of are at their limits, so need a new way to sell more of what you don't have.  Old concept supposedly.

I expect overselling with OpenVZ.  It's the crackhead providers virtualization of choice for the oversell-ability.  To what degree?  3X typically.  Above there, it's mighty horrible idea.  Some can go 5x+ depending on idleness of their customers.

Would I find it funny if 10% of CVPS' customers did what I recommend tomorrow --- the 10%+ who were slapped offline?  Yes, really funny.  Funny to watch Kevin Adam scramble to move people to idle/empty nodes.


----------



## ShardHost (Jun 30, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Thanks @SharedHost!


Shardhost


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

ShardHost said:


> Shardhost


Don't frown   Doh,  Iz a made me a type-o 

ShardHost.  It's finger typing memory, I swear.  

Sorry about that mate.


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## ShardHost (Jun 30, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Don't frown   Doh,  Iz a made me a type-o
> 
> ShardHost.  It's finger typing memory, I swear.
> 
> Sorry about that mate.


Nps, It's an easy mistake.  We're waiting for the day that google starts giving people:

[SIZE=medium]Showing results for Shared Host[/SIZE]

Search instead for Shardhost


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

As a customer, I don't care if host oversell or not.  It's none of my business.  I should not care about that.

I have neighbors, that is understood.  I know I should not pound the servers that will affect others.

Now, limiting what I can do to the VPS depending on motive?  In my opinion, if I max my resources, I am not attacking my neighbors.  Because it should not affect my neighbors.  It's just that incidentally, it affects the business model of my hosts.  Which I shouldn't care about.  Because the host and I agreed at a price that I can consume such and such resources.

Why should morality be included in the equation?  If I pad my server with porn data for backup purpose, am I abusing?  That is to some extent immoral right?  But why is it that because the business plan of the host is affected, suddenly I am doing something immoral?  And should not be allowed to do that?

Host should audit client's motives? Really?


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

Another question.  If I do this on KVMs, I am sure no one will complain that I am doing something immoral.  Because it is not oversold.  Hence it all boils down to issue that we should customers should not exploit that hosts are overselling.


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## jarland (Jun 30, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> As a customer, I don't care if host oversell or not. It's none of my business. I should not care about that.
> 
> 
> I have neighbors, that is understood. I know I should not pound the servers that will affect others.
> ...


Your argument could be applied to a DDOS, so long as no other client notices that you're using me in your cluster. You paid to burst a gigabit line, you should be able to do it right? For that matter, you paid for access to my client area so you should be able to Robert Clarke it, it's not your problem if you cause me harm its my job to mitigate it with no concern for what you're up to, right? I would disagree quite a bit. It is absolutely my job to know my clients and their needs. I love to provide a personal touch by talking to people and understanding their needs. It provides context for my administration. When I see the usage in context, I celebrate my client's popularity and I work to keep the road open for their traffic. Now, if a client tells me that their motive is to damage me or other clients, am I to not react?


You can't just go auditing for motive, but when it presents itself you have a moral obligation to act on behalf of your business and your other clients. Keep in mind that a host's failure is the client's loss. Either both succeed or neither succeeds. A client who has no care for their provider is best refunded.


That better for helping you sharpen the tool?


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## willie (Jun 30, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> It's just that incidentally, it affects the business model of my hosts.  Which I shouldn't care about....
> 
> Host should audit client's motives? Really?


It goes both ways.  If you don't care about them, why should they care about you?  In the world of private ownership, hosts (like restaurants) are entitled to refuse service to anyone they choose, for any reason they like.  Such as being an annoying customer, whether a moral or an immoral one.  There are limited exceptions such as race discrimination but that's going to be a difficult issue to prove about an internet product.  Hope this helps.


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## DearLeaderJohn (Jun 30, 2013)

Hmm,

I'd like to think of the whole concept as being similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The restaurant owner expects that not everyone will sit there for hours on end cramming their mouths until they physically can't walk so essentially he/she oversells. 

However you will occasionally find people who do sit there for hours eating ridiculous amounts whilst drinking tap water; and I'd compare these people to the people on here reserving their diskspace. Sure, you're allowed to do it; but really, do you need to do it? What people don't seem to be grasping is that businesses are out to make profit. By hoarding, you're going to cause a mixture of scenarios such as

a) Increase of prices to keep up with demand = less customers = business losing money

b) Reduction of what other customers can have who are genuinely out to use what they need as opposed to hoarding.

Let's compare this to my buffet analogy; by hoarding your food you're going to then directly cause an increase in requirements for ingredients (thus increasing prices); however once people like you leave the restaurant there's a surplus in food, creating a waste. Essentially the same can be applied to a VPS host, if they have to buy more and more disks purely to satisfy a few hoarder customers who end up leaving down the line they end up with a waste. They have spent money on hardware that will not be utilized. Someone mentioned how this also links to the the environment etc.

So to sum it all up, don't be a hoarder. Leave some cheap spring rolls for the rest of us


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

DearLeaderJohn said:


> 'd like to think of the whole concept as being similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The restaurant owner expects that not everyone will sit there for hours on end cramming their mouths until they physically can't walk so essentially he/she oversells.


 

I like the buffet example and comparison.

There is a non relative part though in that every Chinese buffet I've ever been to:

1. Was using massively cheap ingredients

2. Was exploiting non citizen slave-like labor

3. Never is/was an all you can eat.

To that point, I have some very large friends who are capable of consuming a gross amount of food in one sitting.  I know one has been booted from all you can eat setups multiple times.  So calling them all you can eat, no way, they aren't, nor are they spreading around the underconsumption love to other customers.

VPSes aren't all you can eat.  They limit everything in the sales offer.  Then in the setup of the VPS every resource is locked down.

VPSes aren't using cheap ingredients - typically.  That would be an old gen processor with no RAID.  Most providers use modern gear with large RAM and they pay a healthy chunk to their provider every month.

VPSes often are exploiting cheap slave-like labor.  Many VPS companies have few, if any employees.  Mainly they do the work themselves and when they don't outsource it to pay-per-ticket companies.   Many seem happy to exploit foreign labor and the poor.

It still remains an interesting comparison though 

If you went to said buffets and were told it is a three plate limit for fixed price, what would happen?  You'd see people with plates stacked sky high making the most of their allotted food limit.  People might actually end up wasting gross amounts of food ruined by stacking.  Some customers would go to the other place, that doesn't limit you to three plates.

All that said, a Chinese buffet has MUCH higher costs than a VPS business.  Even those graphically skirting laws and regulations still have to comply with the daily reality of buying and cooking hundreds of pounds of food that costs $ and they have to pay their landlord monthly.  VPS business has nearly fixed costs.  Sell x accounts to cover the server rental overhead.  Sell y more equals almost entirely profit.   No landlord, no pesky regulations, nothing.


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## maounique (Jun 30, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> As a customer, I don't care if host oversell or not.  It's none of my business.  I should not care about that.


I have a few issues with that.

First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low. You are part of the bargain.

If you use a KVM, that is oversold too, probably only traffic but many oversell other aspects.

It is not auditing motivations here, it is not even about morality, tho I would like to think that we all try to live modestly and not waste anything on purpose when others go hungry every night, but it is business.

Every business weights the averages of given conditions. Cannot guess the price of said ingredient in a given month, so makes an average of it for the business plan. If is wrong, goes out of business, but if a competitor buys all the ingredient at a loss just to make the prices go up and the competitors fail, then that is forbidden anti-concurential tactic.

If we agreed on a price and your sole interest is to make me go at a loss for selling you, I have the right to deny further service to you.

Simple as that.


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## nunim (Jun 30, 2013)

Mao said:


> I have a few issues with that... First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low .. If we agreed on a price and your sole interest is to make me go at a loss for selling you, I have the right to deny further service to you.
> 
> Simple as that.


First, I don't KNOW you oversell unless you tell me?  Many providers claim not to oversell at all.

Second, If I was to use the full resources that I have purchased legitimately (website, whatever..), wouldn't my sole interest still be the same?


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## jarland (Jun 30, 2013)

nunim said:


> First, I don't KNOW you oversell unless you tell me?  Many providers claim not to oversell at all.
> 
> Second, If I was to use the full resources that I have purchased legitimately (website, whatever..), wouldn't my sole interest still be the same?


Not at all. You purchased it to use for your needs, not specifically to attempt to cause harm (or I think you'd agree that you would be a candidate for termination upon admitting this). I think you may have gotten off track from the intention behind this thread in the beginning. The intention was to reserve disk allocation from a provider assumed to be overselling. So to get here we've already assumed the end user believes that overselling is taking place and intends to utilize that knowledge to cause harm. When we oversell we take a risk. That risk is nearly nonexistent as the idea that everyone could use what they purchase simply never becomes a reality. However, as hosts we must acknowledge that this is still a potential scenario. When it happens, we either admit that the entire population has changed in some dramatic way and that business plan must be phased out or absorbed by a new plan that accommodates for new realities, or we must take the impact and continue on assuming that overall the numbers still even out with a little bit of node migration. Attempting to force us into one of these scenarios is down right malicious. Doing so by legitimate use? That is the scenario we consider a possibility (though an improbability) and we must be prepared to simply do what is necessary to ensure that the clients continue to all be able to use what they purchased.

It's not like everyone would cap 100% in the same hour anyway, there's not enough pipeline for that, so we have time to observe and adjust.


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

I think it's not related to DDOS. You are intentionally hurting someone. In the case of this post, you are just using your resources inside your box.

I think it's not related to eat all you can buffet. because it's limited resource. If I bought 5 servings of food, I should be allowed to eat it right?


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## jarland (Jun 30, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I think it's not related to DDOS. You are intentionally hurting someone. In the case of this post, you are just using your resources inside your box.
> 
> 
> I think it's not related to eat all you can buffet. because it's limited resource. If I bought 5 servings of food, I should be allowed to eat it right?


Just like reserving disk space specifically to punish a provider for overselling is intentionally hurting someone. This thread assumes that you believe overselling is taking place and that you believe you have the right to force the provider to deal with an extremely improbable reality by forcing the improbable into reality in such a way that provides absolutely zero benefit to you or the host. I'll ask, what justification can you come up with for capping all of the resources for no actual usage when you already believe the provider is overselling? Give me one justification for this aside from a personal vendetta against a business plan that is proven effective and economical. Then tell me how that vendetta justifies your continued status as a client if the provider becomes aware, without question, of your intention.


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

Mao said:


> First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low. You are part of the bargain.


this assumes that i read forums. but if i only read ads posts is another story


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

jarland said:


> Just like reserving disk space specifically to punish a provider for overselling is intentionally hurting someone.


Overselling is a statistic game/gamble. Host should be ready that some people really wants to use resources they purchased.


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## jarland (Jun 30, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> Overselling is a statistic game/gamble. Host should be ready that some people really wants to use resources they purchased.


Exactly. But why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you don't know that I'm overselling? If you do know that I'm overselling, why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you think I'm actually worth hosting your content with?


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## maounique (Jun 30, 2013)

I think there is another aspect here.

We allow all customers, even on overzold plans to go over their cpu quota for a short time or a small amount.

If everyone starts running unix benches on cron, this will make bursting impossible.

Also, running bogus ramdisks to fill the ram is making vswap impossible.

The company guarantees access to the resources when you need them. Reserving anything is unnecessary and harmful for all parties involved.

If you think you may boost sales for your KVMs or Xen by pesting OVZ that way, you are wrong, people will still go for the lowest plan that does the job.

In spite of instabilities, exploits and poor isolation, OVZ does the job at a good price. Not you, nor 100 hosts selling KVM/Xen will be able to change that.

We sell all three types (well, out of stock on KVM and OVZ right now, but in general) and ovz makes two thirds of the servers.

It is great for hosting, gameservers (most of them) and voip due to low latency and overhead as well as the generous resources available when you need them.

If you are only after wasting them in the purpose of increasing the prices and/or pushing the host out of business because you dont like their low prices and you think you cant sell your Xen/KVM otherwise, guess what, you are wrong.

If you cant sell Xen/KVM, you are doing something wrong, OVZ is not to be blamed, it caters for a different needs.

Frankly, all other virtualization types should concentrate on allowing overcommit much better so the servers will start to be used more than a few %. VMWare does that well, now KVM is improving visibly, Xen is lagging behind somewhat.

You will never be able to reach the flexibility and speed of OVZ, but that is normal by design because various virtualization types are intended for various usage scenarios, but i want to see a kvm server running at at least 50% cpu (and not due to io wait) for a change.


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## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

Mao said:


> We allow all customers, even on overzold plans


you are with uncle?


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## drmike (Jun 30, 2013)

jarland said:


> But why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you don't know that I'm overselling?


 

Well,  I didn't inflate my usage in this scenario, except on disk.   No RAM, CPU or bandwidth use.  Purely disk.   Impossible for a provider to tell exactly what those file(s) are and any attempt to do such would rub me the wrong way / make me disinterested in their disregard for privacy.

I did say about a RAM drive to put some RAM to use too, which again, I see no giant problem with. I bought it, and am quarantined, where's the harm in using what I bought?

Face it, providers are just petrified of anything remotely like this or anything which causes subscribers/customers to use their resources.

Providers are banking on customers buying frivolously without any real usage or intent to use.  It's like selling crack to crackheads.  But in this model you sell some mythical resources and when it comes time to deliver the goods, start coughing, about having to deliver a product to a buyer.

I think, generally speaking for non dedicated servers --- shared servers - I am going to spend more time looking at on-demand computing models where you pay based on actual use for CPU + RAM + disk + bandwidth.   A $7/2GB VPS looks great on paper, until it sits there idle or with too many providers - you try using the resources.

The benefits I also see with on-demand computing is being able to burst as-needed and be billed accordingly.  Considering use patterns on growing number of VPSes in my collection, I'll probably save money.  Plus with on demand, I can get more CPU use, grow disk to terabytes if needed and do other things that VPSes just don't do yet.

I could envision perfectly legitimate use that would end up with the same disk consumption up front via FUSE with a custom/distributed/encrypted volume stored on the VPS.  Considering the sad a$$ state of privacy, government spying and hacker/provider culture, doing something crypto volumed seems to be a step toward self preservation.


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## SeriesN (Jun 30, 2013)

This exactly what I am seeing right now and to be honest, it is rather interesting. I don't get this straight,

IF you are selling something, buyer should be able to use it/get what they are paying for. You don't go buy a gallon of milk and let the grocer give you half gallon for the same price just because he knows you won't be able to finish it and that milk will rot . As long as users getting what they are paying for without violating any terms and unless your term uses the same thing "unlimited" hosts use, I don't see any issue.

NOW! If you are going to deny that, and this is in response to someone who is quite vocal about USA laws and how EU laws are better, we have consumer protection against false advertising and you risk losing your license if you falsely promote something


----------



## SeriesN (Jun 30, 2013)

At the end of the day, I am happy and proud to say that, my KVM and OpenVZ lineup has the same pricing structure  while my KVM nodes are ~ twice as expensive as my openVZ nodes. As an end user, you will decide what you want to use and if you prefer speed and simplicity over isolation. The only part I oversell are IO, CPU and PortSpeed and I am pretty much clear about CPU and Port speed usage. As long as your neighbors won't complain, cops won't knock at your door


----------



## jcaleb (Jun 30, 2013)

Mao said:


> Every business weights the averages of given conditions. Cannot guess the price of said ingredient in a given month, so makes an average of it for the business plan. If is wrong, goes out of business, but if a competitor buys all the ingredient at a loss just to make the prices go up and the competitors fail, then that is forbidden anti-concurential tactic.


What does it have to do on my host business plan? I am just using resources I paid for. And it's host business to juggle users on different nodes if they are overselling.

Again, I am speaking as a customer. If you are not willing to handle people that want to use the resources they paid for, then why sell it in the first place?

I don't get it that I have to be mindful that the host is overselling when I use my VPS.


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## jarland (Jul 1, 2013)

@buffalood



> Well,  I didn't inflate my usage in this scenario, except on disk.   No RAM, CPU or bandwidth use.  Purely disk.   Impossible for a provider to tell exactly what those file(s) are and any attempt to do such would rub me the wrong way / make me disinterested in their disregard for privacy.


Unless someone is starting a campaign to do it on a forum and the provider happens to know from previous exchanges who it is that is doing this. It is by no means impossible. If every one of my users up and scales to 100% usage tomorrow, this isn't the result of a dice roll, this means something is happening and I need to start figuring out why all of my clients had an identical need on the same day. My first assumption is that there has been a massive security breach. All clients don't act alike, and every use of a VPS doesn't need to automatically scale to the point where it cannot even sustain usage. It's illogical to a very large degree.

I never even thought of being skeptical of people using their allotments until you posted a thread encouraging them to try to do it for malicious purposes. You've made a public call for people to start abusing their hosts. I'll be eyeing patterns. I don't have to spy. I can open a ticket and ask them. I'll know if they're lying without digging through their container. You can't pull one over on the guy watching IO, pps, CPU, netstat, and top process lists all day. When you fill 100GB of storage and you say it's backups but you've transferred 2MB, I'll know what's going on.




> I did say about a RAM drive to put some RAM to use too, which again, I see no giant problem with. I bought it, and am quarantined, where's the harm in using what I bought?



No harm. Reserving it because you're afraid it won't be there when you need it? Inconsistent with the needs of the hosting industry. If you have no memory left, you cannot sustain growth. Web servers, mail servers, DNS servers, and most game servers need memory to burst into. All clients on the server are not going to need the same burst patterns. This is reality. You're talking about changing reality. For what? What host do you believe is worth your future use but at the same time you fear will not be able to provide you the resources later? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you would host content with someone that you trust so little? That doesn't make sense. It's illogical. Want to know what logic actually connects the dots and paints a solid picture? You have a personal vendetta against overselling and you want to encourage people to join together in changing a reality in which it works into a reality in which it does not. I consider you a friend, but I'm not sugar coating this. It's crystal clear and I'm calling you out on it.




> Face it, providers are just petrified of anything remotely like this or anything which causes subscribers/customers to use their resources.



Petrified of a bunch of people joining together with intent only on changing a business plan that works because you don't like it? No I'm not petrified of it. It's not like I haven't terminated abusive clients in the past. Not for this, but there's a first time for everything.



> Providers are banking on customers buying frivolously without any real usage or intent to use.  It's like selling crack to crackheads.  But in this model you sell some mythical resources and when it comes time to deliver the goods, start coughing, about having to deliver a product to a buyer.


Try again. *Responsibly* is the word you were looking for. It is not frivolous to have unused memory. It is downright necessary for almost every possible use of a VPS. The small minority that can come up with a good reason for using 100% of it will have no issue with me. That's great that they found a need. The ones just trying to stir things up and cause problems for me? They'll be asked to take their money elsewhere.



> I think, generally speaking for non dedicated servers --- shared servers - I am going to spend more time looking at on-demand computing models where you pay based on actual use for CPU + RAM + disk + bandwidth.   A $7/2GB VPS looks great on paper, until it sits there idle or with too many providers - you try using the resources.


Ask any of my clients if they've had a problem using 2GB of memory on my nodes. Memory is cheap. An E5 node can hold more clients than would be advisable to load with vSwap enabled. Thus, high memory packages at a promo price is hardly a big deal. So you know what ChicagoVPS loaded. Now every provider is horrible and must pay?



> I could envision perfectly legitimate use that would end up with the same disk consumption up front via FUSE with a custom/distributed/encrypted volume stored on the VPS.  Considering the sad a$$ state of privacy, government spying and hacker/provider culture, doing something crypto volumed seems to be a step toward self preservation.


Certainly I would love to see someone put their resources to use for a legitimate reason. 



SeriesN said:


> This exactly what I am seeing right now and to be honest, it is rather interesting. I don't get this straight,
> 
> IF you are selling something, buyer should be able to use it/get what they are paying for. You don't go buy a gallon of milk and let the grocer give you half gallon for the same price just because he knows you won't be able to finish it and that milk will rot . As long as users getting what they are paying for without violating any terms and unless your term uses the same thing "unlimited" hosts use, I don't see any issue.
> 
> NOW! If you are going to deny that, and this is in response to someone who is quite vocal about USA laws and how EU laws are better, we have consumer protection against false advertising and you risk losing your license if you falsely promote something


Would you tell me who is suggesting that a client not be able to use it? You're not the first to step in here and say that providers are freaking out and saying that clients shouldn't be able to use what they pay for. Considering I'm one of very few even weighing in, I'll assume you're talking to me and Mao. I'd love for you to show me where either of us suggested such a thing. What we said, for the millionth time (and I'll defend it a million more, you know me), is that purposely trying to cause issues with a node is malicious in nature and should be met with a termination notice. If you believe that your provider is overselling with a business plan that proven effective when done responsibly and you try to prevent them from continuing to do so for absolutely no benefit of any party involved, you are showing malicious intent.



SeriesN said:


> At the end of the day, I am happy and proud to say that, my KVM and OpenVZ lineup has the same pricing structure  while my KVM nodes are ~ twice as expensive as my openVZ nodes. As an end user, you will decide what you want to use and if you prefer speed and simplicity over isolation. The only part I oversell are IO, CPU and PortSpeed and I am pretty much clear about CPU and Port speed usage. As long as your neighbors won't complain, cops won't knock at your door


That's all well and fine and I love that about you. But don't come in here and crap on others for doing something that works, over and over again. If my overselling memory is a problem, it's my problem. Show me a client who hits an issue with it and I'll make it rain so hard they'll feel like Michelle Obama with a Visa card. But show me a client who wants to make it a problem just because they can and I'll show you a client who needs a boot removed from their rear end.



jcaleb said:


> What does it have to do on my host business plan? I am just using resources I paid for. And it's host business to juggle users on different nodes if they are overselling.
> 
> Again, I am speaking as a customer. If you are not willing to handle people that want to use the resources they paid for, then why sell it in the first place?
> 
> I don't get it that I have to be mindful that the host is overselling when I use my VPS.


This thread was made to encourage people to put an end to overselling by forcing providers into submission on that particular point you just mentioned. Yes you should be able to use it. No you should not try to encourage people to break a viable model just because you can, and no a host shouldn't have to bend over and take it if they see as plain as day that not a gigabyte has been transferred and suddenly 60 people all need 100GB of storage space in the same week.

------------------------

On another note, let me provide the overseller mission statement that I just wrote for fun.

*Overcommitting works.* Does every customer have a checkout line? If you staff the store appropriately (and most do not) then you will understand that not everyone in the store will check out at the same time. They do not all need a register at the same time. You allot for realistic patterns, not over simplified child-like observations like "there's 50 customers in the store, the sign on the door says no wait to checkout, there absolutely has to be 50 registers or it's false advertising." Real life demands effective, productive, and efficient models. If you don't trust the guy monitoring the patterns and doing the math to determine how to meet the goal on the sign then don't go to that store. If you do trust him, don't encourage 51 people to go in and all check out at the same time just so you can say "ha, you broke your promise."

 

*Overcommitting works.* Does every car have a lane? Does efficient traffic planning involve adding a lane for every car? Did you not pay to drive on that road with your tax dollars? Are you entitled to park your car in the road because you paid for it and it should be able to sustain your needs?

 

*Overcommitting works.* Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?

 

*Overcommitting works.* Can you host a reliable service without memory to burst into? Your website, game server, VIOP, whatever, needs extra memory to handle actual usage on top of it's standard idle configuration.

 

Thank you and good day.


----------



## drmike (Jul 1, 2013)

First, I am just loving this thread.  A lot of this is theory vs. reality and expectations of the buyer vs. fluff of the seller.

Thanks @jarland and obviously none of this is about Catalyst.  If we could get you to school folks some the market wouldn't be how it is.



jarland said:


> Now every provider is horrible and must pay?


Nope. Specified up front horrible providers and mainly those where the client has been ToS screwed into rest of prepaid contract with non refund after spectacular failure(s).

We have some good provider folks who prefer idle servers and balance their workloads across many clients and it works.  So the issue kind of stings/seems foreign / lack of need to do this to a provider    Clearly, as proposed is a means of flushing out the horribly oversold providers who cannot and will not manage their servers and likely has many more problems.



jarland said:


> You have a personal vendetta against overselling and you want to encourage people to join together in changing a reality in which it works into a reality in which it does not. I consider you a friend, but I'm not sugar coating this. It's crystal clear and I'm calling you out on it.


 

Right on, I take overselling personally.   I don't care who the company is doing it.  If they are, their name is mud and should be smeared.

People joining together?  Not really.  If I intended that I would have started Occupy VPS and we could hang out and shoot the breeze and protest outside colo facilities while not bathing and doing lots of intoxicating substances.

It's a tutorial on how to spin up some reserved space for later use, mainly where the provider is a problem and the customer is being screwed.

I don't expect 100% utilization of resources.  I never proposed that.  80% is where I put things.  A full 20% under plan cap.

Now in all fairness, I long ago put crypto'd volumes on remote VPSes.   Was part of my normal setup.  So I've been allocating disk blocks (then 10GB+ single files) for a while selectively (where working on crypto related matters and right resouces --- disk, IO, location, reliability, etc.)  Same appearance and net outcome per se.



jarland said:


> Does every customer have a checkout line?


See, but a customer isn't buying a checkout line.  They are buying a box of cookies and there better be cookies in there and they better be fresh and it better be about the amount there should be.

Just last week, I had a guy behind me in line with a full cart of non perishables.   Me, I had well a few hundred items to cash out.  The fellow got tired of waiting and left the store.  Why?  Because the store hadn't staffed a second register.  One register in the place.



jarland said:


> Overcommitting works. Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?


My ISP can't deliver what they sell at 5AM on a Monday morning.  Then again, they can't route traffic right either.  Plus they are QoS happy.  Never mind they keep upping the price of their non competitive service (nice to have a monopoly).

Sure is false advertising.  Especially where they fail to upgrade nodes and invest in more fiber to deal with the growing pig pile of video everyone streams all their waking hours.  ISPs are sort of the granddaddy of overselling and underdelivering while promising all sorts of fast and wonderful.



jarland said:


> Can you host a reliable service without memory to burst into? Your website, game server, VIOP, whatever, needs extra memory to handle actual usage on top of it's standard idle configuration.


Burst memory?  Containers come with x RAM + whatever burst/swap.   I never advocated reaching or exceeding the limits, just utilizing a portion of what was provisioned.   It is entirely possible to run things without hitting ceilings and stay within the boundaries.  I've run no-swap environments for years and have ample headroom still.


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## vanarp (Jul 1, 2013)

Just checking.. Has any provider observed clients applying the suggested technique to reserve disk or memory since the surfacing of this thread?


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## kaniini (Jul 1, 2013)

jarland said:


> Overcommitting works. Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?


That sounds like something I would do, yes.


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## kaniini (Jul 1, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Right on, I take overselling personally. I don't care who the company is doing it. If they are, their name is mud and should be smeared. People joining together? Not really. If I intended that I would have started Occupy VPS and we could hang out and shoot the breeze and protest outside colo facilities while not bathing and doing lots of intoxicating substances.


Sign me up.  Lets hang out in front of ColoCrossing Buffalo first.



buffalooed said:


> Now in all fairness, I long ago put crypto'd volumes on remote VPSes. Was part of my normal setup. So I've been allocating disk blocks (then 10GB+ single files) for a while selectively (where working on crypto related matters and right resouces --- disk, IO, location, reliability, etc.) Same appearance and net outcome per se.


That seems like an epic waste of time on OpenVZ.  With the rest of them, overcommiting disk is a lot more difficult, so I doubt it's going on.


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## jarland (Jul 1, 2013)

> Right on, I take overselling personally.   I don't care who the company is doing it.  If they are, their name is mud and should be smeared.


Count us in on that and proud of it. I've got two OpenVZ nodes that are darn near oversold capacity right now and here's what it looks like:

DallasOne: 15GB Used / 64GB Total, 3.7 Load Average, 0% iowait, 1029pps udp/tcp combined, 665GB of 1.8TB used (probably about 200GB of it my own waste)

DallasTwo: 20GB Used / 64GB Total, 0.61 Load Average, 0.1% iowait, 2947pps udp/tcp combined, 608GB of 1.8TB used (again probably a couple hundred gb of trash to clean)

That overselling, it's hurting a lot as you can see. Imagine how many people can use their full resources without me having an issue. Especially considering the highest RAM container I sell is 2GB. If they don't all join in some scheme to try to hurt me, there is literally no way that anyone is going to have a problem without me noticing a trend far beforehand and doing my job.


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

jarland said:


> This thread was made to encourage people to put an end to overselling by forcing providers into submission on that particular point you just mentioned. Yes you should be able to use it. No you should not try to encourage people to break a viable model just because you can, and no a host shouldn't have to bend over and take it if they see as plain as day that not a gigabyte has been transferred and suddenly 60 people all need 100GB of storage space in the same week.


Encouraging people to punish oversellers, I agree this is very gray area.

Personally, I will not do what was suggested in this thread, unless for review or other goal that will be helpful later. But I wish to have the option to be able to do this, in my own accord, if ever I wanted to in the future.


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## drmike (Jul 1, 2013)

jarland said:


> That overselling, it's hurting a lot as you can see. Imagine how many people can use their full resources without me having an issue.


 

See you might have oversold (i.e. all buyers can't use all their resources at once), but you stop there at your ratio and observe the often idle resources.

Others see that, and say, well, why stop at 3X, let's go to 5X  and up and up until things become truly bad.

I think morally you get the balance.  That's why I think so darn highly of you   Others in the industry just laugh and lie about their over used servers.  They  probably think you are fool who could load those servers up more and get more sales in the register.


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## jarland (Jul 1, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> Encouraging people to punish oversellers, I agree this is very gray area.
> 
> 
> Personally, I will not do what was suggested in this thread, unless for review or other goal that will be helpful later. But I wish to have the option to be able to do this, in my own accord, if ever I wanted to in the future.


The fun thing about theory and practice is... I know you. If you choose to use Catalyst for something big, feel free and watch it fly. If you're using it, I know you need it. I try to be that way with as many clients as will let me. Our prices have gone up in hopes of sustaining that forever.


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

It is still a probabilistic/statistical game. Even if we post this kind of thread many times, I doubt it will make a big impact.



jarland said:


> The fun thing about theory and practice is... I know you. If you choose to use Catalyst for something big, feel free and watch it fly. If you're using it, I know you need it. I try to be that way with as many clients as will let me. Our prices have gone up in hopes of sustaining that forever.


Of course, I love and respect the host I sign up with.


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## SeriesN (Jul 1, 2013)

Damnit Jarland. Too much to quote and reply to. So I am just not going to respond .

GOOD DAY! Happy monday to y'all!


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## maounique (Jul 1, 2013)

We are also overzellers and damn proud of it 

We sell 2x almost on OVerZold plans and we have some 30+ % free memory and 1/4 cpu usage.

There is still place to grow, the machines are underused.

We allow every customer to go up in load to 4 (number of cores) but since this thread i thinking to startshutting down and suspending those that go over that consistently or in very large spikes. I have all right to do so, as the customers have all right to use all resources.

If we are to be jerks and I will boot you without refund if you have 4.01 load, by all means, fight back and fill the disk in return. We will see who is "winning" if you think this is a way to conduct business, then, by all means, try to use all resources and never go over your quota.

Instead of doing each of us our job, me watching so you have ALWAYS available the resources you paid for (even on OVerZold plans) and you using the vps for whatever legit purpose including bursting over quota now and then when needed, we can waste the time making each other's life difficult.

When you will be on your death bed, wouldnt you give anything for the time you wasted trying to do harm (and failing, by the way) and go out for a walk in the forest or park ?

So, instead of trying to make people waste time and resources, go now and smell a few flowers, help the needy, do something useful and/or enjoyable.


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## Reece-DM (Jul 1, 2013)

SeriesN said:


> Damnit Jarland. Too much to quote and reply to. So I am just not going to respond .   GOOD DAY! Happy monday to y'all!


Time for this week's new rounds of drama! opcorn:


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## SeriesN (Jul 1, 2013)

Reece said:


> Time for this week's new rounds of drama! opcorn:


Got 2 corporate meeting, another staff meeting because we have new craps coming in and new targets to fulfill, then a 2 day trip to Connecticut and the sad part, none of these are hosting related. So no time for drama. Not atleast this week.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jul 1, 2013)

> Considering I'm one of very few even weighing in,


And that's the point that too many people missed. Consider the providers that have weighed in on this issue - pretty much the upstanders with few complaints that don't have to worry about people making _legitimate_ claims about oversell.

Conversely, it makes me wonder about the folks that haven't spoken up. Honestly have no opinion on an issue that effects pretty much everyone? Or just trying as hard as possible not to draw attention to themselves for this particular topic?


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> Conversely, it makes me wonder about the folks that haven't spoken up. Honestly have no opinion on an issue that effects pretty much everyone? Or just trying as hard as possible not to draw attention to themselves for this particular topic?


Host who massively oversell wants this thread to be as tiny as possible


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## SeriesN (Jul 1, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> thread to be as tiny as possible


I wish I could say the same about JAVA Devs


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## Reece-DM (Jul 1, 2013)

So what is the most likely ratio that people are over selling here? Based on the e3s with 32gb - 2:1 4:1? Quite shocking really especially if your counting people selling 2gb under 7usd a month cough... cvps.


Disk space being oversold isn't new at all its happened for years, generally people use under 15gb heck probably less, you will see more usage from people running cpanel along with multiple sites than a good 80% of your other clients that's not even taking into count how much is actually allocated to the vps.


Btw openvz isn't all so bad if you take all the over sellers out of it it don't mean its a bad platform at all.


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## drmike (Jul 1, 2013)

Reece said:


> So what is the most likely ratio that people are over selling here? Based on the e3s with 32gb - 2:1 4:1? Quite shocking really especially if your counting people selling 2gb under 7usd a month cough... cvps.


 

Looking at the CVPS data, two servers in Atlanta that were oversold at 9-10:1.   Assumption there is we are dealing with 32GB RAM servers like they historically have used and not 128GB RAM servers like Chris said somewhere on here.


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Looking at the CVPS data, two servers in Atlanta that were oversold at 9-10:1.   Assumption there is we are dealing with 32GB RAM servers like they historically have used and not 128GB RAM servers like Chris said somewhere on here.


150 x 2GB customers on 32GB server?


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## drmike (Jul 1, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> 50 x 2GB customers on 32GB server?



Ahh worse than sort of.  They have 3GB plans too.  Mostly 2GB plans and a handful of 1GB plans... Totals:

+--------+---------+----------+--------------+

| nodeid | name    | vservers | ram          |

+--------+---------+----------+--------------+

|    110 | atl2    |      183 |          372 |

|    109 | atl1    |      161 |          317 |


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Ahh worse than sort of.  They have 3GB plans too.  Mostly 2GB plans and a handful of 1GB plans... Totals:   +--------+---------+----------+--------------+ | nodeid | name    | vservers | ram          | +--------+---------+----------+--------------+ |    110 | atl2    |      183 |          372 | |    109 | atl1    |      161 |          317 |


that's a lot... are memory sticks that expensive not to upgrade to 128gb? or hardware too old?


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## jarland (Jul 1, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> that's a lot... are memory sticks that expensive not to upgrade to 128gb? or hardware too old?


E3 only holds 32GB. This is the one reason I won't put out less than an E5.


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## maounique (Jul 1, 2013)

We have E3 nodes we used for SSD-only offerings as well as Biz plans (KVM and OVZ). Since they are 8 in 3u, were good for the purpose.


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## jcaleb (Jul 1, 2013)

jarland said:


> E3 only holds 32GB. This is the one reason I won't put out less than an E5


The invention of E5 made many host generous of ram. is ram cheap for e5?


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## jarland (Jul 2, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> The invention of E5 made many host generous of ram. is ram cheap for e5?


ECC memory is crazy expensive. A lot of server vendors seem to get better deals on them and pass it along if you build a full system with them. I may not be looking at the best places since we don't colo anything at the moment though, but everything I see is pretty outrageous if you were to compare to the cost of desktop memory.


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## Marc M. (Jul 2, 2013)

Overselling disk space is also possible with KVM by thin provisioning your storage arrays. Of course, providers here are not doing it, as all of us are simply using traditional LVMs. However one company that does it is Digital Ocean. So I think that this tutorial would apply to them as well.


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## jcaleb (Jul 2, 2013)

jarland said:


> ECC memory is crazy expensive. A lot of server vendors seem to get better deals on them and pass it along if you build a full system with them. I may not be looking at the best places since we don't colo anything at the moment though, but everything I see is pretty outrageous if you were to compare to the cost of desktop memory.


How much would a dual e5 with 128gb cost?


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## maounique (Jul 2, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> How much would a dual e5 with 128gb cost?


That depends on a lot of factors. I would say starting from 500 Eur and going up.

Ours cost some 1000 but are supermicro blades. With disks, raid with bbu and all, would be about 2 k.


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## jcaleb (Jul 2, 2013)

Mao said:


> That depends on a lot of factors. I would say starting from 500 Eur and going up. Ours cost some 1000 but are supermicro blades. With disks, raid with bbu and all, would be about 2 k.


I thought it's something like 6,000 USD.


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## jarland (Jul 2, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> How much would a dual e5 with 128gb cost?


Alone on websites that a consumer might tend to look, the memory alone (ECC) could be up to $2,000. Seems a lot of server specific shops get better deals. Bunch of them here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/wiki/Server_Builders


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## Marc M. (Jul 2, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> I thought it's something like 6,000 USD.


*@**jcaleb* I think that he means monthly


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## wdq (Jul 2, 2013)

Last I checked the E5's start at around $500 a piece. A motherboard for the dual processors is another $500. Sixteen 8GB sticks of registered ECC memory would be $70/stick.

Put all that together and you're looking at about $2600 excluding the hard drives, extension cards, and chassis.


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## Marc M. (Jul 2, 2013)

wdq said:


> Put all that together and you're looking at about $2600 excluding the hard drives, extension cards, and chassis.


*@**wdq* not that long ago I was looking into building SSD cached servers running KVM for the low end market. The builds were based on a single Core i7 3820, Supermicro or ASUS motherboard, 64GB non-registered DDR3, 6 x 2TB drives, 2 x 256GB SSDs, LSI RAID card, CacheCade Pro 2.0 and so on. Each build would have been around $3200. When we're talking a proper dual Xeon E5, registered DDR3 and so on, the price can climb really fast to $5000/$6000 per node. Of course if build properly a single E5 server is much better value than two of those i7 3820 servers, which isn't even 100% server grade hardware. Needless to say that I've killed the idea pretty fast.


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## maounique (Jul 2, 2013)

You can buy them second hand for as low as 500 Eur.

But you can also get good deals on new ones if you buy special blades in a 3u case, without disks, for the FC setups. Only the board and cpus are some 1000+ eur, added some fc card, redundant psu and all that add to each blade, for some 6 of them in a 3u you end up paying close to 2000 Eur per piece.

Special price for old customer. No raid cards, no drives at all. Without taxes too


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## NodeBytes (Jul 2, 2013)

I've been buying my servers second hand for a while now. Since they're just for my own use I don't need the best hardware, I just need stable hardware. I am currently in the process of buying an older Dell server as well.


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## jcaleb (Jul 3, 2013)

Isn't it 2nd hand disk has short life?


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## maounique (Jul 3, 2013)

Actually, if it worked for a while it is unlikely to fail, you have more failures in newer ones than in 2-3 years old.

Hidden defects or bad design will be ruled out after a while.


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## NodeBytes (Jul 3, 2013)

And I generally swap out the drives for new ones and put in a raid config before anything else.


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## jcaleb (Jul 3, 2013)

based on above, owning hardware is very steep. may costing 3k-6k.

maybe thats reason hosts just sign up with quickpacket for 50 bucks a month and 16GB ram. you can be host in no time.


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## drmike (Jul 3, 2013)

jcaleb said:


> maybe thats reason hosts just sign up with quickpacket for 50 bucks a month and 16GB ram. you can be host in no time.


 

Well, no offense to QPS, but the L5420's are out there for a song these days.  $150-300 depending.  Might need to put the harddrive on top of that and still in the $200-400 range, maximum.   ROI on a $50 plan could be 6 months on the low side. 

That's why the 5420's and similar series are so darn popular.  Nothing wrong with them.  I buy them myself.

I question why folks go the $50/mo route when  buying this isn't much.

When it comes to $2k+ servers, yeah, renting dedicated units is all the rage.


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## Magiobiwan (Jul 3, 2013)

L5420's are still pretty decent machines. I have 1 at WSI for my MC server. I also have a dual X5355 server doing media encoding and it handles it pretty darn well.


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## wlanboy (Jul 3, 2013)

Magiobiwan said:


> it handles it pretty darn well


In opposite of some other really small dedicated servers.


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## Kruno (Jul 4, 2013)

```
#!/bin/sh
currentdisk=$(df -h | tail -n 2 | head -n 1 | awk '{print $4}' |  awk -F"G" '{print $1}')


if (( $(echo $currentdisk) < 10 )); then
/bin/echo "$(hostname) is almost out of disk space" | /bin/mail -s "$(hostname) CHECK DISK SPACE" [email protected]
fi
```

 

Above script will email server admin when a Node has less than 10GB of available disk space left. Put it to hourly cron and that's it, will definitely come handy if you are overselling disk space.


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## jarland (Jul 4, 2013)

Kruno said:


> #!/bin/sh
> currentdisk=$(df -h | tail -n 2 | head -n 1 | awk '{print $4}' |  awk -F"G" '{print $1}')
> 
> 
> ...


Oh dear. The thought of letting a node get that low makes me cringe.


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## mikho (Jul 5, 2013)

jarland said:


> Oh dear. The thought of letting a node get that low makes me cringe.


Monitoring diskspace is often hard, I mostly use PRTG by Paessler and their default settings are warning at 25% and error at 10%.


10% of a 18TB array is just wrong (in the other way).


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## Kruno (Jul 5, 2013)

In my case this is 4x 600GB of SAS 15k RPM in RAID10 array. A bit more than 1TB of usable disk space. 10GB may be little low, but still enough to live-migrate to another Node in the VLAN if you have this script in hourly cron.


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## maounique (Jul 5, 2013)

Well, you can always put it to 100 GB or whatever.

We use munin to warn for less than 10% left. It never happens for node storage, but for the root partition when logging goes out of control.


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## dmmcintyre3 (Jul 5, 2013)

That is with free VPSs. No overselling (not even bandwidth)

Node specs: 32gb ram, E3-1230, 4x1TB with mdadm RAID10, $159.99/mo


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## Ishaq (Jul 7, 2013)

I wonder how you make back the $160, advertising?


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## maounique (Jul 7, 2013)

I think he makes even more, must pay his bills, I presume...


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## Francisco (Jul 7, 2013)

dmmcintyre3 said:


> That is with free VPSs. No overselling (not even bandwidth)
> 
> Node specs: 32gb ram, E3-1230, 4x1TB with mdadm RAID10, $159.99/mo


It's KVM though so the disk space is assigned on LV's. Yes you can oversell it but that's just asking for a FSCK. <_<

Francisco


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## dmmcintyre3 (Jul 7, 2013)

Ishaq said:


> I wonder how you make back the $160, advertising?


Yes. I could easily have another paid for by ads if I felt like it was needed.


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