//begin rant
Quote from WHT:
I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day hosting customers will not be misled by hosting providers spewing this bullshit that only OpenVZ RAM can be oversold and KVM/Xen/VMware memory can't be oversold. I have a dream that one day the hosting community will rise up and live out the true meaning of its truth in advertising creed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all virtualization types can be overcommitted and oversold to some degree."
Until that day comes, here's my WHT post with some links to overselling RAM on KVM and VMWare:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1560573&p=9666710#post9666710
//end rant
From the WHT thread:
"
I doubt you'll see any provider advertise that they oversell. If they're using OpenVZ, then that's a possibility, but generally the provider's that are highly recommended here, you won't have any problems with."
I know for a fact Crissic promoted their overselling as a benefit to customers on price. Which actually is honest and makes sense. Customers aren't stupid and some actually do math and say things don't add up.
I wish more companies were forth coming in overselling / thin provisioning / overloading practices. Not that we want your secret sauce, we don't. It's to communicate with your customers and potential customers.
Nothing wrong with loading customers more densely than 1-1 ratio. Fact is most sit with little to no use and idle. Stretching things a bit to draw down prices is fine, so long as not being abusive to customers and packing heavy use on the same and running into resource horrors and mass contention. Then again, all that comes from experience and having competent admin(s) and processes in place.
