Overselling!!!!

[Ashish]

Very recently a client asked us about overselling and that made me think a bit... so I just wanted to get your opinions on it….. Do you think overselling is justified? Still thinking about what to answer

[Jonathan VanSchaack]

Its hard to be profitable if you dont oversell some. But too much overselling, what the big guys do is not wise. Packing 1000 customers onto one server is just too much. Personally I try my best not to oversell at all but its truly not possible. Since this is a high bandwidth industry now, if all customers used there respected bandwidth right now it would put a reaL strain on the line.

[littleFella]

so what would be the acceptable level of users in the context of available resources?
Is there some sort of rec. along the lines of sites per unit of RAM? per available cpu cycles?

[Jonathan VanSchaack]

depends what type of accounts and sites would be on each server. I know what the server can handle by looking at usage and load... ect

[fishfreek]

There is no hard number for sites per server based upon ram/cpu. You might find you attract alot of clients whom have low load sites that are mostly static html and images. Then again you might end up attracting sites that are dynamic scripts that encompas databases and content thats created on the fly.

We have sites that demand they have their own server due to the load they put on the server and we have other sites that have nearly no impact on server load so its a balance game.