I have a shared hosting plan 4u with tera-byte.com. I have set up a forum, a vBulletin (just like this one), and I just got an email saying that my forum is taking too much server resources. First off, I don't even use a gig of bandwith monthly..What do they mean by this? I'm ready to explode at the support ******** who respond to my email 6 hours after I sent it. And everytime they do send back a response (::GASP::), they give me very little information and I must slowly derive the answer out of them. I know many sites that have a vBulletin on a shared hosting account with other hosts that receive A LOT more traffic than I do, and I don't see their accounts being suspended. Now those guys at tera-byte are telling me to consider a virtual or dedicated server...LOL! That's not within my budget...Any suggestions? Should I change hosts alltogether, or bitch at them till we reach some sort of an understanding?

They are not speaking of bandwidth, rather the server load. It is using too much of the server's resources such as memory, CPU, etc...

Then that means maybe the server may be too sensative.

How popular is your forums? If it's like this one, you sure need at least a virtual server. If it's like mine which gets less than 200 visitors per day, a shared account should be good.

Still..... flipping out about a forum is a bit over the edge, ya know? I ran CHAT applications on my last host, and all they did was ask me to keep ram usage below 80 megs!

~{Skie}~

Every host is going to have different levels of acceptable resources. While I wouldn't 'bitch' at them, I'd ask if there were any alternatives besides virtual servers/dedicated, and if not, you could try hosting it at the same place as:

"I know many sites that have a vBulletin on a shared hosting account with other hosts that receive A LOT more traffic than I do, and I don't see their accounts being suspended."

If it works for them, I see no reason why you wouldn't host your site there.

They must have really crappy servers if they can't handle a forum with 50 unique visitors a day. The reason I don't switch hosts is because it's outta my budget.

Maybe they just have issue with you running a forum in general. Even though VBulletin is a low-resource forum, other software like UBB has given BBS/Forum software the bad reputation of taking up a lot of resources.

My opinion? Drop them and go with someone else. There are plenty of other hosts that would be glad to serve your forum for you. Even if they let you stay, who is to say that they won't suspend you again in the future if your forum becomes more popular.

Take care,

Brian

Thanks a lot for your input. I'll probably go with aletia or something. Anyway, what are your guys general opinion of tera-byte?

Originally posted by TGL4387DD
Thanks a lot for your input. I'll probably go with aletia or something. Anyway, what are your guys general opinion of tera-byte?

I'd say you either love em or ya hate em. I like www.phenominet.com and have yet to hear of someone having bad experiecne with em. They are basically the american version of tera-byte :D

I think Tera-Byte puts their shared hosting accounts on Raq's, and vBulletin and any dynamically generated pages can stress a Raq.

They also started using Linux boxes equipped with Ensim and about 1.5 gigs of ram (at least one did :)).

I had a weird horror story with them, i was on a raq and suddenly the load average went above 3 constantly and even reached up to 90... I was shocked as top revealed that people were running all kinds of scripts.

I asked to be moved to one of the linux boxes, before i uploaded my site I checked the load average and it was above 2.5 at the time. The ensim control panel was also horribly slow.

When I uploaded my website there, static html pages ran as fast as possible with my cable connection (hazy memory), but scripts utilizing php/mysql ran horribly slow.

I decided to vote with my feet...

Originally posted by greggish
I think Tera-Byte puts their shared hosting accounts on Raq's, and vBulletin and any dynamically generated pages can stress a Raq.

and gifs
and javascripts
and wav files
and anyting thats not plain text html

raq's sux

I've never heard of such a small VBB really harming system resources, forums with us haven't caused any problems as of yet, as someone said, it could just be the case that it's on a raq. In the end you're probably just better off getting a new host, I don't think it's worth the hassle to *possibly* come to something of a resolution with tera-byte.

Originally posted by MarcD


and gifs
and javascripts
and wav files
and anyting thats not plain text html

raq's sux
While I don't run one anymore, I can tell you've never used one. This is just a tangent, and while I won't go into it, this post seems pretty ignorant.

Well, I know for a fact that 4U isn't on a Raq. Only 3r and 4r, which I must say, is really good.

Yes, people gotta stop saying RAQ is "crap, you can't run PHP/MySQL intensive scripts on it" etc.

A RAQ is like any machine, although the hardware specs are somewhat low compared to a regular P3 but that has nothing to do with it.

What matters is how much load ( how many sites and which type of sites ) the host put on the very same machine. A good host monitors CPU and resource usage and puts new accounts on another server when it becomes slow.

Originally posted by TGL4387DD
They must have really crappy servers if they can't handle a forum with 50 unique visitors a day.

A Cobalt Raq 3 you mean? :D

The reason I don't switch hosts is because it's outta my budget.

what's your budget, some of us can probably host you ;)

cheers,
:beer:

Originally posted by Chicken

While I don't run one anymore, I can tell you've never used one. This is just a tangent, and while I won't go into it, this post seems pretty ignorant.

didnt mean to offend anyonne and i was joking about the gifs

but raqs cant handle any kind of scripts from my experience

i have seen many raqs reach 30-40 cpu

on little cgi scripts with 4-5 users on them

and the intels we switched to only get up to 3-4 cpu at maximum usage

these are not high resource sites average 700 uniques a month nothing big but i have never seen a raq able to handle any of these scripts


i have seen this on many scripts cgi php cgi/msyql cgi/flat text

and would never use a raq for anything outside of plain html

What else were you running, i doubt a "little" scripts can cause cpu utilization to go to 40%... That depends on the script (little scripts can use lots of resources depending on what they do) so, we really don't have much details. Also server setup is VERY important (for example, running php as a cgi instead of compiling it with apache can cause large differences).

We don't even know what hardware your running.... "Intel" chip is kinda general don't you think? Sure you'll notice a big difference between a 300 mhz raq 3 and a 2 ghz p4 or even a 1 ghz p3. Raqs 3 can have anywhere from 32 megs-256 megs of memory, so all Raq 3's themselves aren't equal :).

Also are we talking 4-5 total users or simultaneous users?

The only reason I am mentioning this is because it can be somewhat misleading to people (new people).

one of the scripts were a download scripts

user would hit the file

would retireve it from a txt file and add a hit to the file

others were

a cgi shopping cart

php scripts were a hit logger scripts

the current server we have them on is a p3 866 with 256 ram

the raq was a 450 mhz with 256 ram i believe

with the price of computers today i dont see how a 300 mhz raq server woudl be used ?

i would never use it

i can build a dual p3 1ghz with nice ram for under 1,000

i couldnt even use most of the raqs for my at home use



yes raqs can be good webservers for different things but as far as running sites that use a lot of scripts
they will crash
what if you have 50 sites that all use cgi i dont think a raq can handle it

Originally posted by MarcD
i couldnt even use most of the raqs for my at home use


I'll have to backup MarcD. And yes, I've had a :eek: raq

these are not high resource sites average 700 uniques a month nothing big but i have never seen a raq able to handle any of these scripts


i have seen this on many scripts cgi php cgi/msyql cgi/flat text

and would never use a raq for anything outside of plain html

You must have had some weird raqs. Are you sure they were not broken :confused:

On one of my raqs I have a customer with a site that receives 4000 unique visitors on a daily average. With spikes up to 5200 unique visitors a day. 150 GB datatransfer per month for this site alone. And besides this site there are 110 other virtual accounts on this raq. The last real downtime was on november 3rd, load average is below 1.0, memory usage no more then 74%.

(and yes, that is visitors, not hits)