I'm currently looking at a VPS package from my current hosting provider which on the face of it looks pretty good and I'd rather use them than have to change hosts again, but I'm a little bit concerned about the package.

The server itself is a dual 2.8ghz Xeon with 4 gigs of RAM, which on the face of it seems like a nice machine, however delving a bit further in to the specifications of the package it shows that their is a 50:1 contention rate added to this the fact that each VPS can host a minimum of 30 domains via Plesk or an unlimited amount via Root.

This gives a total of 1500 (possible) domains if everyone maxes out their Plesk allowance, which seems to me to be a little bit too much for one machine to handle easily.

I know that server resources are allocated to each VPS, but surely if the whole system is placed under a massive load the whole thing is going to end up needing to be poked with a big stick?

In an ideal world of course, the VPSs would be balanced out across a number of servers to with a mix of high use and low use VPSs, but having been stung before with overpriced hosting packages I'd rather not take the risk!

Are my concerns worthy of keeping my wallet in my pocket for a bit longer, or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks in advance.

I think it would depend on how traffic heavy the sites are, if they're using PHP + MySQL, forums, etc.

The only way to be sure of the resources alotted to you is to purchase a dedicated server.

Just as with shared hosting there's no guarentee that a host will not oversell their plans.

It's a simple matter to move high load VPS's to another server with a system like Virtuozzo, but you'll be hard pressed to find many hosts willing to put anything in writing other than generic min cpu/mem and burst ranges.

It's a tradeoff of the flexability and efficiency of a virtual server over the certainty of the resources with a dedicated server but potentially less features and higher price.

Originally posted by iamBen
This gives a total of 1500 (possible) domains if everyone maxes out their Plesk allowance, which seems to me to be a little bit too much for one machine to handle easily.
Are my concerns worthy of keeping my wallet in my pocket for a bit longer, or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks in advance.
As always, trying to compare the sum of a set of unknown quantities to an unknown metric is impossible. Domains (defined loosely as the activity generated by the operations of a domain) are all unique--no two are alike. Thus it is impossible to say N domains on this machine are fine, but N+1 is simply too many.

I agree, one can not say how many domain names a VPS can handle.

It depends - Greatest words.

As always, trying to compare the sum of a set of unknown quantities to an unknown metric is impossible. Domains (defined loosely as the activity generated by the operations of a domain) are all unique--no two are alike. Thus it is impossible to say N domains on this machine are fine, but N+1 is simply too many.
i absolutely agree with BobFarmer as its very hard to predict resorce usage.
generally its decided by trends and history but it does not guarrenty that server can host N domains in future. it might go N + m domains or even resources would be less for N - m domains
one has decide safe number, technical and commercial viable numbers.

e.g a VPS with 256 MB ram and 200 MHz CPU can host 10- 15 mid usage domains, 40 - 50 low usage domains. or this is too less for 1 high utilising database orented forum or shopping or community portal domain.