Is it possible to host 100 clients on a server without overloading it? Can it hold more? I plan on leasing a server with 400 GB of BW and plan on overselling. Most of my current clients use less than an avg of 2 GB of BW.

I need this info since am working on a business plan and would appreciate any info.

depends on the server and what programs/scripts your clients are useing :P and if you have to ask questions like this are you really qualified to run a webhosting company?

yes it is possible, you could have 600 customers on a server, as long as its powerfull enough.

I've never had a server use anywhere NEAR 400 gigs before it was overloaded.

about 180G is what my busiest server uses up in a month and it's a bit overloaded and I've gotta start identifying the hogs on it and move them to less populated or even semi dedicated servers.

1 semi-popular games site using PHPNuke can kill mid-power server.
while 500 personal sites can be very ok on 1PIII server with 50gb monthly traffic.

I've never had a server use anywhere NEAR 400 gigs before it was overloaded. The only servers I have using 400 GB are with one customer only on the server. And, those are beefed up, high performance servers with dual processors and lots and lots of ram.

Be very careful of high-bandwidth customers on shared servers. 90% of the time the bandwidth is accompanied by high CPU usage and, accordingly, a heavy load. I just moved two customers to a new server to separate them from others. They are both high bandwidth and high CPU. They will be the only two customers on this server. The only reason this even works is that one is in the U. S., with primarily U. S. visitors, and the other is in the U. K., with primarily U. K. visistors. Both peak in the evening in their countries, and, therefore, their peaks are at different times. U. K. client's peak ends before U. S. client's peak starts. Both are heaviest from 6 pm to midnight locally.

Originally posted by 2Mhost
1 semi-popular games site using PHPNuke can kill mid-power server.

is phpnuke really that resource hogging? any alternative to replace that? I was about to host some clients with myphpnuke on, aiks...

It's not _that_ cpu intensive by itself, (unlike some forums), but it still accesses databases, runs PHP scripts, so it's more than your average "static html" site.

as for loading the servers, I don't think it would be bandwidth so much as cpu load, i mean once you get a few busy forums (as I found out recently :() they tend to peak at certain times and use up a massive load.