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  1. #26
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    Sep 2002
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    Quote Originally Posted by eric418
    i too agree unreasonable overselling is wrong, but don't agree with the 'fraud' part.

    if it is really the case that any marginally talented attorney could easily argue, and prove, these business practices are fraudulent, then we should see thousands if not millions of winning cases by now and we shouldn't see those 100TB plans offering anymore.

    also what about other internet service providers? like VPN, lease line or email providers. all of them are overselling.

    i don't think we can sue a company for fraud because of overselling. at least for me i haven't seem any case for all the times in WHT and all the news sites.
    In our wacky legal system you can sue a company for anything you want. Fraudulent advertising is a pretty good reason for a lawsuit, for an activist type. You're right though. There have been no cases to my knowledge either. All that means is no one has gotten upset enough to slog through a protracted lawsuit over $5. It would really take a class action suit whereby many could join with little effort. No one has the time to invest in an individual lawsuit over $5 hosting. Plus, if it got that far, I'm sure they would just settle out of court. Although the problem with a class action is the only one who wins are the lawyers.

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by benoitr007
    Ok, sorry. Yeah, probably that some people don't mind giving 20$ a month for a website.
    Well for any website that means anything to the client a $20 fee per month is about .66 per day for hosting. Thats just not expensive.
    As far as site5 goes (or any of the others that have followed) they are getting exactly what they want: EXPOSURE! At the end of the day they really do not care if its positive, negative. They've lured em in.
    HostCaters.com - Quality Web Hosting - Under A Gig! - Since 1999

  3. #28
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    Apr 2006
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    American Airlines becomes American Web Hosting
    Site5 Web Hosting becomes Site5 Airlines

    ***********

    My name is Joe. I’m a hypothetical 370lb, 35 year old entrepreneur wanting to start my own business.

    I sign up with American Web Hosting. I get my site, at the cheapest price too! It’s an economy package, but I intend to use up every MB.

    I designed my site (a rather nice one I might add), and started filling up my web space with files. In a few weeks, I started getting an impressive number of visitors. Things are looking up for my new business. But then- Oh no! They oversold on the server I’m on and they no longer have any room for me.

    But no need to worry- I was transferred to another server before I even knew it, and I was comp’ed with a rather large hosting account at the same price as the economy package for my troubles.

    I’m surprised at how well American dealt with the situation. I got the service I wanted, and when it looked like they couldn’t provide, I got an even better service in the end!

    Now that I signed up with American Web Hosting, my business is booming. Sales are up, and we are thinking of opening another office. Before I can open this new office, I have to travel 200 miles to look over some office space for rent and handle other business while I’m there. My friend told me that Site5 Airlines has round-trip tickets for $50! What a deal! And it’s first class! I purchased my tickets immediately.

    As I board the plane, there are men and women sitting in the isle and children stuffed in the overhead compartment. I made my way through and found that the entire plane was made up of first class seats- but in a plane that could only seat 100 passengers, there were 250 inside! Most people seemed content, however, since they were used to being in coach. They had never flown in first class on other airlines, nor would they ever use the extra legroom even if they had. But me, being 370lbs, I needed a little more room than the average guy.

    As we reached cruising altitude of 40,000ft, warning lights and buzzers went off in the cockpit. Emergency oxygen masks burst out from above and the plane started shaking violently. People who had a seat put on their seat belts and braced themselves.

    “We’re overloaded!”, screamed the pilot, “Quick, throw out the heavy passengers!”

    The emergency door on the plane burst open, and people one by one were thrown out by the stewardess.

    “Sorry, you weigh too much- it’s against the TOS!”, I was told.

    Suffice it to say, I never reached my destination. My body parts were scattered across a field in Kansas somewhere, but the plane, still overloaded, managed to make it to its’ final destination. It crashed 5 or 6 times, and a dozen more passengers were kicked off the plane in mid-flight. A lot of people lost their luggage. But at least we all got a good deal, right?


  4. #29
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by kubel
    American Airlines becomes American Web Hosting
    Site5 Web Hosting becomes Site5 Airlines

    ***********

    My name is Joe. I’m a hypothetical 370lb, 35 year old entrepreneur wanting to start my own business.

    I sign up with American Web Hosting. I get my site, at the cheapest price too! It’s an economy package, but I intend to use up every MB.

    I designed my site (a rather nice one I might add), and started filling up my web space with files. In a few weeks, I started getting an impressive number of visitors. Things are looking up for my new business. But then- Oh no! They oversold on the server I’m on and they no longer have any room for me.

    But no need to worry- I was transferred to another server before I even knew it, and I was comp’ed with a rather large hosting account at the same price as the economy package for my troubles.

    I’m surprised at how well American dealt with the situation. I got the service I wanted, and when it looked like they couldn’t provide, I got an even better service in the end!

    Now that I signed up with American Web Hosting, my business is booming. Sales are up, and we are thinking of opening another office. Before I can open this new office, I have to travel 200 miles to look over some office space for rent and handle other business while I’m there. My friend told me that Site5 Airlines has round-trip tickets for $50! What a deal! And it’s first class! I purchased my tickets immediately.

    As I board the plane, there are men and women sitting in the isle and children stuffed in the overhead compartment. I made my way through and found that the entire plane was made up of first class seats- but in a plane that could only seat 100 passengers, there were 250 inside! Most people seemed content, however, since they were used to being in coach. They had never flown in first class on other airlines, nor would they ever use the extra legroom even if they had. But me, being 370lbs, I needed a little more room than the average guy.

    As we reached cruising altitude of 40,000ft, warning lights and buzzers went off in the cockpit. Emergency oxygen masks burst out from above and the plane started shaking violently. People who had a seat put on their seat belts and braced themselves.

    “We’re overloaded!”, screamed the pilot, “Quick, throw out the heavy passengers!”

    The emergency door on the plane burst open, and people one by one were thrown out by the stewardess.

    “Sorry, you weigh too much- it’s against the TOS!”, I was told.

    Suffice it to say, I never reached my destination. My body parts were scattered across a field in Kansas somewhere, but the plane, still overloaded, managed to make it to its’ final destination. It crashed 5 or 6 times, and a dozen more passengers were kicked off the plane in mid-flight. A lot of people lost their luggage. But at least we all got a good deal, right?

    hahaha, this is great!
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  5. #30
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    Aug 2005
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    3,587
    Quote Originally Posted by kubel
    American Airlines becomes American Web Hosting
    Site5 Web Hosting becomes Site5 Airlines

    ***********

    [...]

    That is just excellent. Perfect

  6. #31
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    Nov 2002
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    Lakeport CA, Clear Lake
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    Talking

    Originally Posted by kubel
    American Airlines becomes American Web Hosting
    Site5 Web Hosting becomes Site5 Airlines
    Great stuff, I loved it!!!
    Everyone is entitled to MY opinion.
    CatfishEd.com

  7. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnCrowley
    . . . But when the host throws out such ridiculous offers that really cannot be met under any circumstance (due to TOS restrictions) then it is really bait and switch if you try use all the bait (or what many would call false advertising, fraud, etc...).
    A lot of those offers folks have to pay a year or 2 in advance too. They're rarely per mth payment plan deals.
    WLVPN.com NetProtect owned White Label VPN provider
    Increase your hosting profits by adding VPN to your product line up

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0utlier
    The problem with the airline analogy is the airline may oversell, but they will get you on the next flight. The won't just kick you off the plane and then deny you services that you were offered and paid for.

    These companies that advertise enormous space/bandwidth plans for pennies are committing consumer fraud. Pure and simple. The space and bandwidth is the selling point, but they have no intention of ever letting anyone use what is offered. They can't. If they let people actually use the space/bandwidth they would go out of business. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math.

    Their TOS's are worded in a way that assures that no customer can ever use the maximum of what they paid for. Go try to use 55 gigs space and a terabyte of data and see how fast you get kicked off the server for "abuse".

    It is just a matter of time before one of these companies is sued for fraud / false advertising. In fact, they are ripe for a class action lawsuit. I don't care what their TOS says. You can't tout your ridiculous plans then have a TOS that basically says you'll get kicked off the server if you use said resources. I realize the wording of the TOS is more deftly written than that, but the outcome is the same.

    I challenge anyone to actually use 55 gigs and 1 terabyte of data without getting kicked off their servers. If I had more time on my hands, I wouldn't mind starting a class action suit against these jokesters just to clean up this industry a little.
    I haven't seen any reports of site5 users who actually consumed 1TB.

    But Servage and DreamHost have some reports WHT, and I have consumed 30 GB in a single day without ny problem.
    So, some of super oversellers actually provide that much of bandwidth.

    As for the TOS, overseller or not, you can get some sorts of sanction if you use too much resources.
    And there is NO concrete evidence showing general tendency of oversellers provides LESS resources than non-oversellers, for example.

    In short, some of oversellers are simply allowing higher macimum for some of resources.
    But it doesn't mean they provide higher maximum for ALL resources.


    As some users imagine that they can get higher maximum for whatever the resource they want, they can get disappointed and frustrated.

    So, the solution can be relatively simple.
    Hosts can/may/should CLEARLY state that bandwidth limit IS FOR bandwidth, and it doesn't mean you can use mega-giga quantity of all other resources, for example.

    Also, today's popular apps are highly inefficient.
    When I first saw the code of phpbb/etc, I was surprised.
    I didn't think nobody would/should run this hog on a shared hosting account, let alone low budget shared hosting account ...
    That was some years ago.

    Now, with the one click installer and hosts advertising them, most people think that it's normal to use them on ANY shared hosting account.
    And they think they can use up to the max bandwidth with these hoggy apps.
    It doesn't make sense to me, but that's how the hosting industry and app writers/users has been educating users.


    Anyway, we haven't seen so may site5 user creaming in WHT, for a while.
    Who knows? Maybe they have found a good way to predict usage, or introduced better setup that can balance the load on each server, or better server monitoring/controling techniques.
    If clients are happy with what they are getting, I don't have problem with their $5 offer.
    (But I wouldn't buy it as it doesn't fit what I need.)

  9. #34
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    Sep 2002
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    333
    Bandwidth is a much more fluid commodity. 1 terabyte of transfer is not a reasonable offer for shared hosting, but that pales in comparison to offering every $5 account 55 gigs of disk space. To actually use 1 terabyte of transfer would be difficult for most sites, even if they tried.

    Disk space, however, is a very limited commodity, but much easier for an individual to reach with images, videos, etc. In order to host the amount of customers to simply break even for that one server at $5 per month you would have to host at least 75 accounts.

    Without indulging in questionable business practices, they would be on the hook with those 75 customers for 75 terabytes of transfer and 4.1 terabytes of storage. Obviously that is overselling to the n'th degree. It matters not one iota that most people don't use what is offered. The issue is it is offered, but could never be provided by the company due to their TOS.

    I still challenge anyone to sign up for an account with one of these companies and attempt to use the maximum resources you paid for. Please report back at what point your account was terminated for abuse.

  10. #35
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    Aug 2005
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    Canada
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0utlier
    Bandwidth is a much more fluid commodity. 1 terabyte of transfer is not a reasonable offer for shared hosting, but that pales in comparison to offering every $5 account 55 gigs of disk space. To actually use 1 terabyte of transfer would be difficult for most sites, even if they tried.
    Search with "servage" or "dreamhost".
    There are reports of people using TB bandwidth.

    Also, my site consumed 30GB in a day.
    It means 900GB / month.
    And I can imagine serving even more without worry, as my CPU time usage is way below the old (and removed) limit of the host.

    Disk space, however, is a very limited commodity, but much easier for an individual to reach with images, videos, etc. In order to host the amount of customers to simply break even for that one server at $5 per month you would have to host at least 75 accounts.
    Are you thinking that everyone is using only the onboard HDD?
    Some low budget hosts are using massive NAS boxes.

    Without indulging in questionable business practices, they would be on the hook with those 75 customers for 75 terabytes of transfer and 4.1 terabytes of storage. Obviously that is overselling to the n'th degree. It matters not one iota that most people don't use what is offered. The issue is it is offered, but could never be provided by the company due to their TOS.

    I still challenge anyone to sign up for an account with one of these companies and attempt to use the maximum resources you paid for. Please report back at what point your account was terminated for abuse.
    Again, search and see it by yourself.

    You can go and ask site5 users in the site5 forum, too, if you want.
    If you are nice, some people may give you access to their stat pages.

  11. #36
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    Oct 2002
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    the out of biz logic is simply a theory, assuming 5% of all people will use the phone at the same time, but in reality this will never happen.
    Actually, it does. During the New Year's night, it's quite common around here for the telecom network to be overloaded and to not be able to place a phone call.

    Hosts can/may/should CLEARLY state that bandwidth limit IS FOR bandwidth, and it doesn't mean you can use mega-giga quantity of all other resources, for example.
    The marketing departments will make sure that doesn't happen. Personally, I don't have a big problem with "resources overusage" policies listed in the TOS, but I like it when they're clear rather than vague, and help the user get at least a very rough idea of the computing power their $ can buy. Sadly, it's just easier and more advantageous for the hosts to give as few details as possible.

  12. #37
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    Canada
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    Quote Originally Posted by ldcdc
    The marketing departments will make sure that doesn't happen. Personally, I don't have a big problem with "resources overusage" policies listed in the TOS, but I like it when they're clear rather than vague, and help the user get at least a very rough idea of the computing power their $ can buy. Sadly, it's just easier and more advantageous for the hosts to give as few details as possible.
    I know some hosts are like that (in hiding as much as possible), and I don't like them much.

    But I don't agree if you say all marketing guys are like that.

    For example, Lunarpage used to clearly state how they could offer lower price by overselling, for example, and I chose them partly because of it.

    And there are some users tired of many many boringly similar marketing plans and site designs.



    In case of site5, I don't know if they are trying to hide, but the equivalent of TOS/AUP isn't visibly linked.
    And there are important details ALL users should know in the page.
    https://help.site5.com/index.php?_m=...kbarticleid=83


    Their network is supposed to be redundant, but they don't say if they are using Raid storage or any kind of redundant server setup, either.
    http://www.site5.com/hosting/features.php

    Not telling about the exact server setup, which is an important information in choosing a host for some of us, is a common practice for many hosts, though ...

  13. #38
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    Sep 2005
    Posts
    251
    Quote Originally Posted by extras
    Their network is supposed to be redundant, but they don't say if they are using Raid storage or any kind of redundant server setup, either.
    http://www.site5.com/hosting/features.php

    Not telling about the exact server setup, which is an important information in choosing a host for some of us, is a common practice for many hosts, though ...
    The server I'm on at site5 has RAID storage. Last year, site5 had a bunch of disk failures and wasn't using RAID so they got a lot of angry customers. Now, at least for my $149 for 2 years hosting plan (not the $5 deal, but the Multisite Dynamic plan), they use good SCSI disks in a RAID configuration.

    You can see my server specs at this URL:

    http://psyche.site5.com/

    In fact, you can see the specs of most of the servers in their fleet by using the server name as a subdomain in a site5.com URL (like for my server named Psyche).

    You can see a list of all the server names at the Uptime page (which also shows uptime statistics for each server):

    http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php

    I'm pretty happy with shared hosting at Site5. I only use my accounts there for development and some very small sites so I'm not using much of the plan resources. It is a good value.
    Kevin, The Walrus

  14. #39
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    May 2001
    Posts
    361
    Quote Originally Posted by ldcdc
    Actually, it does. During the New Year's night, it's quite common around here for the telecom network to be overloaded and to not be able to place a phone call.
    this is exactly the point. everyone seems to so understand when teleco network overload. no one calls this fraud.

    in my country, we have like 2,000 mins monthly airtime in average with a ratio of 1.5 mobile per person, comparing to network capacity, this is call crazy overselling in hosting.

  15. #40
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    Sep 2002
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    Quote Originally Posted by eric418
    this is exactly the point. everyone seems to so understand when teleco network overload. no one calls this fraud.

    in my country, we have like 2,000 mins monthly airtime in average with a ratio of 1.5 mobile per person, comparing to network capacity, this is call crazy overselling in hosting.
    You don't get it... I don't know how to make this any more simple.

    Use your 2000 minutes. You can do it if you really want to talk that long. The company won't terminate your services for using 2000 minutes.

    Now go try and use 55 gigs of space and 1 terabyte of data. It's simply not going to happen. They will not allow it. They cannot allow it. You will be removed from the server for abuse.

    Do you now see the difference?

  16. #41
    If their service is relatively new, they may not have a lot of clients yet. As they add more websites to their servers people will probably start to see problems. Offers like this usually end up being to good to be true in the end. There's plenty of literature about these types of offers. I'm a firm believer in you get what you pay for. Oftentimes sweat deals like that usually turn sour.
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  17. #42
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    A lot of those offers folks have to pay a year or 2 in advance too. They're rarely per mth payment plan deals.
    Righto. It's all perfectly justifiable on their end when they boot you off for using too much resources. Or, conversely, you'll use hardly anything at all and they'll never really have a problem. There's always fine print with "deals" like this and they take advantage of the people who put the blinders on and don't read them.

  18. #43
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    Actually, it does. During the New Year's night, it's quite common around here for the telecom network to be overloaded and to not be able to place a phone call.
    That happens in a lot of countries on special occasions.

    A lot of those offers folks have to pay a year or 2 in advance too. They're rarely per mth payment plan deals.
    Most of the overselling companies do not accept monthly payments at all, minimum yearly or more.

  19. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trophimus
    Oops! Wrong website! I was thinking of Hostway at the time, but was reffering to HostMonster (which is a sub-division of BlueHost).

    Please edit your post then regarding HostWay
    I'm Zafar Ahmed.
    I provide
    SEO Services & eMarketing consultancy
    I'll be glad to hear from you

  20. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zafar Ahmed
    Please edit your post then regarding HostWay
    He can't. Post edits are only available for 15 minutes after the initial post submission.

  21. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by AWalrus
    The server I'm on at site5 has RAID storage. Last year, site5 had a bunch of disk failures and wasn't using RAID so they got a lot of angry customers. Now, at least for my $149 for 2 years hosting plan (not the $5 deal, but the Multisite Dynamic plan), they use good SCSI disks in a RAID configuration.

    You can see my server specs at this URL:

    http://psyche.site5.com/

    In fact, you can see the specs of most of the servers in their fleet by using the server name as a subdomain in a site5.com URL (like for my server named Psyche).

    You can see a list of all the server names at the Uptime page (which also shows uptime statistics for each server):

    http://www.site5.com/support/uptime.php

    I'm pretty happy with shared hosting at Site5. I only use my accounts there for development and some very small sites so I'm not using much of the plan resources. It is a good value.
    Thanks for the info.
    It's good to see a REAL user talking about REAL story rather than prophets predicting the inevitable dooms.

    Having said that, some of their server don't have RAID.
    Probably this is why they don't say anything about the RAID.

    And some servers don't have the sys info page.
    Some servers are showing directory index .....
    Maybe the list of servers includes the MySQL servers, logging servers, etc.

  22. #47
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    May 2001
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    361
    Quote Originally Posted by 0utlier
    You don't get it... I don't know how to make this any more simple.

    Use your 2000 minutes. You can do it if you really want to talk that long. The company won't terminate your services for using 2000 minutes.

    Now go try and use 55 gigs of space and 1 terabyte of data. It's simply not going to happen. They will not allow it. They cannot allow it. You will be removed from the server for abuse.

    Do you now see the difference?
    can i understand this as assuming the shared hosting account is on a single server environment, which the package offer is beyond one server's whole capacity?

    if so, i agree exactly your point.

    but for those cluster/grid or whatever they call infrastructure, since i don't have 1st hand experience as being kicked off, i can't comment on it.

  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by extras
    Thanks for the info.
    Having said that, some of their server don't have RAID.
    Probably this is why they don't say anything about the RAID.

    And some servers don't have the sys info page.
    Some servers are showing directory index .....
    Maybe the list of servers includes the MySQL servers, logging servers, etc.
    Site5 only started deploying RAID servers last year after all the disk failures. Some servers have been upgraded, but some of the older one's have not.

    They provision new accounts automatically, but you could always ask sales what server is being used for new accounts if you signed up today and check that server's page. You could also ask if your new account will be provisioned on SCSI RAID servers.

    I'm not sure what kind of servers the $5 accounts are on since I'm on the slightly more expensive MultiSite Dynamic plans.
    Kevin, The Walrus

  24. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by eric418
    can i understand this as assuming the shared hosting account is on a single server environment, which the package offer is beyond one server's whole capacity?

    if so, i agree exactly your point.

    but for those cluster/grid or whatever they call infrastructure, since i don't have 1st hand experience as being kicked off, i can't comment on it.
    Of course it is. None of these penny hosts have elaborate network storage setup. It's one server with a few hard drives that are oversold by terabytes. At most, the available space for sites is several hundred gigs.

  25. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by 0utlier
    Of course it is. None of these penny hosts have elaborate network storage setup. It's one server with a few hard drives that are oversold by terabytes. At most, the available space for sites is several hundred gigs.
    Some low budget hosts are well equipped, FYI.
    Servage use NAS with redundant clustered setup.
    DreamHost use NetApp and other NAS with non-redundant clustered setup.
    And there are some others using filers and clustered setup.

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