Today we’re going to take a deeper look at the way we manage hosting account resource limits to ensure our servers are running as fast as possible, keeping your website and email operating quickly.
You’ve almost certainly heard of the two most common limits when it comes to website hosting: webspace and bandwidth – they’ve both been around for almost as long as website hosting has.
Webspace refers to the amount of storage or disk space you’re able to use on your account, usually ranging from a few hundred megabytes (MB) up to many gigabytes (GB).
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data you may transfer to and from your account, usually on a calendar-month basis. We no longer limit bandwidth on any paid hosting packages, other than a fair usage policy.
There are other limits servers have beyond those two, however, yet the overwhelming majority of websites will never reach them. We’re primarily interested in ensuring individual accounts don’t consume excessive levels of memory (RAM) and processor (CPU) resources; excess consumption of those, left unmanaged, usually results in a server eventually becoming slow and unstable leading to frequent downtime – something we’ve worked very hard to avoid.
Memory usage, in general, isn’t an issue for a number of reasons:
- Most scripts are well behaved when it comes to memory usage.
- PHP enforces a 256MB per process limit on all scripts.
- Having lots of memory in a server is cheap, so limits are high.
The Unlimited package has a 1GB physical memory limit for example. This means at any one time, your entire hosting account can use 1GB of physical memory spread between all processes currently running.
CPU resources, on the other hand, are not as plentiful. Our servers – and your computer – both have a CPU, or Central Processing Unit. The CPU is responsible for much of the processing a computer does – everything relies on and uses it, and that’s where our monitoring comes in.
How we monitor CPU usage
The amount of CPU available depends on which package you’re on. The Unlimited package for example allows you to burst to 100% of a CPU core, the Multisite is 150% of one core (servers have multiple cores). Please note that’s a maximum limit, and isn’t intended to be run at that limit 24/7.
Cloudlinux
Because we use Cloudlinux on our shared hosting servers, there’s no such thing as over-use, the server will simply not allow you to use more resources than allocated, to protect other customers and overall server stability. This means everyone gets a fair share, all the time.
Buy Unlimited Hosting at NetNerd
If you’re looking for reliable unlimited web hosting for your website, view our plans and buy online today. Alternatively, call us on 0333 222 4080 and one of our experts will help you get set up on the best plan for your individual requirements.
