Slashdot

[om3ga]

Hi,

My site got slashdotted, and before it even hit the mainstream, it was down due to me using more than my share of CPU. This has now caused me embarrassment as a large audience tried to visit my site, only to see that it was down.

I submitted a support ticket, but have had no response. It seems unfair that bluehost advertise huge amounts of bandwidth, and then impose CPU restrictions which we were not even warned about.

When will my site be back up!?

-Ben

[Early Out]

Welcome to the wonderful world of shared hosting. You're sharing a server with 800-1000 other domains. Should traffic to your site be allowed to bring everyone else's site to its knees?

[om3ga]

Should a hosting company advertise features which they can't give?

-Ben

[areidmtm]

Bandwidth and CPU usage are completely different. Bluehost is giving you everything they promised and advertised to you. CPU restrictions are on EVERY shared hosting service out there. And if they don’t have it, then they are not a competent host. Bluehost give you more then any other hosting provider that I know of would give you. If you can’t live with the CPU restrictions, then you need to go to a VPS or a dedicated server.

Bluehost is a lot nicer than, for example, dreamhost, who gives you a flat out 60 minutes of cpu time per day. If you go over that, they disable you for a full day. If the bluehost limits haven't changed, you could theoretically reach use a total of 1440 minutes of cpu time per day without our limiter kicking in.

To minimize your CPU usage, you need to reevaluate your PHP and MySQL scripts. Too much CPU usage comes from poorly written PHP scripts that are taking too long to process or talk to the MySQL database and non-indexed MySQL tables

[page1ink.]

om3ga, was your site/article about fixing scratches in CDs? I erm... I think I helped eat that quota up <_< >_> <_<

[admin]

We occassionaly have sites get slashdotted. I even read your CD fix thing myself before I saw this post. You can call support and have them take your CPU quota off for a day while your slashdot wears off. We won't charge for this either and then will turn it back on after a day. We want our users happy.

ON THE FLIP SIDE - If you do consume so many resources that you cause others problems then we aren't the place for you. We are working on VPS solutions that will give you an environment where you can't affect others. They will start in the $20-$30 range. When we have these available we will let everyone know.

Thanks,
Matt Heaton / CEO Bluehost.com

[KenJackson]

You're sharing a server with 800-1000 other domains.

Is that true? Do we have access to that information somewhere?

I remember I asked the pre-sales guy how many sites share each server, and I can't remember the number but I think he said something like 450. I thought that was an absurbly large number, so I figured he didn't know, or that was the total per cluster or something.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I have no real basis to know how much one server can handle. I'm just surprised. And since my site is largely for a hobby and self-training, I doubt that I will press the CPU limits anyway.

[dvessel]

Look here: http://www.domaintools.com/

Shows the number of domains on the IP. It could be more like 450 accounts on a server + the multiple domains being taken advantage of.

939 domains on my box.

btw, Dreamhost doesn't have a 60min time limit. We talked about this not too long ago.

[KenJackson]

Wow! There are 930 hosts listed for box117. And they only listed two of my three domains, so the number could be a bit higher.

Thanks for the tip about domaintools.

[dvessel]

True, and some could just be parked domains doing nothing.. Who knows how many are using up resources. It tends to work out though.