What are Resource Usage Policies?
In a shared hosting environment, a server's resources are what economists would call a common pool resource, meaning that although having plenty of available system resources benefits everyone, no single user has an incentive to ensure that they don't use too many resources themselves. In an effort to protect against the tragedy of the (server) commons, we have placed limits on the amount of a server's resources that any given user may consume. While these are limits, server abuse is not limited to these policies and is up to Site5's discretion what constitutes server abuse.
The Purpose of These Policies
Understand that these policies are in place to protect you, our customers, from poor service quality. Generally, if we need to impose a restriction on an account for resource abuse, that account is in violation of at least two of these policies (or one policy to a very serious degree) and is adversely affecting the other clients on their server. The large, large majority of sites, at least 99.5%, will never even have to take these limits into consideration. That being said, it's good to make yourself aware of them.
Enforcement
It is also important to note that many of these limits can be seen as "soft" limits. They are not actively enforced, and you can run up to or even over most of them without issue. If, however, you start to affect the overall performance of a server, we do need to have limits and policies in place. Without them it's incredibly hard to explain to the customer, in quantitative terms, exactly how a site is consuming too many system resources.
The Policies
Unsolicited Bulk/Commercial Email / SPAM
The use of Site5 Internet Solutions, Inc. servers and networks to transmit unsolicited bulk/commercial email (also know as spam) is strictly forbidden. Under no circumstance is the transmission of spam acceptable or tolerated.
The transmission of spam from our servers and networks can cause irreparable monetary and reputation damage. All damages caused by spamming will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Any client caught explicitly spamming from our servers or networks will have their account immediately terminated & without notice.
General Content & Service Restrictions
Backups
Site5's servers should not be used as a storage system for local computer backups.
Adult Content
Under no circumstance is adult content permitted on Site5's servers or networks. All adult oriented pictures, videos, links, written content and similar is strictly prohibited. Should you require hosting for adult oriented content, please contact a host who specializes in this hosting realm.
Chat Applications
All interactive chat web applications are strictly prohibited on Site5's servers. This includes but is not limited to chat applications written in PHP, Perl, CGI, Python, Ruby, etc. Any web application that provides 'real-time' chat is not permitted. Shoutboxes, Chatboxes and other web based chat programs other than those specifically provided by Site5 are prohibited.
Web Applications & Web Accessible Scripts
All web applications that are out of date and actively being exploited will be shut down immediately without notice. As a webmaster you should evaluate your web based applications and scripts on a regular basis to ensure they're secure and up to date.
General
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) farms or similar are strictly forbidden on Site5's servers and networks. SEO farms create undue strain and resource abuse on any given server and affect all clients.
- Banner rotation services and link exchanges are not permitted.
- Offering Image, File, Document and Data storage, and free hosting and email services are strictly prohibited.
- Operating a public mirror site is not permitted.
- Running a proxy, whether publicly accessible or protected, is not permitted.
- The abovementioned services / web content create undue system load on our servers and should only be run in a dedicated server environment. All violations will be shut down immediately and may result in account suspension and/or termination.
Resource Usage Restrictions
Processes
Processes invoked by the web server, cron, shell or any other method should not exceed the following limitations:
- Consume more than 16 MB of RAM.
- Utilize in excess of 15 seconds of CPU time.
- Number of open files should not exceed 64.
- Create core dumps.
- Number of simultaneous processes should not exceed 5.
- Execute a script/binary that forks in a way to create a fork bomb.
- Programs may not run in the background or listen on a network port. If you require a bot, service or daemon, you should consider a dedicated server, as very few shared web hosts allow this type of program.
Database Restrictions
- All users are restricted to 15 concurrent MySQL connections.
- Each database is restricted to 2 GB of disk space.
- Database queries should not exceed 3,000 per hour.
- Database changes (insert/update/delete) should not exceed 1,000 queries per hour.
- Database servers should not be used as a hosted solution. Database access should only be used for the web site hosted by Site5.
- Remote database access is for administrative purposes only.
Files and Directories
- The total number of inodes in an account may not exceed 25,000.
- A directory can not contain more than 2,500 immediate child files. This includes subdirectories themselves, but does not include files contained within those directories.
Web and Email
- Simultaneous Apache connections may not exceed 50 from one individual source at any given time.
- Web processes should not fork or spawn subprocesses.
- Files in excess of 10 MB should not be sent via email.
- Processes should not send outbound mail to more than 25 recipients at any given time.
- The maximum number of members per mailing list is 1,500.
Cron Jobs
- All cron jobs must be 'niced' to 15 or greater (see the Unix manpage for "nice" for more information).
- A cron job should not execute more frequently than once every 15 minutes.
Shell
- Our servers should not be used as an SSH bounce point to other servers/networks.
- You may not use the Unix "find" command recursively on directories more than 5 levels deep.
Failure To Comply With Policy
Failure to fully comply with these terms is grounds for account suspension and/or termination (with or without refund, subject to Site5's discretion). All accounts and/or servers contained within Site5's network must adhere to the above policies.
We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice. If we terminate your account for violating policy, you will forfeit your rights to a refund--and none will be given. No refunds for advanced payment.
Our Approach to Excessive Resource Usage
For more information on our general philosophy regarding resource usage, as well as our approach to dealing with instances of excessive resource usage, you can review our somewhat idealogical but highly informative wiki article on Overselling and Resource Usage.