Overselling on a Virtual Private Server

19/10/08

What is Overselling ?

Overselling may be defined as a claim to sell beyond the means of delivery. Overselling is better understood by an example.

Suppose there is a web hosting company. It has a server with 40 GB hard drive and 400 GB bandwidth. If the company has sold 10 GB to one single client and has 4 clients in total on the same server then the company has sold out 40 GB hard drive. Also, the company has provided 100 GB bandwidth to each client which makes 400 GB for 4 clients than the resources of the server have been sold out. If in future the company notices that the disk space used by each client is not more than 7 GB and the bandwidth used by each client is not more than 70 GB and the company decides to host yet another client on the same server and provide the client with the same resources which are allocated to other clients on the server.

This means that the company has provided the client with 10GB disk space and 100 GB bandwidth which is not available on the server as it has been assigned to other clients. This is called overselling. It is called overselling as the resources which are offered to the clients are practically not available.

For example a telephone company. If suppose a telephone company has millions of users and all the users use the service at the same time than it will not be possible for the company to provide them the service as the capacity of the company to provide the service is less as compared to the service used when all the clients use the service at the same time. So overselling is not practical and is not reliable also as their is no guarantee when the resources will be used. Overselling is done on a much cheaper rate than regular. Some of the clients are not aware overselling and this is the reason that they choose cheaper packages which are not reliable enough. Overselling also depends on the server which is being used by the provider.

What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS) ?

Virtual Private Server (VPS) is one of the few types of servers available for web hosting. As the name suggests, these servers are like dedicated servers but are virtual. These servers are setup on the dedicated servers and provide the dedicated environment to the client. The features which are provided with the Virtual Private Server are more or less the same as the dedicated servers. As these servers are setup on the dedicated server, they are provided with some resources and these resources can only be utilized by the server to which these resources are alloted. This means no other Virtual Private Server hosted on the same dedicated server can use these resources. This is a very great advantage of a Virtual Private Server but for some it is not.

Overselling on a Virtual Private Server.

If you are planning to have VPS Hosting and start your web hosting business than you will not be able to oversell these resources. The reason for this is, when you will have a Virtual Private Server you will be given some resources with the server. you can utilize these resources but if you try to oversell these resources than the server will not be reliable enough. If you oversell these resources and suppose the resources get used up than the server will get overloaded and might crash as it cannot use up the resources alloted to any other Virtual Private Server hosted on the same dedicated server. Also, the web hosting company which has provided you with the server might cancel your server as your Virtual Private Server is causing problems to the dedicated server on which your server is hosted. Virtual Private Servers are unlike the shared server and the reseller servers which can use up the resources which are alloted to any other account on the same server. So if you try overselling on your Virtual Private Server then you might loose your server as well as your clients. This is the reason that Virtual Private Servers are not suggested for overselling.

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