Resource Usage Policies

 

What are Resource Usage Policies?

In hosting environments, 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 Vercaa’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.

General Content & Service Restrictions

Backups Vercaa’s servers are not allowed to be used as a backup/storage system. Reselling Reselling is not allowed on Web Hosting and WordPress Hosting plans. If reselling is desired, a reseller hosting plan must be purchased. Adult Content Under no circumstance is pornography permitted. Nudity, adult-oriented e-commerce stores, and similar are allowed if the content is legal in the United States of America. Vercaa.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Chat Applications All interactive chat web applications are strictly prohibited on Vercaa’s servers. This includes but is not limited to chat applications written in PHP, Perl, CGI, Python, Ruby, etc. in addition to IRC or IRC bots. Any web application that provides ‘real-time’ chat is not permitted. Shoutboxes, chatboxes, live chat/live help (such as but not limited to LiveZilla) and other web-based chat programs 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 Web Applications & Web Accessible Scripts All web applications that are out of date and actively being exploited will be shut down immediately without notice.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. Forums and any applications using a commenting system should have some form of spam protection or moderation. CAPTCHA is a popular way to eliminate spam robots from spamming your website. General Search Engine Optimization (SEO) farms or similar are strictly forbidden on Vercaa’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 exchange networks are not permitted. Offering Image, File, Document and Data storage, and free hosting and email services are strictly prohibited. Off-site media storage is not permitted. Operating a public mirror site is not permitted. Running a proxy or anonymizer, whether publicly accessible or protected, is not permitted. Prime bank or bank debenture-related sites, bitcoin sites, lottery sites, muds or online RPGs, hate sites, hacker-related sites, sites promoting illegal activity, IP scanner or other hacking tools, mail bombing or spam scripts, or forums and websites that distribute or promote warez content are expressly forbidden. Bit torrent applications, trackers, and clients, as well as any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities, are forbidden. The operation of gaming servers (such as but not limited to Minecraft, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, battlefield1942) are forbidden. Web spiders and indexers are 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. If you have a question on whether or not your content is in violation, please email our Abuse Department for clarification. Resource Usage Restrictions By using the CloudLinux system, the shared hosting accounts are limited to a certain level of resources. Our shared hosting packages support the following CloudLinux resource limits: CPU speed limit, relative to a single core. Measured by the number of cores, our shared hosting packages start from 100% (1x CPU core). Physical memory limit (also includes shared memory and disk cache). Measured in MB, our hosting packages start from 1024MB. IO throughput - combines both read & write operations. Measured in MBs per second, our shared hosting packages offer a limit of 10MB per second. IOPS restricts the total number of read/write operations per second. Our shared hosting packages have a limit of 1024 operations per second. EP (Entry processes) represents the max number of concurrent connections to dynamic scripts as well as SSH and cron jobs running simultaneously. Our packages start with a limit of 10 entry processes. NPROC (Number of processes) - Max number of processes within LVE, our shared hosting accounts are limited to 100 processes. Detailed technical information on CloudLinux limits can be found on the Cloudlinux Documentation website. These limits can vary depending on what hosting package is used and according to the level of resources for which is recommended as is follows: Web Hosting plans:

1. Starter  – maximum 100% CPU resources and 1024 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 10 entry processes. 2. Pro  – maximum 200% CPU resources and 2048 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 15 entry processes. 3. Turbo – maximum 300% CPU resources and 3072 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 30 entry processes. 4. Turbo+ – maximum 600% CPU resources and 6144 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 30 entry processes.

WordPress Hosting plans:

1. WordPress Starter  – maximum 100% CPU resources and 1024 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 10 entry processes. 2. WordPress Pro  – maximum 200% CPU resources and 2048 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 15 entry processes. 3. WordPress Turbo – maximum 300% CPU resources and 3072 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 30 entry processes. 4. WordPress Turbo+ – maximum 600% CPU resources and 6144 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 30 entry processes.

Reseller Hosting plans:

1. Kickstart – maximum 100% CPU resources and 2048 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 20 entry processes. 2. Grow – maximum 100% CPU resources and 2048 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 20 entry processes. 3. Expand – maximum 100% CPU resources and 2048 MB memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 20 entry processes. 4. Established – maximum 100% CPU resources and 2048 memory; IO: 10 MB/s; IOPS: 1024; up to 20 entry processes.

Resource Usage Enforcement It is also important to note that many of these limits can be seen as “hard” limits. If your account start to affect the overall performance of a server, we do need to have limits and policies in place. Customers using the shared hosting service are provided with detailed up-to-date statistics for their CPU and Memory usage under the service control panel (cPanel). The customer is responsible for maintaining their account and any installed software in a proper manner to assure all installed software operates in their optimal state and account resources are released and available to other users as soon as possible to assure optimal performance of the hosting environment for all customers sharing the resource. If an account is found to be in violation of these Resource Usage Policies, we will do our best to work with clients to give 48 hours, 5 days, or 10 days notice depending on the severity of the violation. A customer who exceeds the level of consumption 100 times (100 Faults) within 24 hours are going to be announced by the tech department with the purpose of website optimization or shifting to a plan compatible with the level of consumption. We reserve the right as outlined in the Terms of Service to limit the account's resource usage limits if it is causing a severe problem.

Database Restrictions

All users are restricted to 15 concurrent MySQL connections. 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 Vercaa. Remote database access is for administrative purposes only.

Files and Directories

•  The total number of inodes in an account may not exceed the values listed below. Every file (a webpage, image, email, php file, directory, etc.) on your account uses up one (1) inode.

Shared Hosting plans:

1. Starter  – maximum 250,000 inodes 2. Pro  – maximum 350,000 inodes 3. Turbo – maximum 500,000 inodes

WordPress Hosting plans:

1. Starter  – maximum 250,000 inodes 2. Pro  – maximum 350,000 inodes 3. Turbo  – maximum 500,000 inodes

Reseller Hosting plans:

1. Kickstart – maximum 250,000 inodes 2. Grow –  maximum 250,000 inodes 3. Expand – maximum 250,000 inodes 4. Established – maximum 250,000 inodes

•  A single log file should not exceed 1 GB in size. The total size of all similar log files should not exceed 5 GB in size.
•  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

•  Simultaneous Apache connections may not exceed 50 from one individual source at any given time.
•  Web processes should not fork or spawn subprocesses.

Email and Mailing Lists

Unsolicited Bulk/Commercial Email / SPAM The use of Vercaa.com servers and networks to transmit unsolicited bulk/commercial email (also known 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. To maintain the integrity and reliability of our email services, we have established the following sending limits: Hourly limit: Users are limited to sending a maximum of 300 emails per domain per hour. Daily limit: Users are limited to sending a maximum of 3,000 emails per domain per day. Weekly limit: Users are limited to sending a maximum of 10,000 emails per domain per week. 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. POP connections are limited to 60 per hour. SMTP connections (outbound email connections) are limited to 500 per hour per server account. Mailing lists larger than 1,500 will require a VPS service from us. Dividing one list into smaller parts to get around this limit is not allowed. Any mailing list must be throttled so that it sends an email every 6 seconds at the very minimum. If the mailing list software you are using doesn’t support throttling you must use something else. We do this as this keeps the server load from going very high and causing problems for other users. If you don’t do this you will be suspended. We do not allow you to send to a mailing list you were given or that you bought. This is spamming and we have zero tolerance for this. Any mailing list must comply with the rules set forth by the United States of America and can be found at http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business. No Direct SMTP mailing system scripts are permitted. Mail should be relayed through the local MTA. These limits are in place to prevent excessive use of resources and to ensure fair usage across all users. Failure to adhere to these limits may result in temporary suspension of email services.

Cron Jobs

•  A cron job should not execute more frequently than once every 15 minutes on a shared hosting service. If set for a shorter time, our system will automatically reset it to 15 minutes without prior notice. For execution frequencies lower than 15 minutes, we offer VPS Hosting services.

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.

Dedicated IP Addresses

•  Dedicated IP Addresses require valid justification.
•  Vercaa has the right to decline any dedicated IP requests without any explanation.

Failure To Comply With Policy Failure to fully comply with these terms is grounds for account suspension and/or termination. We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice. Questions The examples listed herein are a guide and may not be an exhaustive list. If you have a question on whether or not your content is in violation, please create a ticket with our Support Department for clarification.