hosting providers with everything unlimited

[thisisit3]

I've noticed that in the past year or so, several hosting providers have cropped up, who offer unlimited... of just about everything. Unlimited hosting space, unlimited bandwidth, etc.

Jag also offers unlimited disk space for shared accounts (but not for VPS, etc).

Just out of curiosity, how can this be? Can I upload my photos collection (from my 10MP camera) which is about 2TB? Will I end up getting an email from the hosting provider telling me that "oops, your account needs upgrading to XYZ package"? I'm sure they'll find an excuse for something like that.

What do others think? Does anyone have experience with these "all unlimited" hosting packages?

PS:
The one I'm looking at, gives you unlimited disk and bandwidth and domains in one account for $6/mo.

[JPC-Jawad]

Thisisit, this is a very good question. Note, that policies have been implemented by most hosting companies that offer unlimited hosting to ensure the best and most efficient use of hosting space, and not as a personal backup location. This has led to hosting becoming so cheap over the years. There is also physical limits of hardware when it comes to storage on a single machine.
We also offer unlimited hosting but the files hosted should to be related to your website. I would request you to go through the "Resource Usage" section in our Terms of Service link here to understand what you can host on your shared hosting account.

[thisisit3]

hmmm interesting.

The prices are very impressive I have to say, very cheap. They are so cheap, its a wonder how these companies make a profit.

I'm sure they have one way or another to force clients to "upgrade" to the next deal...

JPC-Jawad, at least here in Jag the offers appear more realistic. With the recent problems (dead servers, GNAX power failure, etc), I've been looking for alternative methods to spread my web sites over several VPS servers (on different hardware nodes, of course).

I haven't made any decisions yet, still looking at the plain VPS against the Hybrid VPS offers.

[Vin DSL]

I'm sure they have one way or another to force clients to "upgrade" to the next deal [...]

[...] I haven't made any decisions yet, still looking at the plain VPS against the Hybrid VPS offers.

Well... based on personal experience...

I have the Hybrid/VPS 100 package. My account was bringing down a SDX server here (Kraken). Since moving to Hybrid/VPS, it hasn't died once! I just looked -- 88 days uptime (and counting), sub-1 server load, 50k-100k visitors a day without breaking a sweat, blah, blah, blah...

With the recent problems (dead servers, GNAX power failure, etc), I've been looking for alternative methods to spread my web sites over several VPS servers (on different hardware nodes, of course).

Um...

I wasn't down for a single minute, through all of this - hasn't been rebooted since January, when the Hybrid/VPS account was setup.

But, that isn't what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to say is...

I designed an app (a while back) using a flat file db. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, before porting it to MySQL... but I was afraid this app would start crashing MySQL in a shared environment. As it is, this app requires a folder with about 1-million files in it - give or take.

To the point...

After I moved to Hybrid/VPS, within 3 days I ran out of inodes!

I contacted Tech Support, and they boosted my inodes to an ungodly amount -- and they said, when I run out of those, let them know, and they'll give me more.

Google'ing this "inode situation", I found out that this is one of the primary (and invisible) ways that lesser web hosts limit (otherwise) "Unlimited" accounts.

Put another way, these "Unlimited" hosting packages are HIGHLY limited in the underpinnings - in the core config - in ways that you won't see, until it's too late.

JagPC (evidently) doesn't do this, e.g. it doesn't play its clients for suckers!

Personally, I'm totally happy with JagPC -- and totally happy with Hybrid/VPS.

Maybe somebody has a better deal, but I doubt it. I would judge that most of those "Unlimited" offers are simply a marketing tactic - akin to dangling a carrot in front of a horse, to make him move... LoL! And, this horse ain't going nowhere!

[thisisit3]

Your post is a nice collection of generalizations. Yes, many were not affected by the GNAX power outage, that doesn't mean anything. Just being lucky doesn't solve the problem.

My VPS reached its inode limit as well (which resulted in a corrupted MySQL database). Tech support raised the limit and no problems since then.

In more detail, I'm debating a single Hybrid VPS server versus several normal VPS servers spread over multiple hardware nodes.

With a single Hybrid VPS, I get a lot of power, but I also have a single-point-of-failure.

With multiple normal VPS servers, I get less power per server, but the sites are spread out, thus require less resources. But, multiple hardware nodes means more chances of getting a failure.

[Ron]

I am struggling with similar philosophical issues myself. I feel your pain. :-(

[JPC-Greg]

Your post is a nice collection of generalizations. Yes, many were not affected by the GNAX power outage, that doesn't mean anything. Just being lucky doesn't solve the problem.

My VPS reached its inode limit as well (which resulted in a corrupted MySQL database). Tech support raised the limit and no problems since then.

In more detail, I'm debating a single Hybrid VPS server versus several normal VPS servers spread over multiple hardware nodes.

With a single Hybrid VPS, I get a lot of power, but I also have a single-point-of-failure.

With multiple normal VPS servers, I get less power per server, but the sites are spread out, thus require less resources. But, multiple hardware nodes means more chances of getting a failure.

it wasnt lucky that you werent out, we have a ton of machines, chances of them all going out is so ridiculous its not worth mentioning. Your not lucky in that you dodged a bullet, your safe where you are, its what your paying for. We have solid hardware, solid networking (although we are improving capacity 10fold over the next few months) , solid support, and just plain solid operation....dont panic!

you werent affected by any problems by design! But we will certainly sell you more services if you insist, but we dont run some scam so let me say again, you dont need it.

Of course now saying that there is the other side. If you run a business and your business is important to you, you can never spend enough to get peace of mind and assurance, protection . Heck, look at us! We spent the money, time, and resources over a decade to provide ourselves and hence you, our clients, the best protections and solutions we can. But we wont lie, its not always about you, sometimes we do these things just so I can sleep well at night knowing everything will there in the morning. You should always do the same for your own business.

[JPC-Greg]

What I started out saying though, is the power outage or a machine having a problem is abnormal, not the norm. So don't jump into panic mode when a problem comes up. And even when they do, they are far less disastrous these days then they may have been years ago. Its all part of being part of our team and decade plus of experience.

[Ron]

That would be more comforting if restores didn't take 3 days.

[JPC-Greg]

That would be more comforting if restores didn't take 3 days.

They dont always, again not the norm. Thats the ones with large arrays that end up getting a lot of attention and talk. We're working on some things that should improve that still.

[thisisit3]

JPC-Greg, yes I see your point, I wasn't implying that you run a scam or something similar, but I don't trust GNAX and I don't believe that they have power generators, proof is the last power outage.

I also have a mixed experience with your backups, in the last disaster, backups didn't work because they were corrupt, so I used my own backup and saved the day. But in another occasion, your backups worked fine.

Anyway, you nicely explained that I would like to have some assurance, so multiple VPS servers might give me something extra.

[JPC-Greg]

They have generators, battery backups, etc all the typical things you expect in any datacenter. Still, crap happens. Lines or other faults that werent expected to fail can fail, all you can do is overcome and adapt, fix that problem and know you wont have it happen again. The best we can hope for in business is just to not repeat problems we experience, we can't predict a future new problem. We just do our best to reduce the risk.

We don't have problems with corrupt backups anymore, that's very old school. Again a fresh problem at the time that we overcame long ago.

[JPC-Jawad]

hmmm interesting.

The prices are very impressive I have to say, very cheap. They are so cheap, its a wonder how these companies make a profit.

Economies of Scale.

[Skip]

What is a typical RAID rebuild time on a VPS vs a Hybrid VPS?

[thisisit3]

I guess, if the harddrive space is the same, then it shouldn't be different from the two.

A hardware RAID array doesn't care what kind of data you have stored in the harddrives of the hardware node.

If the hardware node is 1TB with 50% of used space, it should take the same amount of time, since the stored data are just data, there is no difference between VPS and Hybrid VPS.