0

I have found a cheap vps solution to cover my needs. Reading through the policies of the vps service, I found that they state "CPU usage should not exceed 70%". Is there a way to prevent this? I plan to run a rails application on that vps + postgres + redis and I have no way of knowing when cpu usage will exceed 70%. I mean, should you be concerned about this when you sign for a vps service? Is this normal or is it bad marketing or does it come from poor virtualization technology they may use?

Nick_K
  • 143
  • 5
  • Utilization is work over time. Do they specify the time period they are counting that from? – Matthew Ife Feb 13 '15 at 10:02
  • copied from their Terms of Service: "...It is not allowed to use more then 75% of CPU time or/and doing more then 100io operations for a long period of time (>6h)..." – Nick_K Feb 13 '15 at 10:09
  • You cannot honour the CPU requirement in its current form, its nonsense. Its the equivalent of saying "whilst travelling in your car, you should not exceed 75% speed". – Matthew Ife Feb 13 '15 at 10:15
  • Read between the lines and it says: we overcommit CPU and we need a stick to beat you with if your usage pattern has a negative impact on the other VPS's on the same host. Generally speaking overcommitting CPU is not necessarily bad and probably the reason for their low prices. – HBruijn Feb 13 '15 at 10:50
  • Thank you all for all your comments. I realized, that they compensate for the low price they charge with the strange policy the impose on their users. – Nick_K Feb 16 '15 at 08:16

1 Answers1

0
Is there a way to prevent this?

Potentially, install & configure 'cpulimit' package if possible. Nice/renice might help.

should you be concerned about this when you sign for a vps service?

That TOS is ridiculous and puts burden of resource consumption monitoring on the user. Any other company will give you X resources and you are allowed (at least try) to use them 100%, 24/7.

 Is this normal or is it bad marketing

It is not normal, even for cheap VPS providers. Resource management should be done at the VPS level and it should not be something a user has to manage within the instance. This is a bad policy and hints at issues with their infrastructure and service in general. 

does it come from poor virtualization technology

To my knowledge, every virtualization platform allows you to configure guest resources. The provider is either lazy, bad at their job, or is using the written policy as a way to bully users.

jlehtinen
  • 1,958
  • 2
  • 13
  • 15
  • thanx. I was thinking of using cpulimit too but what would be the point of monitoring your own cpu limit for something you pay?. Anyway, they charge 100 us dollars / year for a 2 core cpu + 90 GB space with no backup plan. – Nick_K Feb 16 '15 at 08:14
  • @Nick_K That's not even a great price. Take a look here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=a6c687ca98131ae55e35f1dcc43cc6a8&f=104 – jlehtinen Feb 16 '15 at 15:06