GreenGeeks has been providing web hosting for a very long time and our management have been in the industry even longer. We’ve seen our fair share of outages caused mostly by a few customers bringing the server to a grinding halt due to poorly coded web sites, too much traffic and a slew of other reasons sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly… these users are often dubbed as an “abusive user”.
GreenGeeks has coded several systems to prevent a lot of these “outbreaks” from affecting our service, and for the most part the systems have done a great job, however there are certain elements we weren’t able to catch, which did cause slow downs and even service interruptions due to a system coming to a grinding halt. That was then…
Now… we’re happy to announce that we’re running Container-based technology on all of our servers. This technology allows us to isolate each customer into its own “virtual segment”. What this means is that if there is an “abusive user” exceeding its allotted computing resources, their account will be slowed down to prevent service interruption (slow downs, intermittent service, complete outages) to other customers while those not offending the resources will continue to operate as it should. All of our customers will be able to track their resource usage by clicking the resource usage icon in their cPanel or by viewing the quick stats on the left hand side.
This might scare a few people, but here is what we see. Over 99% of our customer base never comes close to the resource limits. In fact, we’ve given each customer more than what our terms of service allows for. The idea here is to maintain an environment that will allow you to see those bursts in traffic without affecting everyone else. That’s our goal. For those customers who do get slowed down, it’s an indication that you need to either optimize or upgrade to a plan that will be suitable for your resource usage… in other words, you’ve out grown your existing account.
Bottom line: This technology will greatly increase the performance and reliability of our web hosting services by limiting those who are exceeding their fair share of resources. Allowing over 99% of our customer base to enjoy world-class shared hosting service. This technology also gives us the ability to provide a no-pressure upgrade path for customers. You’re given multiple options such as:
- Optimize your site to reduce usage
- Accept the slow downs during when your site peaks OR
- Upgrade to a suitable plan.