How many reseller accts per server?

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Posted by softstor, 08-06-2004, 05:26 PM
I am interested in knowing how many resellers accounts you place on a server? Do you play it safe and only put 20-25 reseller accounts on your server, or do you just keep putting on reseller accounts until the server is full? Please feel free to post what criteria you use to determine the number of reseller accounts.
Posted by ferzan, 08-06-2004, 06:20 PM
Hi there, It all depends on the system resources consumed by existing accounts. You can have one intensive site consuming all of your resources or 1000 small sites. The same is true for reseller hosting I guess. Check out Dedicated Server forum for more information. But I don't think you can find out more than what I say because its basicly different for every host and every server. Thanks
Posted by RRolfe, 08-06-2004, 06:30 PM
This is why I am happy I use H-Sphere. Due to its cluster setup all you have to do is add another server to the cluster and Reseller's users will start to be setup on that server instead. Makes it nice for us and our resellers as niether one of us need to worry about host many resellers are on a paticular server.
Posted by MadCow, 08-06-2004, 09:10 PM
We use WHMAutoPilot which also will automatically start putting resellers or shared users onto a new server. You really need to play each server by ear. We generally do not oversell disk space and watch our server loads. Bryan
Posted by cartika-andrew, 08-06-2004, 09:23 PM
There's alot of variables here - Basically - look at what your host is chargeing you for a reseller account and the resources they are offering... Its pretty easy to do a basic calculation and determine the number of accounts on a server to be profitable...
Posted by NexDog, 08-06-2004, 11:13 PM
We average on 30-35 accounts per server. A server MUST have at least 25 accounts or it's a liability. If server load etc is still low at 25 accounts, add another 5. Then review at 30, then 35 etc.
Posted by softstor, 08-06-2004, 11:23 PM
What is the max server load to consider the server load acceptable?
Posted by NexDog, 08-06-2004, 11:33 PM
That depends on the server specifications. A dual proc machine is still fast with a load of 3-4.....but 2 is optimal for a server like that.
Posted by demonmoo, 08-06-2004, 11:34 PM
Well , the important thing is not so much the average , but peak times. If you see no free memory (after removing buffers and cache) and you see high loads up in the 90s often the you have a problem.
Posted by Andrew, 08-06-2004, 11:45 PM
If you see high loads in the 90's it's one user causing it, 99.99% of the time. If you have people watching and paying attention, it's virtually impossible to oversubscribe a server to that level.
Posted by mdrussell, 08-07-2004, 04:57 AM
Sure if 25 accounts is your break even point then your profit margins per server are pretty low? We average 40 accounts per server and the servers run fine.
Posted by NexDog, 08-07-2004, 07:48 AM
Depends what you mean by break-even and what you mean by profit. Hell, if the server, software, staff (including my partner and myself) were all paid after 25 accounts, I'd be a rich man.
Posted by mdrussell, 08-07-2004, 07:52 AM
For break even we have the cost of the hardware, estimated bandwidth usage and cost, cpanel license etc and we factor in (probably not that accurately) some prices to cover staff... How do you do it?
Posted by NexDog, 08-07-2004, 08:06 AM
Do you factor your own wages into the break even cost. I guess not because you said "some prices to cover staff". Basically, at the end of the month or whenever, when everything's paid including me and Chris and 4 admins and anyone else, whatever is left, that is profit in my book. If you had 40 accounts on a server and 15 were the profit margin (15 x $30 = $450 x 20 servers = $9,000 PROFIT........that isn't "pretty low" in my view. How do you do it?
Posted by mdrussell, 08-07-2004, 08:08 AM
For gross profit, the same way
Posted by IHSL, 08-07-2004, 12:27 PM
It really depends on the makeup of your servers. If they are clustered, the number of resellers per servers is nullified, as one reseller can have sites on multiple machines, without missing a beat (auto-assigned by H-Sphere) CPanel/Plesk are much easier to work out averages, as they have much stricter 'rules' in how reseller accounts are dispersed - you're going to get different numbers, as the specs get higher. On average, we look at the plesk/cpanel machines when 30 reseller accounts are live on it - sometimes this can go as high as 40/50/60+ depending on what the actual specs of the reseller accounts on there, are. For instance, a plesk machine of ours has 62 resellers on it, but only 164 domains live (20 and 40 domain limits), and has allocation levels of 41% (disk), 58% (traffic) and 72% of all allocated domain space used. 62 reseller accounts, and not even half of the machines base capabilities are allocated, let alone used (usage is always less than allocation, by definition.) Simon

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