How many people share a shared server?

Before I make a decision about going with basic hosting, a virtual shared server or a dedicated server, I am wondering if anyone knows how many people generally share a shared server? I am being told that 20 will share a VPS, so would a Shared Server do... 100? 200? 50?

In reply to:
Before I make a decision about going with basic hosting, a virtual shared server or a dedicated server, I am wondering if anyone knows how many people generally share a shared server? I am being told that 20 will share a VPS, so would a Shared Server do... 100? 200? 50?

Yes, 20 is normal for VPS. Shared? Up to 1,000 and more depending on the host.

Peace,
Gene Steinberg
Co-Host, The Paracast
http://www.theparacast.com

It does not mean many things.
Some users take a lot of resources (huge website with high traffic) and many others minimal ones (little website with almost no traffic).

And all servers does not have the same hardware.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Server_Statistics

On Formosa for instance, there is about 1100 users, but a customer can have many users.

For instance i have 7 users, but with little or almost no traffic for most of them.

Some customers may also have hundred users.

In brief : this doesn't mean a lot of things about Performances.

And beyond the users dimension there is the domains and subdomains dimension. I have a dozen domains/subdomains. Others have one. Some people have a lot more.

Then there's the fact that our servers are also clustered...

Server hardware is cheap. When DreamHost notices that the load on a particular server (or group of servers) is getting high, they will either move users around or simply add more servers.

The server I'm on has 244 users in /etc/passwd. Minus all the system accounts for daemons (around 50) we have 194 users on the server. But it could also be that some users have multiple shell acounts ( I have three for example). If you're not happy with the server load you can ask nicely and DH will move you to a new server - this is what I did some time ago. I'm happy since then.

Promo-Code: SAVEMONEY97 - Save $97 on your first year of hosting.

I think our site is just too big.

It's a phpBB board, heavily modified that went from 0-5000 users in two months, with a consistent load of 100 or more on all at times, 2 million page views in two months...

I think we are just HOGS.

The determination that people made about the number of users on a server was this: It doesn't matter.

However, it would probably be fair to say that no shared hosting is suitable for your purposes. Not that it would be impossible for it to work: I have no idea of exactly how much the resource consumption (mostly talking CPU and database connections here, not bandwidth or disk space) for a board that size would be (certain MODs could dramatically increase resource usage for phpBB, though, and at the 100 simultaneous users point it may well be irrelevant). DreamHost does offer promo codes and a 97-day money-back guarantee, of course, so there's no risk in trying it, except for your pains. If it doesn't work out, then you will have to look at VPS and dedicated server options.

emufarmers.com
Very little to do with either emus or farmers!

what's the command to find out how many users on the server?

In reply to:
what's the command to find out how many users on the server?

The easiest way I know of to list the other users on your server is to type the following in the shell

cd ..
ls

To count the number of users...

grep home /etc/passwd -c

Of-course, each customer may have created many users, so this is not a good indication of the number of customers on your server.

In-fact, as has been mentioned before, this information isn't really useful at all. wink

Mark

got it. thanks wink

796 users on fresca passwd

lol

I agree with everything I said in the thread Emufarmers linked to. tongue

Seriously, it's meaningless and nothing to worry about. You could be moved from a semi-slow server with 1200 users to an even slower server with 3 users, because one of them refuses to understand that you don't get a dedicated server for $9.95/month.

If you have a really busy site and it's not flying along here, there's a good chance that it's because your site needs to be on a dedicated server--not because of how many other users are on the shared server.

Even if it is okay here, but you see it quickly growing at a rate where it will need a dedicated--I'd just get it over with instead of waiting until you're forced to upgrade.

I think I'll go use up all of my users and not have them do anything. That way, others will see the user count and stay off of my lightly-loaded high-user-count server. smile

In reply to:

I think I'll go use up all of my users and not have them do anything. That way, others will see the user count and stay off of my lightly-loaded high-user-count server.

That's a great idea! smile

In reply to:
I think I'll go use up all of my users and not have them do anything. That way, others will see the user count and stay off of my lightly-loaded high-user-count server.

Make sure you use unpleasant, politically-incorrect user names. Nobody is going to want to share a server with users called pornstar, buttdiver, childrapist or anything like that.

Although not necessarily meaningful, if you want to know how many actual customers (not users) are on your account just do:

cat /etc/group | cut -b1-2 | grep pg | wc -l

This should be 100% accurate of the total amount of *customers* not users on your server.

The only way this would not be accurate is on the rare occasion someone on your server created a group which started with pg (very rare).

Edited by dhftw on 06/01/07 10:43 AM (server time).

How many people share a shared server?