This is a topic that is mentioned every day and it's either praised or frowned upon by consumers and providers alike. To make matters worse, the term overselling is also very commonly interchanged with overloading which is a very different thing. I hope this thread will be an open line of communication to discuss the thoughts, ideas, implementation, and reasons as to why you feel the way you do. It will be both informative and helpful to us providers, and consumers as well to hopefully serve as a reference for understanding what overselling really is.
First of all before this discussion can begin, let's define what overselling is. I have seen this defined as several things. Here are a few:
Overselling refers to selling of a volatile good in excess of actual capacity.
To sell too much or too many of
Overselling is an act of over-allocating resources.
Reading the textbook definitions of overselling I think we can all agree it does not sound like a good thing. As a consumer, it sounds like a problem waiting to happen, and as a provider it sounds like an administrative nightmare.
Now, if it was really that bad, then why would every major host and every major industry oversell? Proper overselling consists of an automated and intelligent system to pro-actively monitor, maintain, and ensure that all customers have a fair share of resources so they have the potential to use the full limits of their plan. So, if there are no limits, or overselling mechanisms in place, then there is no way to protect the customers, servers, and network, therefore leaving everything vulnerable to overload. The nature of overselling and overloading is clearly different.
I think a lot can be said about the total volume for what is being oversold, and the required resource usage of that item or service. For example, if a 50 passenger plane sells 55 tickets, you could end up at the airport without a seat. Each passenger would obviously use 100% of that resource usage because you cannot cut a person in half (haha!), or fit two people in the seat if they are small children (legally).
Now, let's think about another the restaurant industry. Let's assume the restaurant seats 100 people, and has each a men's and women's bathroom's each with 4 toilets (volume). Uhoh.. now we're drastically overselling! However, the usage of that resource is nowhere near 100% either otherwise everyone would be spending all their time on the toilet instead of their at their table actually eating their food (let's assume this is not a spicy food restaurant. haha).
Finally, let's go into the web hosting industry. Let's say just for simple mathematics sake (real numbers would be a lot more than this in today's standards) a server has 100GB of storage, 200GB of bandwidth capacity, and 100 accounts on it. But, the host is selling plan's that contain 4GB of storage, and 8GB of bandwidth! Uhoh, the volume of 100 accounts is too much. But what if the usage on those accounts only averaged 300MB of storage, and 400MB of transfers?? Hrm.. looks like a lot of wasted resources if these were not oversold.
Now what does that mean? Well, let's be realistic. As a consumer you want to get the most value for the money you are paying, right? If you were to go buy a common household item such as toilet paper would you pay 10x as much for this every time you needed it when the store across the street is selling it for a tenth of the cost? Absolutely not, unless of course it was laced with gold or they were also giving you a lifetime supply of toothpaste with it. haha.
So here's the challenge of the larger hosts (let's be honest, if a host is so small they can't even fill a server or two then they aren't faced with this yet).
1) If a host doesn't oversell, what are they doing with the massive amount of resources (90%+) that aren't being used? It costs money to have and provide those resources, which means it costs the customer more (assuming the company is profitable).
2) If a host doesn't oversell, and they are large enough to fill many servers AND remain competitive in pricing, what else are they sacrificing? Is it customer service and support? The Data Center? Network? Servers? Legalities? Overhead? Unfair pay, treatment, or benefits to employees? Insurance? etc. This you may never know...
3) If a host doesn't oversell, besides the bad "karma" that goes along with it, why don't they? Do they lack the technical abilities to do this right?
If a host DOES oversell, then it is imperative that their methods are properly designed, implemented, and maintained to ensure it prevents overload as stated above. The "art" of overselling is definitely something that can take time, experience, and pro-active technological advantages to perfect.
First of all before this discussion can begin, let's define what overselling is. I have seen this defined as several things. Here are a few:
Overselling refers to selling of a volatile good in excess of actual capacity.
To sell too much or too many of
Overselling is an act of over-allocating resources.
Reading the textbook definitions of overselling I think we can all agree it does not sound like a good thing. As a consumer, it sounds like a problem waiting to happen, and as a provider it sounds like an administrative nightmare.
Now, if it was really that bad, then why would every major host and every major industry oversell? Proper overselling consists of an automated and intelligent system to pro-actively monitor, maintain, and ensure that all customers have a fair share of resources so they have the potential to use the full limits of their plan. So, if there are no limits, or overselling mechanisms in place, then there is no way to protect the customers, servers, and network, therefore leaving everything vulnerable to overload. The nature of overselling and overloading is clearly different.
I think a lot can be said about the total volume for what is being oversold, and the required resource usage of that item or service. For example, if a 50 passenger plane sells 55 tickets, you could end up at the airport without a seat. Each passenger would obviously use 100% of that resource usage because you cannot cut a person in half (haha!), or fit two people in the seat if they are small children (legally).
Now, let's think about another the restaurant industry. Let's assume the restaurant seats 100 people, and has each a men's and women's bathroom's each with 4 toilets (volume). Uhoh.. now we're drastically overselling! However, the usage of that resource is nowhere near 100% either otherwise everyone would be spending all their time on the toilet instead of their at their table actually eating their food (let's assume this is not a spicy food restaurant. haha).
Finally, let's go into the web hosting industry. Let's say just for simple mathematics sake (real numbers would be a lot more than this in today's standards) a server has 100GB of storage, 200GB of bandwidth capacity, and 100 accounts on it. But, the host is selling plan's that contain 4GB of storage, and 8GB of bandwidth! Uhoh, the volume of 100 accounts is too much. But what if the usage on those accounts only averaged 300MB of storage, and 400MB of transfers?? Hrm.. looks like a lot of wasted resources if these were not oversold.
Now what does that mean? Well, let's be realistic. As a consumer you want to get the most value for the money you are paying, right? If you were to go buy a common household item such as toilet paper would you pay 10x as much for this every time you needed it when the store across the street is selling it for a tenth of the cost? Absolutely not, unless of course it was laced with gold or they were also giving you a lifetime supply of toothpaste with it. haha.
So here's the challenge of the larger hosts (let's be honest, if a host is so small they can't even fill a server or two then they aren't faced with this yet).
1) If a host doesn't oversell, what are they doing with the massive amount of resources (90%+) that aren't being used? It costs money to have and provide those resources, which means it costs the customer more (assuming the company is profitable).
2) If a host doesn't oversell, and they are large enough to fill many servers AND remain competitive in pricing, what else are they sacrificing? Is it customer service and support? The Data Center? Network? Servers? Legalities? Overhead? Unfair pay, treatment, or benefits to employees? Insurance? etc. This you may never know...
3) If a host doesn't oversell, besides the bad "karma" that goes along with it, why don't they? Do they lack the technical abilities to do this right?
If a host DOES oversell, then it is imperative that their methods are properly designed, implemented, and maintained to ensure it prevents overload as stated above. The "art" of overselling is definitely something that can take time, experience, and pro-active technological advantages to perfect.
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