What are Resource Usage Policies?

In a shared hosting environment, a server’s resources are what economists would call a common pool resource, meaning that although having plenty of available system resources benefits everyone, no single user has an incentive to ensure that they don’t use too many resources themselves. In an effort to protect against the tragedy of the (server) commons, we have placed limits on the amount of a server’s resources that any given user may consume. While these are limits, server abuse is not limited to these policies and is up to Energized I.T.’s discretion what constitutes server abuse. Please note that these resource policies are applicable towards shared, reseller, and semi-dedicated hosting services.

The Purpose of These Policies

Understand that these policies are in place to protect you, our customers, from poor service quality. Generally, if we need to impose a restriction on an account for resource abuse, that account is in violation of at least two of these policies (or one policy to a very serious degree) and is adversely affecting the other clients on their server. The large, large majority of sites, at least 99.5%, will never even have to take these limits into consideration. That being said, it’s good to make yourself aware of them.

Enforcement

It is also important to note that many of these limits can be seen as “soft” limits. They are not actively enforced, and you can run up to or even over most of them without issue. If, however, you start to affect the overall performance of a server, we do need to have limits and policies in place. Without them it’s incredibly hard to explain to the customer, in quantitative terms, exactly how a site is consuming too many system resources. If an account is found to be in violation of these Resource Usage Policies, we will do our best to work with clients to give 48 hours, 5 days, or 10 days notice depending on the severity of the violation. We reserve the right as outlined in the TOS to suspend a site if it is causing a severe problem.

The Policies

Unsolicited Bulk/Commercial Email / SPAM

The use of Energized I.T. LLC servers and networks to transmit unsolicited bulk/commercial email (also know as spam) is strictly forbidden. Under no circumstance is the transmission of spam acceptable or tolerated.

The transmission of spam from our servers and networks can cause irreparable monetary and reputation damage. All damages caused by spamming will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Any client caught explicitly spamming from our servers or networks will have their account immediately terminated & without notice.

General Content & Service Restrictions

Backups
Energized I.T.’s servers are not allowed be used as a backup/storage system and only one cPanel/SiteAdmin backup for that same account is allowed.

Adult Content
Under no circumstance is adult content permitted on Energized I.T.’s servers or networks. All adult oriented pictures, videos, links, written content and similar is strictly prohibited. Should you require hosting for adult oriented content, please contact a host who specializes in this hosting realm.

Chat Applications
All interactive chat web applications are strictly prohibited on Energized I.T.’s servers. This includes but is not limited to chat applications written in PHP, Perl, CGI, Python, Ruby, etc. in addition to IRC or IRC bots. Any web application that provides ‘real-time’ chat is not permitted. Shoutboxes, Chatboxes and other web based chat programs other than those specifically provided by Energized I.T. are prohibited.

Web Applications & Web Accessible Scripts
All web applications that are out of date and actively being exploited will be shut down immediately without notice. As a webmaster you should evaluate your web based applications and scripts on a regular basis to ensure they’re secure and up to date.

General

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) farms or similar are strictly forbidden on Energized I.T.’s servers and networks. SEO farms create undue strain and resource abuse on any given server and affect all clients.
Banner rotation services and link exchanges are not permitted.
Offering Image, File, Document and Data storage, and free hosting and email services are strictly prohibited.
Off-site media storage is not permitted.
Operating a public mirror site is not permitted.
Running a proxy or anonymizer, whether publicly accessible or protected, is not permitted.
Prime bank or bank debenture-related sites, lottery sites, muds or online RPGs, hate sites, hacker-related sites, sites promoting illegal activity, IP scanner or other hacking tools, mail bombing or spam scripts, or forums and websites that distribute or promote warez content are expressly forbidden.
Bit torrent applications, trackers, and clients as well as any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities are forbidden.
The operation of gaming servers (such as but not limited to Counter-Strike, Half-Life, battlefield1492) are forbidden.
Web spiders and indexers are not permitted.
The abovementioned services / web content create undue system load on our servers and should only be run in a dedicated server environment. All violations will be shut down immediately and may result in account suspension and/or termination.

If you have a question on whether or not your content is in violation, please email our Abuse Department for clarification.

Resource Usage Restrictions

Processes
Processes invoked by the web server, cron, shell or any other method should not exceed the following limitations:

Consume more than 16 MB of RAM.
Utilize in excess of 15 seconds of CPU time.
Number of open files should not exceed 64.
Create core dumps.
Number of simultaneous processes should not exceed 5.
Execute a script/binary that forks in a way to create a fork bomb.
Programs may not run in the background or listen on a network port. If you require a bot, service or daemon, you should consider a dedicated server, as very few shared web hosts allow this type of program.

Database Restrictions

All users are restricted to 15 concurrent MySQL connections.
Each database is restricted to 2 GB of disk space.
Database queries should not exceed 3,000 per hour.
Database changes (insert/update/delete) should not exceed 1,000 queries per hour.
Database servers should not be used as a hosted solution. Database access should only be used for the web site hosted by Energized I.T..
Remote database access is for administrative purposes only.

Files and Directories

The total number of inodes in an account may not exceed 75,000. Every file (a webpage, image, email, php file, directory, etc.) on your account uses up one (1) inode. This is not something we actively enforce and it will only become an issue if a client is causing problems for other people on the server. We will of course notify you if this is the case with a full explanation.
A directory can not contain more than 2,500 immediate child files. This includes subdirectories themselves, but does not include files contained within those directories.

Web

Simultaneous Apache connections may not exceed 50 from one individual source at any given time.
Web processes should not fork or spawn subprocesses.

Email and Mailing Lists

Files in excess of 10 MB should not be sent via email.
Processes should not send outbound mail to more than 25 recipients at any given time.
The maximum number of members per mailing list is 1,500.
POP connections are limited to 60 per hour.
SMTP connections (outbound email connections) are limited to 500 per hour.
Mailing lists larger than 1,500. Dividing one list into smaller parts to get around this limit is not allowed.
Any mailing list over 900 emails is only allowed in off peak times such as Saturday and Sunday or from 1am to 8am ET during the week.
Any mailing list must be throttled so that it sends an email every 6 seconds at the very minimum. If the mailing list software you are using doesn’t support throttling you must use something else. We do this as this keeps the server load from going very high and causing problems for other users. If you don’t do this you will be suspended.
We do not allow you to send to a mailing list you were given or that you bought. This is spamming and we have zero tollerence for this.
Any mailing list must comply with the rules set forth by the United States of America and can be found at: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/spam/.
No Direct SMTP mailing system scripts are permitted. Mail should be relayed through the local MTA.

Cron Jobs

All cron jobs must be ‘niced’ to 15 or greater (see the Unix manpage for “nice” for more information).
A cron job should not execute more frequently than once every 15 minutes.

Shell

Our servers should not be used as an SSH bounce point to other servers/networks.
You may not use the Unix “find” command recursively on directories more than 5 levels deep.

Failure To Comply With Policy

Failure to fully comply with these terms is grounds for account suspension and/or termination (with or without refund, subject to Energized I.T.’s discretion). All accounts and/or servers contained within Energized I.T.’s network must adhere to the above policies.

We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice. If we terminate your account for violating policy, you will forfeit your rights to a refund–and none will be given. No refunds for advanced payment.
Our Approach to Excessive Resource Usage

For more information on our general philosophy regarding resource usage, as well as our approach to dealing with instances of excessive resource usage, you can review our somewhat idealogical but highly informative wiki article on Overselling and Resource Usage.
Questions

The examples listed herein are a guide and may not be an exhaustive list. If you have a question on whether or not your content is in violation, please email our Abuse Department for clarification.

Questions