Stop punishing your customers for success.

[whatrevolution]

This post is the good illustration I've been waiting for. I really have to agree with most of what this man has said. Regulars of this board tell people in this situation that they're stupid for not having already upgraded for this or that reason. HG tells them roughly the same thing, in much nicer phrases. "You get what you pay for", is a valid rhetorical remark, but it's not the posture of a responsible company with happy customers.

No one, even the people who try to maximize their profits by underbuying their critical resources, is paying to be turned off at your whim. They are in fact all assuming that you will warn them, and you really should; well in advance of cutting their wires. Even utility companies typically send you a letter first... and they practically have carte blanche.

It's a fact that many other hosting companies keep a set of servers which are strictly throttled, where they will move these same kind of resource-hog customers; that's what they do where HG will simply turn you off. Your customer turn-over rate will drop, and your upgrade rate will increase, if you follow that example.

If you ever, ever, turn me off that way; I'll cancel. No questions asked.


Other user seem agree:
CPU and Mem usage
Way to keep customers online through the Reseller/Shared to dedicated upgrade
Oh Hostgator, why do you do this to me? (Worst Nightmare Story)
Disappointed & Frustrated Ticket QJM-2553637 (this one's a real doozy)
Frustrated and disappointed. My site is temporarily suspended for CPU overusage?
Better Alert Page? (Blaming the customer: "The solution to the problem is not to be suspended.")
Excellent Service! But Unhappy with CPU usage policy

Those are the highlights of page one, forum search: suspended cpu.


Selling Out, October 6 2007:

Originally Posted by Brent Oxley

You heard me… We are going to be giving abusers hosting below our cost. I’m not even factoring in merchant fees, support costs, or server administration time! If this isn’t good enough for the less then .5% of customers that crash our servers then there just isn’t any pleasing them.

Originally Posted by Brent Oxley

Our new offering is no different then the last due to the TOS limiting the CPU and memory which is what truly affects performance.

Originally Posted by Brent Oxley

The reason most hosting companies start going downhill after a plan increase is a result from sales skyrocketing and the lack of man power to keep up with growth. If HostGator starts having this problem I’ll switch the site back to the old plans in a heartbeat. There’s no way I’m going to risk everything we built in exchange for a few more sales.

And so on.

I don't see that happening. I suppose he did step away from that idea in a heartbeat; not the one he was referencing with the heartbeat comment, I know he was referring to disk usage, but nonetheless. Honestly, I don't blame you, Brent. That's not the ideal way to deal with this situation, and you have no obligation to go any further to satisfy abusers... except to warn them with reasonable advance notice. That's where your server idea should come in.


Bluehost.com and Hostmonster.com have a custom tool to limit CPU usage by user.
They continue to work to improve it.

But I don't suggest Bluehost/Hostmonster as an alternative.


How do I find out Linux CPU utilization?

Linux Performance Analysis, and CPU Quotas

Linux PAM can limit user CPU time

Staircase Deadline CPU Scheduler can be set in either purely forward-looking mode for absolutely rigid fairness and cpu distribution according to nice level, or it can allow a small per-process history to smooth out cpu usage perturbations common in interactive tasks

Throttling your webserver

Graphs the load averages on the system and the fractions of CPU states under the curve. -- Lars Kotthoff

[Prezadent]

AMEN, I hate knowing that my experence with HostGator will end in this way. Its like a distant elephant.

I'm gone If I ever get shut down without decent notice. No negative review or pleading to fix the problem, just gone.

[Chimpie]

Originally Posted by Prezadent

AMEN, I hate knowing that my experence with HostGator will end in this way. Its like a distant elephant.

I'm gone If I ever get shut down without decent notice. No negative review or pleading to fix the problem, just gone.

I don't get your first sentence. You "know your experience with HostGator will end in this way." So you know you'll exceed the CPU usage? You know this and you're not prepared for it? You know you will go over your limits and you're not moving your site(s) to a dedicated server?

So if you know you will exceed the limit(s), why is it HostGator's fault if you do it?

[whatrevolution]

I need to clarify that I don't mean to ask HG to stop suspending resource abusive accounts. I mean to ask that abusive accounts be moved to an "abusers' jail" set of servers in which they are throttled and live next to the rest of the bandwidth hogs for a month, before the account is suspended simultaneously as the warning email is issued.

That's why I call this bullying, in the other thread. In fact, it's spiteful extortion... "we got you now, you evil resource hog, now pay up". If I'm off-base with that, then HG needs to officially and explicitly state what their abuse investigators are looking for before they decide to suspend an account; and they need to justify their policy of sending the warning email after the suspension is in effect. Personally, I think that's unjustifiable, but I will listen.

Originally Posted by Chimpie

You "know your experience with HostGator will end in this way."

Absolutely. The thread you are posting in is a warning to those of us worried about being unable to prevent, or being surprised suddenly by, this frequent sequence of events. We'd have to not read this forum, or have plenty of money in the bank (or Mom and Dad's bank account), to not worry about this. Writing on the wall, etc.

Originally Posted by Chimpie

You know this and you're not prepared for it? You know you will go over your limits and you're not moving your site(s) to a dedicated server?

So if you know you will exceed the limit(s), why is it HostGator's fault if you do it?

He didn't say he knows he'll go over his limit. He knows how HG handles these things. He simply anticipates that when and if it does happen, HG will be unreasonable about it, and he will not feel inclined to give HG more money for such treatment.

Not everyone who reaches success on the web can afford dedicated hosting at the time they achieve it. They may need time to do it. They might have to take out a loan to do it. Ridiculing them for that is no less than trolling. Have you never encountered the stories of the impoverished genius?

In that, I'm not asking HG to sacrifice anything for the sake of pity; I'm telling you and the rest to can the attitude, as you are not HG, and this fan-boy/girl defense of a faulty policy execution is grinding my gears (can you tell? ^_^ I'd like to can my attitude on the matter, too).

We are not psychic. These things happen. Sometimes it's our fault, more often it is not. Stop assuming it is our fault. Just look at the abject cluelessness of the majority of postings on this forum; asking some the most newbie questions you're likely to encounter (relevant to webhosting)... there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone starts somewhere.

Stay off bandwagons. Thousands of posts doesn't mean the person thought them through far enough. Use some creativity in analyzing people's statements and concerns.

[Chimpie]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Stay off bandwagons. Thousands of posts doesn't mean the person thought them through far enough. Use some creativity in analyzing people's statements and concerns.

I have no idea where that last paragraph comes from, but whatever.

I agree that sometimes publishers will not know when their site will take off. However, I disagree that people should not be prepared for it. Whether the site is a revenue generator or not, if you are publishing a site that is going to require a lot of CPU usage, then you need to prepare for it. That means going to a dedicated server if need be.

Now, I will agree that hosts who just suspend with no notification is just BS. Taking HG for example. Constant use of 25% of a CPU is a problem. But not knowing when that use will cease is something that HG cannot predict. If there is a runaway script the usage may never stop. If that is the case, they have no option than to suspend. Sure they can send an email, but what happens if the recipient is not at a computer. Should HG wait for a response, which may be hours, before suspending the account?

[ldearing]

relying on shared server' resources are skyrocketing, i would want them shut down before they affected my sites. if my own sites are shutdown for over utilization... Its my fault. i support hostgator's policies. without them our shared hosting experience here would be no better than the others.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by Chimpie

I have no idea where that last paragraph comes from, but whatever.

Not aimed at you. My apologies, for that.

Originally Posted by Chimpie

I agree that sometimes publishers will not know when their site will take off. However, I disagree that people should not be prepared for it.

Many publishers are not as savvy with it as others. They'll not be looking frequently enough at their machine's server load, and cPanel server load indicator is machine wide, not user specific (I think. I should go look it up). Server load figures are cryptic, even to many otherwise technically inclined people, it seems. So there just isn't enough information to be had, for the policy to be so harshly dealt with. It's not fair for the customer to discover this the day their account has been suspended for hours already.

I also agree that, on the whole, we should be prepared. Should be. It might not work that way, it could be a surprise, it could catch you with your pants down, etc.

Originally Posted by Chimpie

Constant use of 25% of a CPU is a problem. But not knowing when that use will cease is something that HG cannot predict. If there is a runaway script the usage may never stop.

Like Brent said, we're talking about a tiny minority of users with all of this. It will not cost HG nearly as much as other posters have speculated to get this done right. It will only cost manpower after a few abuse servers are implemented, to move high CPU accounts to those servers where the machine itself stops the user processes from processing too much data.

I have thoroughly edited my opening post to illustrate ways this problem has been being addressed since at least 1996. HG is not the first administrator of a large network to encounter the problem of needing to strictly monitor and enforce processing time on CPUs. They don't have to go out of their way to accomodate abusers as if those abusers are special people who need extra love and attention. They simply need to account for the fact that not all resource hogs are trying to cheat them.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by ldearing

relying on shared server' resources are skyrocketing, i would want them shut down before they affected my sites. if my own sites are shutdown for over utilization... Its my fault. i support hostgator's policies. without them our shared hosting experience here would be no better than the others.

You have, in my opinion, been mislead that the abusive account has to be "shut down". It does not. Again, the account can be moved away from your server, to a server that is built to punish the abusive account by very strictly limiting how much work that account user can do on the CPU.

This is not a risk for you, the non-abuser. At all. Ever.

It's also not a matter of relying upon shared service because it's cheap. The policy does not have to change, and 25% CPU for 90 seconds limitations can remain in effect. We can still encourage these users to upgrade their service without pissing them off and trashing their site's link to the world until the submit. It's just not good psychology, or good business.

Also, with their monitoring technology, HG can begin to warn the abusive user when their CPU usage is exceeding, say, 20% for 90 seconds. That would help.

[riostyles]

Do somebody experienced this:
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/col17.html

[whatrevolution]

Yes, blocking abusive spiders/bots as they crawl your site is a common concern; and the facilities for doing so can be built into a content management system. Unfortunately, not all (or even most) systems do this at all; if they do it, they may not do it well.

Most "webmasters" are not going to know to be prepared for this until it hits them, hard.

Encouraging customers to use resource heavy content management on shared hosts, such as nearly all of the software available in our cPanels, is basically begging that customer to hit their CPU usage limit so you can have a contract enforced upgrade. That's why I don't use any of it.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Encouraging customers to use resource heavy content management on shared hosts, such as nearly all of the software available in our cPanels, is basically begging that customer to hit their CPU usage limit so you can have a contract enforced upgrade.

I think you've stumbled on the issue behind the issue: resellers on shared servers.

The details of only two non-resellers facing the situation spring to my mind, though there have been a bunch of spurious members passing through (bounced from one host, they last a month or so here and post about the injustice of HG, until HG reminds them they had warez or a topsite or ran a sink-the-CPU game or something like that.)

One was Eric, whose forum devoted to a popular tv show grew from a hobby to, if not a business, a sideline that pays for itself. His posts in this forum indicate he'd seen the move to dedi coming, was suspended several times, and finally couldn't put it off. He was good-natured (at least here) about it to the extent that he admitted being surprised HG hadn't taken action sooner.

The other was the newspaper guy whose review/situation was one of those prompting this thread set. I get the idea (possibly erroneous) from reading his posts, that with the paper paper's circulation at 4,000+, he was trying to see if its electronic debut would work on a shared account, and very quickly discovered it would not.

It looks to me as if resellers are in a different situation from non-resellers, and I'm afraid the underlying issue gets back to, once again, the business model for resellers on shared servers and the many changes it has undergone in the past five years.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

I think you've stumbled on the issue behind the issue: resellers on shared servers.

Do resellers really share the exact same machines with Shared host customers? I was under the impression that they're the same system setup, but the physical machines are separate ones.

Originally Posted by gwyneth

His posts in this forum indicate he'd seen the move to dedi coming, was suspended several times, and finally couldn't put it off.

Eric may have upgraded sooner if, instead of flipping his switch, HG had "sent him to Siberia" and left him there until he upgraded. His business would have been damaged, and the only recourse would be to change his model instead of playing cat and mouse. His shared neighbors would not have suffered repeated exploitation of their server's resources.

The same would occur if, as Bluehost and Hostmonster apparently do, Hostgator would simply enforce their CPU usage policy through software.

Originally Posted by gwyneth

It looks to me as if resellers are in a different situation from non-resellers, and I'm afraid the underlying issue gets back to, once again, the business model for resellers on shared servers and the many changes it has undergone in the past five years.

It could be. I still agree that the CPU usage policy itself is a sound one. In fact, if HG didn't have it, their machines would enforce it for them. I also agree with the thrust of Chimpie's (and others') statement that it's not HG's concern how their customers' business models or intentions do or don't pay for the hosting their site demands.

How HG enforces this otherwise sound policy, however, both in technology and in human interaction, could determine many things for HG. Every time they get an intelligent (or lucky?) customer whos project blows out of proportion in popularity too quickly, they are currently risking ticking that customer off and encouraging them to look for hosting elsewhere.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Do resellers really share the exact same machines with Shared host customers? I was under the impression that they're the same system setup, but the physical machines are separate ones.

I don't think they do, in fact I'm almost positive they don't. My point wasn't that their activities affected non-reseller customers, but that different forces are at work.

[GatorRichard]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Like Brent said, we're talking about a tiny minority of users with all of this. It will not cost HG nearly as much as other posters have speculated to get this done right. It will only cost manpower after a few abuse servers are implemented, to move high CPU accounts to those servers where the machine itself stops the user processes from processing too much data.

Well, here's the truth of the situation. We used to do exactly that. We had, and still have, an overpowered server just for abusive users and stick them on there from time to time when their accounts go haywire. It worked OK for a short amount of time but it turned into the exact same situation in this thread. All the abusive users on one machine effectively killed services for the other abusive users on the system. Why? Because their scripts were out of control. So we'd get those abusive users complaining that the server just for them was slow and crashing. Well, we can't help that as that user along with the others are the cause of the issue. We implemented exactly what you're talking about and it was a complete bust, it didn't work that reliably at all.

Between downtime and general slowness from abusive users, it was a waste of end users' time to transfer them over, let them blow the servers up or purchase a dedicated account, then transfer them back over to their server (or shared server). Lots of downtime, lots of lost email/traffic, a ton of complaints, and more headaches than it was worth. So we stopped moving users to a temporary server while they get their situations under control because it simply wasn't worth it in the end, in terms of cost of activities taken. Monetarily, it was nothing but a sinkhole for HG and users due to time lost. When you pay $10/mo for a shared account and try to run a quite profitable business on it and expect it to run like an account costing much more per month is simply an illusion of grandeur. We understand that some users cannot, and do not, anticipate their sites getting on Digg/reddit/slashdot/etc but we do know that many customers buying at under expectable costs to maximize profits shoot themselves in the foot for maintaining tight budgets. If you run a business that makes thousands of dollars a day (or month), you have more than enough monetary resources to buy a dedicated server for yourself. After all, it's a business expense to use more productive equipment to increase profits.

Being in the Security Department where I do my fair share of suspensions and thus, making end users mad, I can understand frustrations and the headaches. We were there at one point too, end users trying to stay the course and suddenly our money-maker is out of commission. In the end, the users that do raise valid complaints about not being warned are doing so in earnest and with good merit, they understand why we cannot warn someone before we suspend them because their site is crashing the web server and is well on its way to taking down the server, part and parcel. Those that complain because they weren't notified and are more boisterous about it are always under the assumption that we should have notified them -- we do in two fold: a ticket and a phone call, name another hosting company that calls you when you cause a problem so it can be remedied as expediently as possible -- and are very upset that we didn't notify them. However, whenever we say "Well, if another user was crashing the box and hindering your service, would you want us to notify them and wait seemingly hours until they fix the problem or do you want us to fix it now, as in five minutes ago?" Always the reaction is the same "Suspend that user so my service is not hindered." It's "what's mine is mine and what yours is mine because I'm paying for it too" but that's not how shared hosting works. At all.

Philosopher Max Weber had a profound impact on sociology and economics as well. He has fantastic theories on statehood and statists themselves. Each shared server is essentially a Weberian domination state and we make all the rules and we enforce them as we have to. However, we're more than willing to work with users to fix issues as to not incur a price hike for a server. I can't tell you how many times we've fixed issues with caching plugins or fixed errant code and even helped to optimize databases all at our own monetary expense. We don't get paid extra to provide a bit more support so our users don't have to shell out exuberant amounts of money for something they really don't need...currently. We don't get bonuses for anything like this nor should we. Back to the domination state allegory, as the kings of said server statehood, we're more than allowed to impose regulations to improve conditions for everyone and that's just what we do try and do.

Not everyone likes our rules but we don't expect them to. But we do expect them to understand that one-sidededness is not an option and we try to present a balanced field for everyone.

[gwyneth]

GatorRichard, what a wonderfully written post. Anyone who talks allegory and quotes Weber is OK by me.

[GatorJess]

The issue with this is simply that you have to look at it from the other Hostgator clients' point of view, even more than Hostgator's, and in turn, then that of Hostgator itself.

If you are on a server that is crashing and your business is going down and you are losing money because someone else is overusing their fair share of resources, wouldn't you want that user to be suspended accordingly and just the same, suspended as soon as possible to avoid further downtime?

The immediate suspension is an unfortunate consequence of resource abuse, but at the same time, it is a step that must be taken to ensure the highest level of service to the highest number of clients by Hostgator. Hostgator notifies clients of the suspension immediately and will work with any client who will work with us to determine a resolution to the issue at hand.

I apologize that you were part of the small group of users that face this suspension process, but please understand that when it comes down to it, it is highly likely that many more users are thankful that this process exists than not, as it is designed to keep the service level high for as many users as possible. (It is even probable that at some point the same server you are/were on had experienced issues in the past where we had to suspend a user to bring your service back to a normal level, which I'm sure you preferred over dealing with issues not caused by your account.)

We understand that some clients will not be very happy with the suspension decision, but we are very willing to work with those clients who end up suspended for usage violations of the Terms of Service and do our best to do so quickly by having a dedicated Security team ready to assist with all security and TOS-related issues.

The whole issue really needs to be looked at from both sides, and although I do completely understand where you are coming from as I myself would not want a site suspended, please understand why Hostgator does what it does.

We are aware that other options exist, and do consider them, but at this time, this is the process that is in effect, and please know that we truly do try our hardest to be fair. We present all of the limits in advance in our Terms of Service and if an account does get suspended, our Security team does its very best to work with the client quickly to get the issue addressed.

Nothing is perfect and we simply can't please everyone, but we do our very best to keep the most clients possible happy.

[GatorJess]

"I have thoroughly edited my opening post to illustrate ways this problem has been being addressed since at least 1996. HG is not the first administrator of a large network to encounter the problem of needing to strictly monitor and enforce processing time on CPUs. They don't have to go out of their way to accomodate abusers as if those abusers are special people who need extra love and attention. They simply need to account for the fact that not all resource hogs are trying to cheat them."

I'm not sure if this last sentence is intended specifically for Hostgator, but the resource abusers, most of the time, are not trying to cheat us and we are absolutely aware of that. The issue is simply that it's a 1 vs. 100 aspect where it's either keep 1 resource-abusing account active at the expense of 10 or 100, versus suspending 1 resource-abusing account in order to maintain a positive experience for 10 or 100, and then work with that 1 to try to return their experience to a positive one.

[GatorJess]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

I don't think they do, in fact I'm almost positive they don't. My point wasn't that their activities affected non-reseller customers, but that different forces are at work.

No, to answer, our Shared hosting package clients are on separate boxes from the Reseller clients.

[Serra]

Really the only thing that Hostgator needs to address is a simple, fast and effective way to restore sites that were suspended in error. While ALL USERS say they were suspended in error, few actually are, but those few should be able to quickly appeal the suspension without having to go to abuse. Because abuse is very slow, and rightly so, its hard on users who don't belong.

It would be nice when someone is suspended, another tech reviews the suspension immediately as an objective third party. (without the aid of supporting evidence that would mislead them). This would prevent the few mistaken suspensions.

It would also be nice if HG required users to use an email address for billing that was NOT on their domain.

[GatorJess]

Originally Posted by Serra

It would also be nice if HG required users to use an email address for billing that was NOT on their domain.

We actually do require this per our Terms of Service ( http://www.hostgator.com/tos.shtml ), but unfortunately, not enough people thoroughly read through the TOS before agreeing to it.

1.) Account Setup / Email on file
We will setup your account after we have received payment and we and/or our payment partner(s) have screened the order(s) incase of fraud. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not @ the domain(s) you are signing up under.

[GatorJess]

Originally Posted by Serra

Really the only thing that Hostgator needs to address is a simple, fast and effective way to restore sites that were suspended in error.

Also, if anyone ever feels they were suspended completely in error -- not just because they're unhappy they got suspended for a valid reason -- please do let us know right away. Usually, checking with us in LiveChat is your best bet for starters so we can at least check the basics out for you.

We will do our best to make things right for you, and even if it involves a ticket to our Security or Sales team, usually, we can still work to resolve that as quickly as possible for you, as we're human, things happen, and we would much rather fix them for you as quickly as we can to ensure you maintain a positive experience.

[whatrevolution]

Delusions of grandeur, reasonable business expense, and who sets the rules aside; that was never what I was talking about, except to multiply state that I wasn't talking about it, and I've already agreed with other people on the thrust of those points.

Stop side stepping, please?

The real issue here is that you are perfectly capable of monitoring CPU usage and even throttling it, thus, you can warn users before they reach the 25% mark. You can warn them at 15%. You can warn them at 20%. You can warn them at 24.5%, and you can automate this. Easily.

You also have very little, if any, need to please abusive customers while they are on a pre-suspension server. That's bogus. However, I do understand your need to keep them happy enough that they will be inclined to upgrade. Just keep the machine running, and yes you can throttle either the server load or the request count, successfully. Easily. If yours didn't work, that isn't an excuse, it's a mark against you.

I expect to be notified when I come anywhere near my contracted limit of resource usage which would expectedly result in termination of my account.

I do not expect to be slyly and surreptitiously allowed to break that limit until you have leverage enough to hold me down by my neck like a subjegated dog being dominated by another, with my data and access to the world in your pocket, and demands for more money right now as the only sollution. I expect to be dealt with more fairly than that.

While I'm on fairness, I hear the argument already, so: Your prices are not fair. Your prices are competative. Your service is not fair. Your service is as good or better than it needs to be; to compete. Your support services in calling or flying to Kentucky and knocking on my door are not fair; they are thoughtful and worth marketing brownie points, and I would thank you and appreciate it, and tip you if I had the cash on me.

This execution of your fair CPU usage policy, is not fair... but there is nothing good to say about the execution of the policy; and we aren't really talking about fairness, nor have I ever been talking about wether or not you should have this policy. I like the policy.

Your argument that this issue is tyranny of the minority versus the greater good of the people is purely business politics, and I'm not playing. I've too great a need to feel secure on this issue, to let it go down quietly... and economists tick me off, with their propensity for psychopathy, sociopathy, and their tendencies in agreeing with and enjoying the thrill of living John Nash's Game Theory.

[Mooska]

Interesting thread but gets you thinking, as a dedicated server owner, this problem is more common then people realize. Honestly I cannot imagine spending every waking moment of my time watching the CPU of all of my clients especially someone that has more than one dedicated server and several resellers or clients on an account or server alone.... totally boggles my mind sorry but I don't think anyone wants to pay an extra ten dollars for services for a single staff to monitor CPU on every single server, honestly I can totally relate with Gator.

While I would never want to upset my customers the one thing I have learned most is that, you lose a little you win a little no way you can please everyone. But like a gator staff mentioned earlier people flat do not read the terms or rules before signing up for an account, to me they are at blame first if they never bothered to read the terms, secondly, I am happy with the fair cost of Gator's services and would not want their prices to increase because they gotta hire a guy or two to monitor (something plus) servers for CPU. I personally feel that any person that order hosting especially on shared servers (reseller or hosting plans) are responsible for their own web site. This means everyone should be responsible as web users to upgrade their scripts and if they are expecting or have grown to exceed a great deal of CPU should take responsibility of their web site by getting their own server so they can max out the CPU all they want. I know I would, if I felt my own site was jeapordizing the whole server with others on it, it just seems common courtesy to consider getting my own.

While I do understand all points of view on this thread, like I said it all comes down to being fair for everyone, but for me personally I may sound harsh, but, it cost me a great deal of money to pay for a server it will cost me even more if one person jeapordizing the server and I lose 10 people because of it. I have even deleted my own site (top list script) because of hacking and cpu issues, because to me its not worth losing clients and having down time, but that's me. Most of my clients are good it does happen I do ask them to upgrade their scripts if they get the warning and fail to comply and they use up too much CPU your right I suspend if needed I terminate, so far I have never had to terminate I hope I never do but I would do it if needed.

[kmaw]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

The real issue here is that you are perfectly capable of monitoring CPU usage and even throttling it, thus, you can warn users before they reach the 25% mark. You can warn them at 15%. You can warn them at 20%. You can warn them at 24.5%, and you can automate this. Easily.

Yes, this is the real issue. How is this accomplished?

[joer80]

I think its dumb to expect customers to be responsible for a cpu metric they can not even check if they wanted to.