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Resource Usage Policies

What are Resource Usage Policies?

In hosting environments, 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 BrickellHosts’ discretion what constitutes server abuse.

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 Terms of Service to suspend a site if it is causing a severe problem.

General content & service restrictions

Backups

BrickellHosts; servers are not allowed to be used as a backup/storage system. We allow only website backup data to be stored within the same account.

Adult Content

Under no circumstance is pornography permitted. Nudity, adult-oriented e-commerce stores, and similar are allowed if the content is legal in the United States of America. BrickellHost will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Chat Applications

All interactive chat web applications are strictly prohibited on BrickellHost 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, live chat/live help (such as but not limited to LiveZilla) and other web-based chat programs 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.

Forums and any applications using a commenting system should have some form of spam protection or moderation. CAPTCHA is a popular way to eliminate spam robots from spamming your website.

General

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) farms or similar are strictly forbidden on BrickellHosts’ servers and networks. SEO farms create undue strain and resource abuse on any given server and affect all clients.
  • Banner rotation services and link exchange networks 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, bitcoin 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 Minecraft, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, battlefield1942) 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 us.

Processes

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

  • Number of open files should not exceed 64.
  • Create core dumps.
  • 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 MySQL limits on the hosting plan/s.
  • 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 BrickellHost.
  • Remote database access is for administrative purposes only.

Files and Directories

  • The total number of inodes in an account may not exceed the values listed below. Every file (a webpage, image, email, php file, directory, etc.) on your account uses up one (1) inode.

Web Hosting and WordPress Hosting plans:

  • Lite:
  • Hosted Websites (Domains): 1
  • Storage: 10GB
  • Inodes: 100,000 (Maximum files)
  • Memory: Up to 1GB RAM
  • CPU: Up to 1 Core
  • I/O: 5MB/s
  • IOPS: 1024KB/s
  • EP: 25
  • NPROC: 100
  • Pro:
  • Hosted Websites (Domains): Unlimited
  • Storage: 20GB
  • Inodes: 200,000 (Maximum files)
  • Memory: Up to 2GB RAM
  • CPU: Up to 2 Core
  • I/O: 5MB/s
  • IOPS: 1024KB/s
  • EP: 25
  • NPROC: 100
  • Premium:
  • Hosted Websites (Domains): Unlimited
  • Storage: 35GB
  • Inodes: 300,000 (Maximum files)
  • Memory: Up to 3GB RAM
  • CPU: Up to 3 Core
  • I/O: 5MB/s
  • IOPS: 1024KB/s
  • EP: 25
  • NPROC: 100
  • A single log file should not exceed 1 GB in size. The total size of all similar log files should not exceed 5 GB in size.
  • 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 sub processes.

Email and Mailing Lists

  • The maximum hourly emails per domain are 300.
  • Each email account is restricted with limited disk space.
  • Processes should not send outbound mail to more than 25 recipients at any given time.
  • The maximum number of members per mailing list is 500.
  • POP connections are limited to 60 per hour.
  • SMTP connections (outbound email connections) are limited to 500 per hour per server account.
  • Mailing lists larger than 500 will require a semi-dedicated, VPS, or dedicated server from us. Dividing one list into smaller parts to get around this limit is not allowed.
  • 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 tolerance for this.
  • Any mailing list must comply with the rules set forth by the United States of America and can be found at http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business.
  • No Direct SMTP mailing system scripts are permitted. Mail should be relayed through the local MTA.

Cron Jobs

  • A cron job should not execute more frequently than once every 30 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.

Dedicated IP Addresses

  • Dedicated IP Addresses require valid justification.
  • BrickellHost has the right to decline any dedicated IP requests without any explanation.

Failure To Comply With Policy

We are sending notice to the users, to take action on their account. This notice is valid for 48 hours. Failure to fully comply with these terms and notice, is grounds for account suspension and/or termination.

We reserve the right to remove any account without prior notice.

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 create a ticket with our Support Department for clarification.