Resource Points Discontinued
As you are aware, we developed the Resource Points system to help show in a simplified way how your sites used resources to allow you to see spikes and also to ensure all users were only using their fair share of resources on our shared servers. Using this system helped in providing a visual and statistical look at resource usage for our customers to see the impact their accounts had on the server.
Due to the complexities of resource usage and the amount of variables that come into play when a site is using resources, we have found that the Resource Points system simply cannot portray the totality of information our server monitors use when auditing accounts or making service upgrade recommendations. In addition to Resource Points, there are other factors (such as disk usage) that influence the type of plan you may need. Due to this, we have decided to retire the Resource Points system. You will no longer see your Resource Points usage graphs in your control panels; however, we will still actively monitor our systems to be sure that you have an excellent experience with your sites on our servers and that they are running as fast as they possibly can!
Mehdi March 17, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Hello,
Since one year or more I’m monitoring every day Resource Points daily to not exceed the quota and to make necessary changes on websites that are consuming many points.
Some times it helped me to detect that a website was compromised in less than 24 hours and correct it
Unfortunately I see that you deactivate this function some hours ago
Sorry but I think that this is not a good idea
It’s very useful specially for very old customers like me (I’m with you since 2005)
Could you take back the page that permit us to monitor resources ?
Best regards
James Davey March 21, 2016 at 6:48 am
Hello Mehdi,
The decision to remove this tool was not taken lightly, and was announced with the understanding that some customers were actively using this, like yourself. However, the resource points system was, as described here, insufficient in providing an accurate review of your usage. With its removal, the limits themselves become more fluid, but the way you are notified of overuse remains the same. Our team will email you and do everything they can to ensure your sites remain online while you reduce any usage spikes that occur.
Colin Chong March 18, 2016 at 4:25 pm
I will miss the Resource Points graphs. I found that the Resource Points gave me a indication of what sites were using more resources than I would have expected. I could then take steps to make the sites more efficient and see how effective different options were eg. cache plugins and the like. Hopefully you will come up with some scheme that would allow us to keep track of things in the future
Raul March 21, 2016 at 3:14 pm
We totally agree with you. Those graphs were the only way to detect who needed improvement or cache or… whatever… Now we are blind again. As you state, hopefully site5 will release some new tool to let us act in advance to prevent those spike resources warnings before they are needed.
Stavros Zacharias March 19, 2016 at 5:28 am
Being a reseller, the resource metering, the disk usage and the bandwidth usage are three factors we have been monitoring at least once every day to make sure that everything runs smoothly.
Most of our customers are small establishments with no technical knowledge to maintain a website. They completely rely on us in taking care of everything (development, hosting, maintenance), and therefore we have complete control on most of our hosted accounts.
Our target is to utilize no more than 50% of our available resources so that we can accommodate usage spikes. Prolonged usage above 50% would force us to take action (e.g. taking out a problematic script, or setting up another reseller account and distributing our customers’ accounts among our reseller accounts).
However, now If we use too many processing resources, we risk finding it out too late – when Site5 takes our reseller account offline.
I don’t believe that the complexities is the reason for terminating the resource usage plugin. I’ve been noticing that the resource usage plugin was getting slower and slower by the day. Probably the resource usage metering system was itself consuming too many usage points and putting too much processing strain on the servers.
Please let us know what are our resource usage limits and how are we going to know if our processing usage gets close to the limits? Are we going to know only when we get kicked offline? Are you going to look for another more efficient resource usage display plugin?
James Davey March 21, 2016 at 6:42 am
Hello Stavros,
We were not seeing any issues with the tools used to track and display the resource points graphs at all, no. These were pulled directly from tools that are built-in to the operating system, and simply translated to an easily-readable format. I can assure you that the explanation given here is accurate.
As for the limits themselves, these are now a little more fluid. As mentioned, our team is still monitoring the servers closely, and at all times. The practice will remain the same as it always has been – we will do everything we can to avoid disabling your sites, and will be happy to work with you to reduce your impact on the server, if need be. If your site or account is starting to show signs of impacting the server in a negative way due to resource usage, you will receive an email letting you know, and advising you of what steps you can take.
The only real change here is the removal of the graphs from your control panel.
Stavros Zacharias March 21, 2016 at 2:21 pm
Thank you James,
I don’t really understand the fluidity notion.
– Does it mean that high usage of processing resources is O.K. if there is low disk and bandwidth usage? or
– Does it mean that it is up to somebody’s personal opinion at any point in time in deciding what is over or under limit? or
– Do limits flex and shrink based on a server’s unutilised resources at any point in time.
In my opinion, limits should be fixed, clear and transparent.
I don’t mind loosing the graphs. Is there a possibility of providing us with the daily numbers, preferably in a downloadable csv file? I need to know at what point I cannot accommodate more customers on my Reseller account.
I know that you are assigned to only respond and provide explanations, but if you have the ability to convey our messages to decision makers, please do.
The trends are very important and our policies are based on them. We treat differently the long term trends, the short term trends, and the spikes. We need to have data over a prolonged period in order to take the correct decisions.
James Davey March 22, 2016 at 6:52 am
Hello Stavros,
With the hard limits, the actual impact on the server was not taken into consideration. If you were over the limits you needed to bring your usage down. Now, things will be more in line with actual, real-world impact on the server. Your reseller plan was always bounded more by your bandwidth and disk space limits, even with the resource points in place, so very little should change there.
Mehdi March 21, 2016 at 2:17 pm
Please be kind and give it back to us
Don’t you want to have happy customers?
I prefer to monitor resource by my self than receiving an Email like a police attack where you say :
Your resources are over the permitted you have xx days to correct this or we will move you to superior plan (or we will close the account)
This will really be very stressing to wake up every day and seeing if we will receive such an Email
We want to see which website is consuming more than the others day by day and make good decision in calm and when the server is on 600 points we plan to buy a new one without the stress of your team and delays …
PLEASE GIVE US BACK RESOURCE POINTS THANK YOU
James Davey March 22, 2016 at 6:49 am
Hello Mehdi,
I am afraid that these will not be coming back. At least, there are no plans to do so. This may change in the future, but the decision to remove this was not easily made, and there is no planned reversal of the decision.
Any overuse will be communicated via an email, yes, but we are more than happy to work with you to bring things back under control, rather than simply provide a deadline and demand a resolution from you. Our team is always here to help, and we are happy to do so.
Bill March 31, 2016 at 2:32 pm
Without this tool, how can we see how the site/server is performing? Are there going to be any reports or other options?
Thanks!
Corey Mahon April 1, 2016 at 8:23 am
Hi Bill,
We completely understand your concern. You will still be able to see your server’s service status information in your backstage panel to see if everything is up and running. We also have our live reporting page at https://live-reporting.site5.com/ where we keep you informed of any server issues.
Also, our team is still monitoring the servers closely, and at all times. The practice will remain the same as it always has been – we will do everything we can to avoid disabling your sites, and will be happy to work with you to reduce your impact on the server, if need be. If your site or account is starting to show signs of impacting the server in a negative way due to resource usage, you will receive an email letting you know, and advising you of what steps you can take.
The only change here is that you will no longer be able to monitor the resource usage of your sites by using the graphs in your control panel.
Tom McGee July 7, 2016 at 12:13 pm
I for one am happy to see them go. I would consistently run into trouble doing maintenance or development on my server. In the middle of configuring a theme, my access would be choked off and my site would be a shambles until the throttling ended.