Resources Policy and Scripts Abuse Policy

TeDoc allows CGI, PHP , ASP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tomcat to be used on all Virtual Servers. Scripts can be resource intensive however, and because a Virtual Server must be shared with other users, we must limit how much of the CPU can be used by any one account on a shared server. There are several reasons why TeDoc has created its Scripts Abuse policy for its virtual server users.

What does TeDoc consider “Scripts ABUSE” or “Resources ABUSE”?
Any site whose CGI and other webscript programs are using excessive amounts of system resources. Excessive amounts is defined as any amount that results in substantial degradation of server performance. Tedoc is the sole determinant of what constitutes degraded server performance.

Server Speed and Fairness to others. A Virtual Server is shared. As such, there are many accounts per machine. In all fairness, Tedoc cannot allow one or two clients to use all of the System resources on a shared machine and have all other clients on the machine suffer because of it. Excessive CPU usage by one or more clients causes extreme slowness in all areas: FTP, Email, Web Sites and more. If the CPU usage gets too far out of hand, all sites hosted on the machine will return Errors and will not be accessible in any way.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

Flat File Database Driven Forums:
Due to their use of flat files instead of databases, Tedoc does not allow the use of flat-file database driven bulletin boards. Use of these boards for large or very active forums, results in system performance degradation, and cannot be allowed in our shared server environment. Tedoc advices using VBulletin as a more efficient, database-driven alternative to these bulletin boards. Busy sites with large forums and databases are not suited to a shared server environment and should consider ordering a dedicated or colocated server.

Background Running Processes:
Background Daemons in general are prohibited on Tedoc servers, including, but not limited to, IRC bots, eggdrop, BitchX, XiRCON, warez sites and any other program that interferes with normal server operation.

Persistent mySQL Connections:
Due to the fact that persistent mySQL connections have the ability to use considerable server resources, this configuration is not allowed on our shared servers. It is understood that in some situations, persistent connections may actually reduce resource usage on a server.  However, we have found that connections are commonly not released properly and are, therefore, more detrimental to a shared hosting environment than they are helpful.

Cron Jobs:
We allow customers to set up cron jobs to perform routine functions automatically. Due to the impact on the server, running some automated processes can take up considerable server resources and in those cases, our technicians may disable or even remove the cron job.

Mailing Lists and newsletters:
We have a strict policy regarding use/spam on our network, but we do allow use of mailing lists and newsletters within the constraints of our spam policy.  However, sending thousands of e-mails off of a given server can impact the performance of the server. Therefore we limit the amount of e-mail allowed on our Shared Virtual Servers  to no more than 1000 e-mails per day (24 hours) and 1 e-mail per minute.

Exploitable Scripts:
Unfortunately, many commonly used scripts can be exploited to allow unauthorized users into our systems. Consequently we may on occasion need to ban and consequently disable these scripts, or an entire website. You can view the most current exploits under “Banned Scripts” in this chapter.

Extranet/Intranet Scripts:
It is very common nowadays to have some of the business administration controlled by webscripts. In most cases it is not a problem to have some scripts that are called only several times a day to perform some simple administration tasks. It is, however, strictly forbidden to use your website for business administration and (for example, but not limited to) webshop administration. This is mostly very resource intensive and bandwidth consuming. This kind of web use should be limited to a server in your Intranet. The webserver should only be used for web serving tasks, this meaning to display the contents of your webshop to website visitors and only perform the normally related shopping cart and billing tasks. Otherwise consider a dedicated webserver or colocation.

Other applications that are prohibited on our virtual servers include but are not limited to:
– offsite search engines and so called “bots”