Background and questions to answer.

There has always been a question around overselling, how much is, ok, what methods are used, what is oversold, what are the limits, will it still be usable if oversold.

To not put this on any specific host there has been questions in the past on how hosts can sell so much ram/specs for so little and still exist years later, one of the suspicions has always been using large or just fast ssd arrays as swap and selling swap as Ram.

The plan

To get 2 identical physical servers and run them for 2 or 3 months, 1 will be configured for significant overselling, the other will not be oversold.

Customers will not know which server they are on, that will only be revealed at the end of the experiment.

Services will be KVM based.

All technical details and methodologies will be documented and posted here and on the main site.

The expectations

As customers will only be able to buy one of these i.e. they will only have a server on 1 node so will have no way to do any direct comparison themselves they will not know which node they are on and service quality will seem acceptable even if on the highly oversold node.

The technical details

I would be looking to use 2 nodes with somewhere close to the following specs.

• 12 Threads minimum
• 32GB Ram minimum
• 4 x SATA SSD's minimum (NVME preferred or 2 x NVME + 2 x SSD)
• 1 x /24 IP range.

1 node will be configured as standard. LVM, 30 of the 32GB RAM Sold, Raid 1 minimum (maybe 10 depends on specs)

1 node will be configured to use ram, lower priority large SSD SWAP spaces, Thin provisioned disks with a 4x oversell i.e. 128GB Ram sold.

Plan for selling.

There will be 1 package/plan based on common requirements along the lines of:

• 2 vCPU
• 2 GB RAM
• 30GB Disk space
• 50 GB BW (just to avoid potential abuse)

I will figure out what the lowest price can be so it does not cost money to sell it (fee's etc) I expect this to be around €0.50 for the entire term which I hope to be 2 months minimum, possibly 3.

The reason for charging is that I don't want to make it free so participants can be verified to some degree as the potential for abuse is rife and to manually provision based on requests is too time-consuming.

What is needed to make this happen.

Option 1. In an ideal world a host that provides dedicated servers sponsors this, please tag any hosts you think may be interested in participating obviously they will be heavily credited through the documenting of this which I expect to be multiple parts and I expect to lead to sales as I will essentially be providing a blueprint for becoming a host on your network with maximum profitability per node.

Option 2. As above but the host provides the servers at a cost which if I can cover myself I will but may ask for pledges from the community.

Option 3. We all collectively agree on a host and chip in at full price to spread the cost.

The requirements repeated in case you skipped that above:

• 12 Threads minimum
• 32GB Ram minimum
• 4 x SATA SSD's minimum (NVME preferred or 2 x NVME + 2 x SSD)
• 1 x /24 IP range.
• Both servers must be in the same physical location and connected to the same physical switch/core to avoid any external factors influencing perceived performance.

Control and keeping it honest.

Aside from 1 of the nodes not being oversold at all, I will be inviting other experienced community members to audit and verify the setup and provide comments, ideally @Francisco if he is willing as he is a well known trusted technical resource but not limited to 1 other host so any others are welcome to be involved.

If this happens what should I know?

1. If you buy a VPS assume your VPS data is not private, others will need access to the servers to validate the experiment.
2. Assume it will not be stable, this is an experiment that may need to be tweaked.
3. If 1 node needs to be rebooted both will be rebooted so as not to give away which is which.
4. If this happens and If you buy one and think a sentence that goes anything like "I know it's only €0.50 and/or I know it is an experiment BUT" this is not for you.
5. There will be no support, NO SUPPORT.
6. Abusers accept they will be named and shamed.
7. Linux/templates only for simplicity and to avoid control panel based limitations artificially impacting this.

Any questions, thoughts, words of support?