Virtual Server Frequently Asked Questions

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  1. What kind of hardware do the Virtual Servers run on?
  2. What do you mean by "Contention Ratio" in the plans?
  3. What if none of the basic Virtual Server plans meet my needs? Do you offer custom plans?
  4. Do you monitor network traffic between Virtual Servers and the Internet?
  5. Can I monitor the bandwidth my Virtual Server has used?
  6. How much space does the operating system installation take up?
  7. How much swap space can my Virtual Server use?
  8. How many IP Addresses can I use with my Virtual Server?
  9. Do you offer NFS Storage for Virtual Server Clusters? How about IP Load Balancing?
  10. Are the Virtual Servers sparse-root zones or full zones?
  11. What applications can I run on my Virtual Server?
  12. What applications can I NOT run on my Virtual Server?
  13. What is your bandwidth overage policy?
  14. What if I need help configuring software on my Virtual Server? Do you offer support?
  15. What is your refund policy?
  16. What are the terms of service (TOS) for using Virtual Servers?
  17. Why not Xen? Virtuozzo / OpenVZ? VMware?
  18. Do you offer virtual servers that run Windows? Linux? FreeBSD? Something else?

What kind of hardware do the Virtual Servers run on?

Our Virtual Servers are running on HP DL and BL class servers. These servers use dual core and quad core Intel Xeon CPUs. The network is compromised of Cisco switches and routers. The storage infrastructure is made up of QLogic host bus adapters (HBAs) attached to Network Appliance storage arrays.
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What do you mean by "Contention Ratio" in the plans?

Contention ratio is a measure of how many other Virtual Servers your server will be sharing a physical server's hardware resources with. Thus, a contention ratio of 1/16 means there will be at most 15 other Virtual Servers with the same resource allocations (min. memory and CPU) sharing the physical server.
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What if none of the basic Virtual Server plans meet my needs? Do you offer custom plans?

Yes! Please don't hesitate to Contact Us with any custom needs, and we will work with you to create a custom plan.
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Do you monitor network traffic between Virtual Servers and the Internet?

No. We keep track of the amount of traffic that each Virtual Sever exchanges with hosts that are not on the Gangus Internet Services network (traffic between multiple GIS Virtual Servers is not counted) for billing purposes, but we do not record anything about the traffic itself. The exception to this rule is if we are investigating breaches in our Terms of Service (TOS). In these situations, we may monitor specific traffic to verify compliance with our TOS.
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Can I monitor the bandwidth my Virtual Server has used?

Yes! You will be able to view real-time bandwidth usage numbers and graphs from Virtual Dashboard (VDB) at any time.
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How much space does the operating system installation take up?

At this time, the base operating system installation takes up about one and a half GiB. Please note that the size of the operating system packages may vary over time from various security or feature patches. You may also add or remove packages affecting the disk space impact the operating system will have on your Virtual Server. This figure does count against your disk space quota.
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How much swap space can my Virtual Server use?

You will have a limit of twice (2x) the amount of physical memory you have signed up for. For example, if you have a Virtual Server with 512 MB of memory, you will be able to use up to 1024 MB (1 GB) of swap space.
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How many IP Addresses can I use with my Virtual Server?

All Virtual Servers are provisioned with one dedicated, static IP address. Additional IP Addresses may be requested, with justification.
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Do you offer NFS Storage for Virtual Server Clusters? How about IP Load Balancing?

Yes and Yes. We offer NFS storage in two situations. The first is if you would like to take advantage of "self serve" SnapShot backups (multiple snapshots per day, plus nightly and weekly) on our NetApp Filer for certain folders (say, your www-root). Second, when multiple Virtual Servers are being leveraged in a cluster environment, we will provide an NFS mount for shared storage. We offer IP Load Balancing / Failover services for clusters made up of multiple Virtual Servers at no additional charge. Just let us know, and we'll get you set up.
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Are the Virtual Servers sparse-root zones or full zones?

All Virtual Servers are currently configured as full-root zones. This means that you will have full writeable access to the /usr file system.
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What applications can I run on my Virtual Server?

You will be given root access to your Virtual Server. This means you can install most programs on your Virtual Server that you could normally run on Solaris 10 x86, including Apache, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, Lighttpd, Perl, Python, Java, etc. Note there are some exceptions, due to technical and policy reasons, which are noted: here.
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What applications can I NOT run on my Virtual Server?

Due to technical limitations with Solaris Zones, at this time Virtual Servers may not run certain services or applications:

  • NFS Servers or Clients
  • DHCP Server
  • NTP Server

Due to policy reasons at Gangus Internet Services, the following applications or services are also prohibited:


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What is your bandwidth overage policy?

If you have a small bandwidth overage once or twice, we won't worry about it, end of story. If you go over by a meaningful portion, or continually have overage problems, we will let you know that we are going to start billing you at the rate of $0.50 per GB on an ad-hoc basis, or we will work with you to come up with a plan upgrade for more bandwidth availability for subsequent months.
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What if I need help configuring software on my Virtual Server? Do you offer support?

Our Virtual Server service is considered an unmanaged product when purchased alone. You may be interested in managed hosting, if you do not feel comfortable maintaing the Virtual Server. That being said, we do our best to provide "best effort" support with most software packages, as time allows. Feel free to shoot us an email, and we'll see what we can do.
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What is your refund policy?

At this time, unless mentioned otherwise in writing, all sales are final, and we do not offer any refunds.
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What are the terms of service (TOS) for using Virtual Servers?

You may review our Terms of Service (TOS) here.
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Why not Xen? Virtuozzo / OpenVZ?

Although all virtualization products and methods we have evaluated to date have pros and cons, we feel that using Solaris Containers and Zones provides our customers with the best possible combination of performance and flexibility, while maintaining excellent security and reliability profiles.
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Do you offer virtual servers that run Windows? Linux? FreeBSD? Something else?

At this time, we are only able to offer the Solaris 10 operating system on our Virtual Servers. Please take a look at our VMware ESX Based Virtual Machines to run other popular operating systems like Windows or Linux.
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