Multi-account VPS Services - SmartVPS

The SmartVPS platform is generally for people who prefer to manage their hosting plans themselves. It is up to you to create your hosting plans, manage their resources, and make sure they fit into the resources provided by your SmartVPS plan. Of course, you can still use the SmartVPS platform as a single-site solution - you get a full-featured hosting account which acts as a master account, and you are free to use it as you want. It is important to note that child accounts cannot get support directly from our technical support team. Thus, it is up to you to provide support to your end clients with child accounts. In case something goes wrong, they would have to reach out to you for assistance. You may contact our support team on their behalf for assistance with any hosting-related issues. If a certain child account needs more disk space or inodes and/or you want us to provide direct support to the customer, you need to get a single-site hosting account (e.g. a Business plan) for them.

Multi-account VPS (SmartVPS): A hosting service, provided by ICDSoft, hosted on a single VPS instance and allowing multi-account hosting. Master/parent account: The first account created with the provisioning of the multi-account VPS service. Child account: A custom-defined hosting plan created on a multi-account VPS plan by the parent account owner. Overselling: The practice of selling goods or services in excess of actual supply. Rented compute services, like web hosting for example, rely on overselling in order to optimize hardware usage and provide some profit margin. A healthy amount of overselling is unnoticeable for end users as every end user can get the resources they are paying for, since all users won't use all their available resources at a single point in time. Unhealthy amount of overselling is discouraged.

You can order a new SmartVPS plan from the Order > Order Hosting section. For the provisioning of the SmartVPS service, you must provide a domain name which will be associated with this account. A single master hosting plan will be created on the server with this domain. It is up to you whether to use this account or not.

The specifications of the SmartVPS plans can be found on ICDSoft's managed VPS page. The disk space, inode, RAM, and CPU core limits are hard limits. These are limits that cannot be exceeded. System data such as mail indexes, auxiliary MySQL data, etc. is not counted towards the disk and inodes quotas of individual accounts. However, system data is counted towards the total disk and inodes quotas of the VPS. The "Server Resource Utilization" graph in the Manage Server section for each SmartVPS plan shows the total disk space and inodes usage of the VPS, which includes both system and user data. The traffic limit is a soft limit both for the parent account and for the child accounts.

Multi-account VPS services are identified by the icon in the Hosting Resources > Hosting Accounts listing. The icon identifies a child hosting account (on a custom hosting plan) hosted on one of your SmartVPS plans. Clicking on either of the icons opens up the "Manage Server" interface. 

You can create an unlimited number of separate hosting accounts on your SmartVPS plan. New accounts are created with the "Create New Account" button in the "Manage Server" interface for the SmartVPS plan. Overselling of resources The SmartVPS hosting plans allow overselling. Since the server resources are managed by you, if a single account on a server is able to occupy the disk space of the whole VPS, this can cause downtime and degradation of services for all other hosting plans on the server. You should always leave a healthy amount of available disk space and not over-provision excessively. You can create an unlimited number of accounts each with its own set of disk, inode, etc. limits. These hosting plans are limited by the overall VPS plan limits. The healthy overselling ratio depends on the type of customers you have for your hosting plans. If you don't know your users and their habits, we recommend that you keep an oversell ratio of 1.2 or even lower (i.e. no oversell). Once you get to know your customers, you can adjust your hosting plans to suit. Example: You can create and sell ten 10 GB hosting accounts on a single 15 GB VPS plan. Most of your customers (say eight of them) will use 1 GB or less. The remaining 20% of your customers (two) will utilize their plans heavily. You should monitor the usage of the VPS, and if the amount of free disk space comes close to 80% of its maximum disk space, we recommend an upgrade to a higher VPS plan, or an upgrade of the child account to one of the standalone hosting plans offered by ICDSoft. Resource limits To create a new account, you must supply a domain name and username, and set the account resource limits. The account limits can be chosen from a predefined hosting plan template, or you can use the "Select Options Manually" checkbox for fine-grained control over the account limits and resources. Hosting plans You can create your own hosting plan templates through the "Manage plans" interface. When you edit a plan already used by existing accounts, you can decide whether the new values should be applied to the existing services by selecting the "Yes/No" "Apply changes to all existing accounts using this plan" option. Expiration dates Each child hosting account you create can be set up with or without an expiration date. If you set an expiration date, you have the option to receive a reminder about the expiration. Child accounts with an expiration date will not be suspended automatically. It is up to you to suspend such an account if you wish. Otherwise, it will remain active for as long as the VPS plan is active. Child accounts without an expiration date will be active as long as you keep your VPS service active. All child hosting accounts (with or without an expiration date) will be suspended if you let the VPS plan expire.

Child accounts are custom-defined hosting plan accounts hosted on a VPS plan allowing multi-account setups. Each child account can follow a template for a hosting plan or have its own custom-defined resources. Managing the resources of a child account is done via the "Manage resources" section in the Account Management section of the child account. Suspension and activation of services Operators of SmartVPS plans can use these features to manage the provided services for their customers. The interface provides control over the operation of the hosting services for each child account. All services can be suspended by using the "Suspend account" button. Stopping separate services is possible through the corresponding "Suspend service" button for each service. When you stop the Mail service, the following services on the server will be completely disabled: Incoming mail servers: POP3, POP3S, IMAP, IMAPS, Incoming mail servers: SMTP, SMTPS Stopping the web service for an account disables the web server on port 80 and 443, rendering the underlying site inaccessible. Removing child accounts Use the "Remove account" option. WARNING: This will delete the entire account from the server. Hosting Control Panel for child accounts Each child account receives a fully functional Control Panel interface which can be accessed with the username/password combination associated with this account.

The following additional services can be purchased for each child account: Dedicated IP addresses. Commercial SSL certificates. Advanced Security services. Upgrades to a standalone hosting plan or a high-performance VPS for a single website plan. Due to the migration required for this upgrade, such requests are processed after posting a ticket through the 24/7 Support section in the Account Panel.

Upgrading from SmartVPS to SmartVPS Pro can be done via the Upgrades section of the master SmartVPS account. If a child hosting account needs more resources than the SmartVPS solution can provide, the recommended course of action is to convert this account to a shared hosting plan provided by ICDSoft. Shared hosting plans and High-Performance VPS plans for single websites provide ample resources for more demanding websites.

The entire server is backed up daily. Restores of individual files, databases, and email accounts are performed through the Restore section in the online Control Panel of each child account. The backup storage isn't counted towards the overall disk space usage of the server. We reserve enough space for each VPS plan on our backup systems to keep up to 15 incremental backups.