What is I/O Usage in terms of cPanel? Why my site has been limited?

Question

I am new to web hosting. So this might be a silly question?

What is I/O Usage in terms of cPanel?

Does it stand for maximum bandwidth my website can have per second?

it's the "throughput" or speed of data transfer between the hard disk and the RAM. I have this line from Godaddy help section. And I am not able to understand.

My website is currently developing so there are very rare chances of any 3rd party visits.

My I/O Usage limit is 4 MB/s.

I will be using my site for an android app which is a video and image sharing app. Is this I/O Usage limit sufficient for me ?

Solution

I/O Transfers

I/O is the transfer rate between the hard disk and ram. All computers, servers and mobile devices have a maximum I/O the max is determined by the cpu speed, bus speed, hard drives and ram. All shared hosts, clouds and virtual private server use some form soft I/O limit or cap to ensure that you do not effect other users on the same server.

Understanding Bitrate

When sharing a video online on a shared server you need to know your the I/O of your hosting and bitrate of video. Using the two you can work out the maxium users that can use your site at one time without getting in trouble with your web host. For example if your video is 1080p x264 at 4000 Kbps then that is 400kb/sec which means... 10 users watching your video would be 4000kb/sec which is your limit of the I/O.

Shared hosting is a not a platform that is recommended for video hosting due to the fact of the I/O and bandwidth restrictions these shared hosting companies enforce. This is why so many companies use YouTube and other streaming services because its cheaper to do so.

Shared Hosts

Most shared hosting platforms will have thousands to hundreds of thousands of customers on the same server, each will be allocated a % of the max I/O transfer or have terms and conditions not to constantly use too much. In your case you have exceeded your maximum I/O write allocated to you and therefore have landed yourself a suspension for breaking the terms of service.

But... Wait... What About Unlimited Hosting

Sadly many people believe they have unlimited hosting when in fact they do not. Unlimited hosting is according to their acceptable usage policy. Shared hosting is never unlimited and its kinda false advertising but they have been getting away with it for decades.

Virtual Private Servers, Dedicated Servers, Content Delivery Networks and Cloud Servers

VPS, Dedicated Servers, CDN, Cloud servers will have a higher I/O limit because they generally use better technologies, less user contention and a higher array of disks. If you can afford better hosting then you will need to use something like this or use YouTube.

Comments

[Goutham]

Thanks, @Simon Hayter. One more query, leave videos apart, if I only host images and of low quality (100KB~120KB), will it have an adverse effect on my I/O Usage?

[Simon Hayter]

You count the total page size not individual pictures since SQL may be read from disk including other resources such as JavaScripts. Average shopping site for example is around 2,000kb however you can't really compare this to a video since computers do not render pages instantly and elements are downloaded one after another so you can fit more users within the I/O limit. Streaming kills I/O while it takes a lot of concurrent website browsing users to amount to the same I/O output of streaming.

[Simon Hayter]

Also... I don't recommend catering an APP based on terms and conditions of a shared hosting provider. Its apparent you need something more demanding... cater your content around your users, never the hosting.