Disk Usage

As a re-seller I occasionally see accounts where the actual disk usage is MUCH smaller than the value reported in H-Sphere.

I've had this problem in the past, and I've currently got a support ticket open to address some specific issues - but I'm wondering if there is a more general explanation for the problems?

I understand the 'average' nature of the numbers displayed - and maybe this is all due to that - but the problem seems to be unfixable, and very hard to track on the user side.

As an example - I have an account that indicates it's using 363 MB in the Reseller H-Sphere report.

If you login as the user, it also shows 363MB used. If you use the web file manager it ALSO shows 363MB used.

However, if you download EVERY file, including all the log files, there are only 51.3MB - that's uncompressed, actual files (Windows says "Size: 40.9MB, Size on disk: 51.3 MB")

I have not deleted files recently - in fact it was last accessed 3 months ago. This is no email or SQL usage...

I suspect it might be occurring on 'old' accounts - this account was active for many years, and only 'closed' last year. However, the fact that I am now paying EXTRA for a weird 'rounding' or 'averaging' error seems like a major bug!

The quota issue on linux web servers have been fixed for the account you were having. The issue happens somtimes on web servers mostly there is no definite pattern as to why this happens we have been working with parallels on this for quite some times and they have put up a KB specifically for resolving quota issues on servers.

Thanks for the update!

Is there any way this fix can be applied to all accounts?

The only way I can determine a problem is by downloading every file from an account via FTP.

Then, I check my local file size versus the size reported in either the Re-seller Disk Usage Report or in the user account Control Panel / File Manager.

While cleaning out files yesterday I checked another account - it was reported using 224 MB, when I downloaded every file - including log files - I only had 148 MB.
Once again, this was an old account, setup in 2011(!). It probably set for YEARS, which might indicate the 'average' is very skewed on old accounts.

This specific account isn't a problem - I was deleting the entire account anyway - but that does indicate an over-reporting of disk usage over 30%.

I'm in the process of reviewing all of my reseller accounts to determine 'dead' accounts that need to be removed, and I'll probably be downloading many of them to check their usage as well - unless there is an easier way to check disk usage?

Here's an ironic twist:

Account setup August 2014. Installed Word Press, completed site October 2014 - it's been basically static since that time.
No email or anything, just a basic Word Press site.

My local backup reports 66MB in disk usage
The user control panel and File Manger report 65MB in disk usage.

Everything seems to match up - hooray!

However - the Reseller Disk Usage Report (for the date range 1/1/2015 - 1/25/2015) says the disk usage is only 5.41MB!

Wow, maybe I don't want all of my re-seller accounts reviewed!

Just kidding - but I thought you should be aware the problem could also be affecting Jodo as well.
It also illustrates how difficult it can be for a re-seller to keep track of these things. Luckily I don't need to worry about disk usage for most clients, but I do need reliable info to bill my clients.

Thanks, noted.

One other thing I've recently discovered - ModLogAnalyzer is a HUGE disk hog!!!!

I started going through old accounts looking at disk usage - almost EVERY old account (5+ years) had a HUGE modlogan folder.

Most of these had thousands of files - on some old accounts there were 5,000+ files.

Here's a couple of examples:
Disk Usage (before) 651 MB
modlogan folder: 323MB

Disk usage (before) 371 MB
modlogan folder: 191MB <-- More than HALF the total usage is just in here!

Disk usage (before) 590 MB
modlogan folder: 324MB !!!!! <-- AGAIN More than HALF the total usage is just in here!

Just going over my first 20 reseller accounts I've removed 2,516 MB - just from ModLogAn!

I'm sure it's just turned ON by default - obviously it's time to fix that and remove it from all accounts as as well! And time to go through every account and disable it!

I was worried about hitting my disk quota - but just removing this is going to drop me well below the quota.

Question:
How can a basic HTML website from 2007 use 108 MB in disk space?
Lots of photos...but still - I think we sized stuff to 400 pixels max back then!

Answer:
ModLogAn! 84 MB in 5,786 files!!!

odd I typed up an entire reply yesterday and it seems it did not post. So reposting, yes modlogan and webalizer can both use a large amount of disk space over time as they have so many 1000's of files for daily reports for the entire time enabled.

One more question:

When I get emails from Sales@Jodo... about "Warning(Approaching resource limit)" for my disk usage, where do they get their totals from?

My disk quota is 24 GB and I've bee getting reports from sales indicating my usage is steadily increasing - the last email update (today) was up to 25.8 GB

Last week (Thursday/Friday) I spent a lot of time removing old accounts, deleting files, deleting backups, and deleting old emails - nearly 3 GB. This week - Monday - I removed another 4GB.

However - I'm still getting email updates from Sales that show my disk usage increasing. It's moving slowly, but still increasing. I started the cycle at 24.2 GB.

I understand (at least the concept!) of the average computation - my bill cycle is the 24th, so I was expecting more downward movement with such a dramatic decrease in disk usage so soon after the billing cycle. I have not been adding files, and even my heaviest email users are only adding 5-10 MB per day.

I'll keep an eye on it - but it would be interesting to know where Sales@ is getting their number so I know what to compare it to on my end.

sales@ is just the from address, that is the Hsphere auto mailer They aren't going in and figuring daily. I think you know this just being clear.

The figures shoudl be coming from a tally of all used resources among all your accounts.

I was just wondering how the Hsphere notifier (emails from Sales@...) worked (and I'm assuming this is the figure billing or the automated system will use at the end of the cycle).

The numbers numbers in those emails don't seem to match anything I can see.

Below is a more specific example from a couple days ago:

1.
Reseller User Section (sorry if the title doesn't make sense, that's the menu item):
The Reseller Disk usage bar/total on the left has an "Average" total and "Last Day"
Avg 27,241.24 / 24,000 MB
Last Day 26,708.74 MB

2.
Reseller Admin -> Reports -> Disk usage
I select a date range (for example, Jan 25 - Feb 4) this produces an HTML page. I copy that to Excel and total those figures (note - that would be a cool feature to request - a total at the end of the report!).
That's a different total than the Hsphere reseller user page earlier.
Total: 24,898.02 Mb

Pretty big difference!

3.
Now the auto email - these are daily (none yet today!) but they have shown usage going UP while I've been removing significant amounts of data.
Sales@jodo... Auto mailer:
Summary quota account:XXXXXX has used 25,800.18 MB out of 24000 MB limit

Even the Disk Usage Report is higher than I expected after removing 5 Gb - but I'll agree that still could be based on the average (I removed most of the files Friday, Jan 30 and Monday, Feb 2), we'll see how it changes after a full week of lower usage.

Overall - I would much rather catch these issues BEFORE the billing cycle ends - especially if I feel there is an error in the reporting or totals.
I'd rather keep my money, and I'm sure you'd rather NOT have people issuing refunds!

sure I understand concern, normally the reason for this is that the billing cycle uses a daily average over the billing period timeframe, so it can go up a day or two even if daily usage went down, it lags behind a bit. There could be something else at play here as well, but that would be the first thing that comes to mind. It should start tapering off soon.

Is it safe to delete the older .log files in the log directory? Same for webalizer and awstats? One client alone has over 6GB in the log file.

It is fine to delete if you have no need of them, in worst case you could download them and Zip locally if you really think any need for them but most have none.