FAQ

You can find less-frequently asked questions at wiki.chunkhost.com.

What makes a chunk?

Currently, our physical servers are dells with 32 GB of ram, dual quad-core energy efficient 2.2GHz AMD processors, with RAID 1 (mirroring) 10K SATA drives. The mirroring means double read performance and complete redundancy, but we also make free nightly backups of all chunks to a separate backup server to mitigate the potential of any catastrophic loss.

How much CPU do I get?

Xen (the virtualization software that runs your chunk) is very good about CPU scheduling. 99% of the time CPU isn’t really an issue, but if somehow all the chunks on a machine were all trying to max out the processor at the same time, you would be guaranteed the same ratio of CPU as you have of the total 32 GB of machine memory. For example: a 2GB chunk would get 1/16th of the total 17.6 GHz of CPU (since each machine has 32GB of memory total). Again, remember you can always burst to the unused portion of all eight cores!

Do you have an SLA (Service Level Agreement)?

Yes! We offer an unconditional 100% network and server uptime guarantee. Individual chunks are not covered under the SLA, because you are completely responsible for what you do on it. But, if your underlying server or the overall network goes down at all for any reason, we will automatically credit your account a 100% prorated refund for the time it was down.

Where is my chunk?

Currently, all our chunks are in the Peer One data center in downtown Los Angeles.

How long will the beta be free?

At least 5 weeks. Sometimes longer, depending on capacity.

When your beta chunk's time is up, we email you asking you to take a survey about the experience. At the end of the survey, you can choose to keep your chunk and begin paying for it or let it be shut down.

What if I do nothing? Will I be charged any money?

You will never be charged without very explicitly asking us to!

The default in all cases is to just let your chunk expire.

So if the beta's free, why do you need a credit card?

Because the cardholder is ultimately responsible for the activity on the account, including bandwidth overages, or extra, non-free chunks you can create (if you so choose).

It also helps keep people from signing up more than once and generally mistreating the service.

There's a weird $1.01 charge on my card!

It's not a charge! Like any other business that wants to make sure a card is valid, we have to test the card. It's the same method used by video stores and other places that want to verify a card without yet charging it.

We ask for an authorization, not a charge, for $1.01 (the smallest amount practically possible). If the authorization succeeds, instead of "capturing" the $1.01 (so that we actually receive money), we immediately void the authorization. With most banks you never see the authorization at all.

Debit cards seems to be more prone to having that authorization sit around for a while, sometimes even a day. The absolute worst it can do is reduce your purchasing power temporarily. And if $1.01 in reduced purchasing power would be detrimental, please don't sign up!

Why U.S. only?

As a new merchant account, we're not yet authorized to process international cards, which carry higher fraud risk.

Why "chunk?"

_why, indeed: