Create multiple additional sites to cPanel without reducing CPU available to main site

Question

A little bit background info.. We have one main content heavy website that is quite busy with lots of traffic. Hosting is on dedicated server in it's own cpanel account.

We have other domains too but they don't get that much traffic. Earlier they were in same cpanel account as main site ( as addon domains) but we later on moved them with each one having it's own cpanel account ( for better security).

We need to add 3 more domains now which will be very light sites with little traffic but they may get more traffic as we start advertising them. We need to decide between whether it's better to host 3 light sites ( basically 1-4 page sites) on ONE cpanel account OR to host them in separate cpanel account for each one of them.

Would creating new cpanel accounts for each domain add to the overhead of CPU usage or cause unnecessary load on server as compared to all 3 of them in one cpanel account?

Also is there any way to make sure that our Main site domain and it's cpanel gets preference when it comes to CPU and server resources?

Answer 1

There is no resource advantage to having multiple domains on the same cPanel account. Essentially, all that cPanel does is to modify the configuration of your various services. Once they are modified, they handle the heavy lifting.

For instance, when you create a domain, regardless of whether or not it's in the same cPanel account, cPanel will create a separate VirtualHost entry in Apache for that domain. Once Apache restarts, new visitors will use that entry, and it doesn't have to go through the cPanel account itself.

In fact, for resource concerns, you're better off splitting domains to their own accounts. This is because most methods of tracking resource usage can narrow down the usage to the username. So, if there are different users, then the resources may better identified. As you had already mentioned, the main advantage is for security to prevent one compromise to spread to many websites. Also, it's much easier to merge a domain into a cPanel account later than to move a domain into a separate cPanel accoun.

Regarding your question about throttling CPU usage, you will most likely want some separate tool for that. Otherwise, you might be stuck to simply restricting usage for PHP from within php.ini settings, such as restricting memory limits or timeouts, etc. You may also be able to modify ulimit. The best tool, though, would be instead to install something like CloudLinux, which shouldn't be too hard to do for your cPanel environment. Another option may be to move all of your other sites onto a separate, smaller platform, like a VPS if the time comes that resources become an issue.