Understanding The Node Values - The Disk & RAM Information

Pterodactyl panel was written with hosting companies in mind and not for just the average consumer, so a lot of the panel has admin side only additions which aren't used unless you are a host and API integrations with software like WHMCS modules which support such checks.

If you go to the Admin Side > Nodes > Click the node, you will see the following two information boards on the right hand side. You might be thinking "What? How's that 250 million billion whatever value? Isn't there only 500GB disk and 128GB RAM?"

You are correct, but the value can be modified to whatever number you wish. These values are not automatic, and you set these values when you create the node for the first time, or under the "Settings" tab on the top bar then "Allocation Limits" on the right.

 

Typically, people set this to unlimited, like a billion for example as you see here as it is your own dedicated system. As long as you watch the system resources in SSH such as free -h, df -h and other commands, you will have no issues and you can even setup remote monitoring like HetrixTools pings to monitor the resource levels. The value is a dummy value. Go nuts, set it to what you wish within reason and watch your limits in other ways. The panel does not care what you set this to as a personal user as it won't stop you making servers or starting them manually, it's for limiting creations of servers via the API as explained below.

For a hosting company however, they use billing systems such as WHMCS and with the server module addon "Pterodactyl" or "PteroBill" which automatically creates the server on bill payment by the customer and makes them an account. Now, with these modules, they do API calls to check the node for available space, RAM and allocations before making the server just in case it has no room left. This is where you would set these values to a reasonable amount such as 128GB RAM (131072 MB) so when your billing system allocates a server, you don't run out of room for future customers, over allocating and worrying about degraded performance.

A common misconception is that you should never over allocate as a hosting company. Over allocating is not bad as long as you manage it well. For example, Jasmine has a host herself and set her nodes to unlimited also, but she has many systems in place to warn her of over allocation and usage limits. Think about it, a client isn't going to need all 12GB 24/7 and will idle around 3-4GB when not in use, so allocating 3 servers in that 12GB space is perfectly fine. This applies to CPU also so setting the limit to 200% for 2 whole cores is fine. That server will use all 2 cores on boot but then idle around 20-30%.

As a host running WHMCS, you will meet the error "There are no nodes to satisfy the request" every now and again, meaning that this is basically telling you "A node I am trying to use has run out of something, please check, I cannot auto create a server for this customer." Go check the Disk and RAM values for the node in question including confirming there is enough allocations available.