At HOSTKO we limit the number of Inodes per cPanel account based on your hosting package. The soft limit is displayed in cpanel stats panel under File Usage.
What is an inode and why is it limited?
An inode is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a filesystem object such as a file or a directory. Each inode stores the attributes and disk block location(s) of the object’s data. Filesystem object attributes may include metadata (times of last change, access, modification), as well as owner and permission data. Directories are lists of names assigned to inodes. A directory contains an entry for itself, its parent, and each of its children.
That’s the best definition I could get provided by Wikipedia. But in short, every file/folder within your Cpanel is counted as 1 inode.
We place these type of limits on our hosting packages to optimize for performance. If we didn’t have such limits in place, we wouldn’t be able to provide servers with blazing fast speed.
Keep your file structure clean
Especially for those that have had their website online for many years, it’s easy to start accumulating files that are no longer needed.
If you utilize a caching plugin for WordPress, Magento or other applications, it’s possible you need to truncate your caching directory a couple of times a month to keep things clean and organized.
Another big reason for increased Inodes is storing large amounts of email on the server. Users should download these emails to their computer or at least make sure to clean their spam box regularly.
What happens if you hit the limit?
Once you hit the limit (advertised limits on website) the account functionality will be limited. Meaning you’ll no longer be able to upload new files, receive emails, sending emails, etc. until you bring that number down.
Upgrades available
Most customers that reach the limit find that cleaning up their file structure solves their problem. For those that still have an issue, an account upgrade maybe needed.
Websites that reach their inode limits for standard shared hosting and may need to upgrade to our Pro/Turbo packages that offers inode limits in the millions.
We’re here to help
As said above, we place these type of limits on our accounts to keep our servers running at optimal performance.
If you have any questions over these limits or would like to know how you can clean-up your account, feel free to reach out and we’d be happy to help!