What are Burstable Resources?
Burstable resources allow a hosting account to temporarily exceed its baseline resource allocation, such as CPU or RAM, during short periods of high demand.
How Does Burstable Resources Work?
In a burstable resource model, a server or virtual machine is assigned a guaranteed baseline level of computing resources but can draw on additional capacity for brief intervals when workload spikes occur. This approach is common with cloud hosting and certain VPS plans, offering a balance between cost efficiency during normal operations and the ability to handle unexpected traffic surges.
Burstable instances are ideal for workloads that are generally low but experience intermittent peaks, such as blogs or small business websites. However, sustained heavy usage beyond the baseline will either result in performance throttling or additional charges depending on the provider. Workloads requiring consistent high performance are better suited to dedicated or non-burstable resource plans.