Gandi Bar - GandiBlog

Gandi Pricing Compared to Amazon EC2

Thomas — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:20:00 -0800

Wondering how Gandi's prices for hosted Linux compare to others in the industry? We were too, so we looked. This post is a “no bullshit” approach to comparing the prices of similar configurations at Amazon EC2 and Gandi.

In any price comparison, it's easy for the party making the comparison (Gandi, in this case) to select the parameters to their advantage. They just need to find the sweet spot in their offering, and make sure to choose the competitor's highest-priced offer to compare it to. We will take a “no bullshit” approach to this comparison, and be completely transparent about what we find.

Amazon came out with Xen-based hosting with the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) just prior to Gandi's introducing VPS hosting, so it's no surprise that they are similar. They both address the need in the market for low-cost Linux-based cloud computing. Amazon, with its extremely large infrastructure and plenty of systems programmers, was able to add lots of nice features to EC2, and integrate the S3 cloud storage system. They do charge for the use of those features, naturally. Gandi has a somewhat different model, and packages storage, bandwidth, and CPU cores in flexible shares that you can adjust, and pay for the package you use. For this comparison, we have taken the most cost effective Amazon instances and comparable services, and constructed Gandi share packages to match as closely as possible what Amazon offers.

Another factor that drives the cost of Amazon's service is usage: They charge for transferring data to and from an instance, as well as storing that data. We made some assumptions that we will be very up-front about: We assume you will actually use the network and the storage capacity you contract for from Amazon. It turns out that if you make light use of the Amazon instance while you have it running, it's actually quite cheap, even relative to Gandi's prices. The question then becomes, what is the point of having the instance (and paying the minimum price) if you aren't going to use it for something?

So, what did we pick? Well, we chose 3 basic instance sizes from Amazon's price list:

Small (1.7 GB Ram, 1 core)

Large (7.5 GB, 2 cores)

Extra Large (15 GB, 4 cores)

Gandi charges by the month, if we ignore Gandi Flex, a feature Amazon does not have. Amazon charges by the hour, so to be fair, we decided to compare running the instances for a solid month.

Next, we considered storage. Gandi offers disk management, backups, and snapshots, all of which Amazon also offers, but only if you use EBS-backed disks. If you don’t, the primary storage on Amazon instances vanishes when you terminate the instance, so it’s not really comparable to what Gandi offers. We therefore decided to compare the more expensive EBS storage to Gandi’s disk images. We chose small (by today’s standards) 32 GB disks for the small and large size instances, and kicked it up to 160 GB for the Extra Large.

Finally (and yes, this is getting to be a long post!) we looked at network usage. Amazon charges by bytes transferred out from the instance, and not in. Gandi charges for a block of bandwidth (5 MBits per share). We will assume that you have a reasonably data-centric application, and you use, say, half the available bandwidth to constantly transfer data out.

For Gandi’s resources, we just adjusted the shares, RAM, and disk to match that of the Small, Large and Extra Large instances using the slider here.

Putting all these costs together, adjusting for Euro/Dollar exchange rates, and excluding VAT, we get:

Instance Size	EC2 Cost	EBS Cost	Data Transfer	Amazon Total	Gandi Total
Small	$61.20	$3.20	$96.00	$160.40	$50.37
Large	$244.80	$3.20	$96.00	$344.00	$197.68
Extra Large	$489.60	$16.00	$372.00	$877.60	$444.95

It looks to us like Gandi’s prices are from a third to a half of Amazon’s for similar resources, without support, which Amazon charges for separately as well.

Of course, if you need to run MS Windows on the cloud, or take advantage of some of the other features Amazon offers, it may make sense to use Amazon. Also, Amazon is free to adjust their prices to compete. If what you want is Linux hosting, though, Gandi is a lot easier on your budget for the same resources.

Gandiblog Incident

Ryan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:30:00 +0200

We have been encountering serious performance problems with GandiBlog over the past few days, and you have unfortunately felt the full consequences of this. Please accept our sincere apologies.

What is happening

Since the opening of GandiBlog two years ago, many of you have created one or more blogs. At the beginning, everything went well as there was not too much data. Then, with time, comments started to be added to your blogs (this is not a bad thing, but it is at the origin of the problem as you will soon see). It turns out that around 90% of these comments are spam. We began to be aware of the problem last summer and performed several "cleaning operations" to remove spam from the blog comments. We believed that everything was going well, all the more so as we put into place a high-performance cache system. Wrong!

During the deletion of the spam, we did not take into account the comments that were published, but only the ones that were flagged as spam. Last night, a first wave of deletions removed 600,000 (yes, that is correct) published trackbacks.

The space occupied by the illegitimate spam led to serious performance problems for the database and therefore hurt the entire GandiBlog platform.

What we are going to do

Purge the spam

Yesterday, we therefore deleted 600,000 illegitimate trackbacks. We are continuing with this today, as there are easily 300,000 which have no business being on GandiBlog. Note, however, that we will not touch your comments in any case, this only concerns the trackbacks.

Optimization of our database

Several points remain yet to be addressed in order to improve the performance of the database. We are going to work on this in the coming days and weeks.

Display of recent comments on your blog

The widget, which allows you to display the latest comments published on your blog, now has a cache of 30 minutes. This was implemented this morning and will remain effective.

Improvement of the cache

Several significant improvements to the cache system remain to be implemented. These will be put into production this afternoon.

Closing of comments and trackbacks

We have observed that too many blogs have been abandoned with the comments left open. No comments will be published now for a blog that has not been updated for at least 2 months. It will be possible, of course, to reactivate the acceptance of comments via the administration interface of the blog.

We're working on it !

All of this will be done as soon as possible. We are even more upset than you are about the blogs not operating at an optimal level, and we would like to be able to continue to offer you new options. This will be the case, once the blogs are running, are rapid, and in a way that is stable.

Static pages and other new GandiBlog features

Ryan — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:36:00 +0200

As you may have noticed, GandiBlog has been updated. It now allows you to create static pages, and in addition to other new features, you will find that it is much more ergonomic.

Static pages

Many of you have requested the addition of what we call "static pages" that you can add that can be visited from your blog's sidebar.

We have therefore added these, and made them as easy to use as possible. The interface is therefore a 'light' version of the one used to create blog entries, and is without a only few features:

No categories
No outgoing trackbacks
No tags

We have kept some of the same features as the blog entries however:

A list of pages
A page to create or modify pages
Comments and trackbacks are possible on a page
A page can be protected by a password
One can add media to a page just like with the blog entries

Comments left on the page will be displayed in the general comments list (with an indication next to the title). Comments are also filtered by the anti-spam system.

A new theme that can be customized by default

This was brought up in the previous post concerning GandiBlog, but it is worthy of being discussed again.

This new version of GandiBlog has a new default theme called Blowup. This theme is accompanied by a plugin that allows you to easily configure it. You can therefore chose the color of the test, the links, as well as their size and font. You can also change some of the background colors (page, comments).

You will have the leisure of choosing a banner image from and if none of the eclectic choices are appealing toyou, you can use your own image.

If you are having difficulties being inspired, you may choose a predefined style or use it as the starting point of your work. Finally, you may share your styles with others by simple copy and pasting your code in your blog or in forms.

To conclude, if you do not know any CSS or want to learn all these barbaric things, this theme just what you need. I will even mention that an employee of Gandi used this theme - though I will not mention any names

Ergonomic improvements

The article composition zone has been improved, mainly with regards to the text editor. The presentation and the homogeneity of the editor on the page has been improved. The editor now has a button that allows you to generate a link to another blog entry. For example, if you would like to refer to a recent article, you can simply click on the insertion link, choose the entre from the list (using the search engine if necessary) and voilà!

The management of tags is improving. You now have the ability to delete a tag: either for all the blog entries that use it, or just a couple.

A list of tags that exist at the time you are writing a new entry is now available, just as when you are modifying an existing entry.

You will also notice that you may now export all or part of your media manager to a zip file. This was made available during the previous update, I simply forgot to mention it.

New online help

The presentation of the contextualized help has been totally revisited. The little nearly invisible question marks have been replaced by a very clear button on the upper-right corner of each page that has a special help section. Clicking on the button will display the help contents (and another click will hide it). The help information will be displayd right over the content: this is unfortunately not a bug, but a limitation of a web browser whose name I will withhold.

Performance and spam

GandiBlog has seen a diverse range of performance problems for various reasons. The main one is the constant flooding of the database with comment spam. A new filter was put in place that will verify the origin if the trackbacks. The data that we have receiving shows that this works very well and blocks a large majority of the trackback spam (which represents nearly all of the comment spam).

Note that as of now, we systematically delete all spam that is is older than 7 days.

Many of you now use, or have tried out GandiBlog. This success therefore means that we need to continue developing our platform. The network team is looking at all the various solutions that can be implemented in order to improve GandiBlog performance even more.

Presents for a bit of colour

Arti — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:03:00 +0100

As we announced yesterday, GandiBlog now has a new theme called "Blowup" which allows you to customise many presentation aspects.

Furthermore, this theme proposes a module which allows you to copy the code of a defined style. This allows users to share their customised styles with other users. The "Blowup" theme also offers some pre-defined styles, but there are only few for the time being.

We're going to add more in days to come and thought you could help out as well. To do so, nothing simpler: configure your Blowup theme until you're happy with the result. Once you've done so, click the "+" by "Import / export" and copy the code in the text field which comes up. Then, you can just paste it right here as a comment (and give it a name if you feel inspired).

If you lack inspiration, visit Kuler http://kuler.adobe.com/.

The authors of the styles we will choose to add to the list of pre-defined styles will be given a Gandi t-shirt or a one-year domain renewal, as a token of our gratitude.

What is more, those who feel really inspired can design header images. Only one condition: These must be 800 pixels in width. PNG transparency is allowed (and encouraged). Leave the image's URL as a comment.

Note: Gandi personnel are allowed to participate, but won't get any presents...

Happy colouring to all

GandiBlog Update: The Return

Ryan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:56:00 +0100

You may have noticed your GandiBlog running faster this afternoon.

No, we haven't added 50 new machines, we've just updated GandiBlog. In fact, we've doubly updated it.

Your blogs definitely respond faster. We've set up a very efficient cache system on your blogs' public section, therefore avoiding avid RSS-feed-upaters penalizing everyone else. If you happen to witness any cache-related problem (pages that no longer updates, for instance), please let us know.

That's for the performance side of things.

And because good news always comes in twos, the curious among you will have noticed a new theme in the last of GandiBlog's available themes: "Blowup". Note that the screenshot in the list of themes is only one possibility.

Activate the theme and then click its configuration link. Would you like to change the background color? the title font? change the banner's position? All of those are possible with this theme.

You'll even be able to place an image in JPG or PNG format (800 pixels wide, imperatively) so as to completely personalize the top banner of your blog.

And if you lack inspiration, you'll be able to chose from a list pre-defined styles and ready-made images. There are only few for the time time being, but we're going to add some more and are also relying on your help. That will be the topic of the next post.

Recently, a reader wrote: "...you need to be a real expert in CSS and the like... Isn't there something between the 2? It would be really great to be able to choose a basic theme and simply change the photo...". I think that the Blowup theme will satisfy this need.

More news coming soon...

Temporary closing of GandiBlogs

Ryan — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:18:00 +0100

GandiBlog will officially open its doors this afternoon. The update will cause an interruption in service for this one time only. The blog will go offline at 15:00 Paris time, and will go back online at 16:00.

You will see some changes in your blogs, that may ask you to make some modifications to it

Please read this entire entry if you have a GandiBlog. We will be discussing the additions that will appear after the update.

New widget system

We have taken into account many of your remarks concerning the widgets, and we have greatly improved them. This improvement has an unfortunate side, however - if you have customized your widgets, you must give them a title, they will be erased after the update. You may also reset your widgets if you want to return to the default configuration.

Change in the CSS stylesheet

If you use the theme, "Custom CSS", you may need to update some style attributes:

#categories becomes .categories
#selected becomes .selected
#langs becomes .langs
#syndicate becomes .syndicate
#links becomes .links
#tags becomes #sidebar .tags

Note that this latter must be #sidebar .tags so as to not put it in conflict against a class of the same name.

If you do not use the "Custom CSS" theme, then nothing needs to be changed.

Administration interface

Nearly all the javascript files in the administration interface have been changed. Due to the sometimes odd behavior of certain browsers, they may take on a strange appearance or display errors. The simplest solution to this will be to empty your web browser's cache after the update occurs.

Addition of visitor statistics to GandiBlog

Ryan — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 08:52:00 +0100

To view your blog's stats, click on the "Statistics" link that now appears in the left-hand column in your blog's administration interface. You will then see a page that displays your statistics for the current month (stats for previous months will be saved, and all stats begin on November 2006), along with the usual information (visitors per day, breakdown of visitors, browser information, etc.).

Something somewhat unique: you may see what keywords were used in Google to find your blog, as well as the most recent links to your blog's address.

Statistics are updated each day before midnight via the application, Visitors.

Statistics may vary somewhat from the results you get from other tools you may have added. This is to be expected, though please contact us if you see a difference that seems abnormally wide.

More good news: we will soon be giving you easy access to your blogs' raw logs so that you can use your favorite log analyzer

PS. Please remember that we are still in the Beta version of GandiBlog...at least for a couple more days

GandiBlog Update, Part IV

Ryan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 11:06:00 +0100

Dotclear released version 2 beta 3 yesterday, and the update of GandiBlog followed today (not without some minor disturbances that hopefully you have not noticed).

You can already see the improvement made to this new version of GandiBlog (which has been updated several times already), in that it now has a plug-in for pings.

You may therefore notify the services of Ping-o-Matic! and Google Blogsearch. Ping-o-Matic allows you to notify many different services. If you want us to add others, just ask!

You may have also remarked that on the bottom of the page of your blog you will see a link to the following page: GandiBlog. This is the page where you can see a list of all the most recently-updated blogs (a RSS feed will soon be available).

Statistics will be available in the coming days.

What's new with GandiBlog?

Ryan — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:26:00 +0200

It has been a week now since we have last updated our GandiBlog A few improvements have been made and a bug is being corrected.

GandiBlog options:
A new entry is available in the Dashbord: GandiBlog options. For now, there is only one option, "Authorize Gandi to promote my blog on Gandi.net". If you click this box, your blog will appear on a page that lists the most recently updated blogs. This option is not activated by default, and so you need to activate it if you want this option enabled. The page in question will soon be visible.

Import once again possible
A slight problem has made it impossible to import into GandiBlog. The problem has been identifies and corrected.

Improvements in the XML/RPC interface
The XML/RPC interface allows you to update your blog from a program installed on your computer (or from some sites such as Flickr or Blogmarks). This is rather complex to test and verify given the large number of platforms available. This works better as of today; we have tested some programs and here are some of our recommendations:

Ecto (for Mac OS). Very good, it is just important to not convert the HTML and to be sure tu use UTF-8.
MarsEdit (Mac OS). This works well in "metaweblog API" mode, but not in Movable Type mode, because the specifications are not very good.
An XML/RPC plug-in for Textmate (Mac OS) also allows blogging, and it works rather well.
For Windows users, w.blogger works rather well, though does not support UTF-8.
Performancing (all operating systems) works very well.
BloGTK (Linux) also works very well, it is just necessary to specify that we use UTF-8.

As a conclusion, we highly recommend using Performancing or Ecto.

As a reminder, you will find the XML/RPC interface in the preferences of your blog.

With regards to the forum, we have not forgotten it: it has never been so close to opening!

Multiple writers for GandiBlog!

Ryan — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:45:00 +0200

Due to a technical problem, this will take longer than anticipated...just kidding! Everything is ready, there is no need to click on "Totally delete" right away

The principle is simple, you can invite whoever you want (enter their Gandi handle) to write entries in your blog, and assign them administrative rights.

Before you leap to your keyboard, please take note as to what the Blog's special terms and conditions are (which you have accepted):

As chief editor of Your GandiBlog, and owner of the domain name associated with Your GandiBlog, You are held fully liable for the content published on Your GandiBlog, which notably includes, but is not limited to, all information data, text, software, music, sound, image, photograph, logo, drawing, video, goods, product, service, signs, signals, writing or messages of any or all nature (hereafter referred to as "Content") that is published, transmitted, or made available to the public via Your GandiBlog, including in the event of a Licence of Use, whether or not You are the author or responsible for its being made available online.

How does this work? It is quite simple. Click on "Writers" in the "System" menu (the left-hand vertical menu in your blog's administration interface). Next, to add a Gandi contact, enter his or her Gandi handle (in upper-case letters) and then select what rights you want to allow them to have in administering your blog. It is not possible to transfer full administrative control of your blog to your "mandated user" as that could lead to their possible deletion of your blog (which would be bad...)

To delete a "mandated user", simply uncheck all the permissions that you gave them. We will continue with the rest via the forum, which will soon be online.

GandiBlog Update, Part III

Ryan — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:20:00 +0200

We updated GandiBlog yesterday, and several improvements have been made:

Addition of Wiki syntax help (click on the question mark next to "Text formatting" to access it).
Possibility of entering your Gandi handle in both uppercase and lowercase letters during login.
Possibilitiy of choosing how to sort the tags in the tags widget.
Correction of a problem with the HTTP proxy (for your weather or RSS feeds).

Consequently, the "Latest News" has reappeared in the Dashbord.

Please note: major changes have been made to the XML/RPC interface. In order to avoid sending your Gandi passwords out in the open, the XML/RPC interface has been moved. Information necessary for accessing it is available in the settings of your blof. The XML/RPC interface must first be activated before it will work, and before you can obtain the information that you need for your client.

The mandated user (aditional administrators of your blog) option will soon be up and running. The good news is that all is ready, there just remains one more thing to do...

The forum is also ready to go, and since this no longer depends on me, please give your encouragement to Tuf, who has taken the relay

What's new with GandiBlog?

Ryan — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 11:51:00 +0200

Last week, we added 1,000 additional accounts to GandiBlog. Welcome to all the new arrivals! We hope that you feel well at ease (a few accounts should still be available).

We updated the GandiBlog platform yesterday, adding a range of new features and correcting a few remaining problems. This includes:

The ability to import OPML^[1] or XBEL into your blogroll (a OPML file may often be generated by an aggregator)
RSS and Atom feeds for tags (entries and comments)
The number of attached files is now displayed on your blog. In the administration interface, a paperclip icon shows you if an entry contains attached files.
If you add an image containing an XMP^[2] header, information such as the date of the shoot, the image title, etc. will automatically be imported. A little bit later, we will be adding EXIF and IPTC compatibility, eventually followed by a great gallery
Some improvements to the WYSIWYG editor
From the Dashord, you will see a new link: "Informations GandiBlog". This will take you to a page that contains information pertaining to your blog (for the moment is it only in French). Right now, this only contains info on the XML/RPC interface settings; Many of you have requested this and we must admit that without this information, there would be no way to figure out how to do it

Also, and without a doubt the most widely anticipated: a customizable theme. On the 'Theme Settings' page, select the "Custom Theme" and click the 'save' button. After the page has refreshed, you will see a 'Theme Configuration' tab appear where you can enter all the CSS code you want, to customize the appearance of your blog. If you then change the theme and return to a customized theme, your stylesheet will be saved.

Last, but not least, the problem with trackbacks has been fixed.

Notes

[1] voir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML

[2] XMP headers are often added by Photoshop

Gandi launches GandiBlog public beta

Olivier — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:04:00 +0200

It gives us great pleasure to announce the opening of the public beta version of GandiBlog for the first 500 activations. If everything goes as planned, the final opening should follow quickly. All domains registered with Gandi will include the opening of a blog.

How? It's very easy : go to the control panel of one of your domains ; at the bottom, in the "Technical Settings" section, you will find a link to activate your blog.

Attention: You have to be registered with us as the owner of the domain in order to activate your blog. You can choose to activate your blog under your domain name, or under a related sub-domain. You can either use Gandi's DNS or use your own, by following the instructions during the activation process.

Why GandiBlog, you ask ? A good question. Why do we offer a blog service? To be "in"? So people will talk about us? To sell domain names? To upset expensive and settled monopolies? Why not?

Let's be frank, such a service is a very good way to gain new customers (especially since we don't advertise at all, and don't believe in lobbying). But blogs are first and foremost in line with Gandi's spirit; a very performant and simple tool.

What is GandiBlog? It is a platform based on the DotClear 2 free software, which offers a good number of interresting functions.

With GandiBlog, you can write tickets and receive comments. Yes, yes, it's true, no need to thank us
A category system.
A tag (or key word) management system. You can add as many tags to a ticket as wanted, and thus offer a new browsing mode on your blog. You can also create a new tag by simply selecting a word in a ticket.
A very complete media manager, supporting any file type. Naturally, you will be able to attach these files to your tickets and, for example, create podcasts very easily.
You will be able to protect tickets with a password. You will just need to give the URL and the password to the people you choose.
A visual editor: if you don't like the Wiki syntax and don't know anything about XHTML, you will still be able to publish You will have acces to a visual editor allowing you to use the most common formatings, to insert images, to create links, lists, etc.
A link manager allowing to organize a blogroll as you wish.
Presentation widgets: if the setup of the widgets is not to your liking, a tool will allow you to change everything and add a lot of new widgets soon..
A spam filter, Spamplemousse, adapted to DotClear 2, which will be soon replaced by an even more efficient filter created by the same designers.

Now that we presented the caractéristics common to DotClear 2 and GandiBlog, let's have a look at what makes GandiBlog special.

Hosting. You are not a system administrator and the simple mention of a FTP client makes you want to run the other way? You are in good hands. You will not have to install or update the software for your blog, we take care of everything and offer a 1Go disc space and 10Go of bandwidth per month.
Themes. You are not a graphic designer and the last drawing you made earned you jibes and giggles from your classmates in elementary school? We did not forget you. Talented artists created about 30 different themes. You should be able to find one you like while we work on allowing CSS modifications and maybe templates as well.
With a domain name. You don't understand the first thing about DNS and the Gandi Support plays darts with your picture as a target ^[1]? Don't panic, you just need to check a box to activate your blog.

GandiBlog is the result of a collective effort, a successful bet between two teams, and in the name of Gandi, I wish to sincerely thank the DotClear team. They invested themself in DotClear 2 while still offering support for the users of the version 1. I would also like to thank Nicolas Martin for all the time spent on the visual editor, the Upian team, Maurice Svay, Laurence Jacquet and Marc Hertzog for the themes, and finally, the happy band who tested the platform blogeoisie.com. Thank you, all of you!

Notes

[1] They never do that. More than diligent and available, they are all very nice.