Gandi Bar - Hosting

An Accelerator for your Web servers

Thomas — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:43:00 -0800

Our technical team has once again proven that they are resourceful, innovative, and dedicated, by coming up with yet another new product to enhance your experience at Gandi. Check out this new Web Accelerator cache engine and load balancer! After months of careful study, we are releasing (as Beta) a new way to speed up visitors access to your HTTP and HTTPS web sites running on Gandi Cloud VLS servers. The Web Accelerator provides a significant boost to the serving of content, allowing your sites to handle a far greater number of users without sacrificing performance.
And if that's not enough to impress you, through manipulating the Varnish cache, we have added load balancing functionality for up to 16 servers! When multiple servers are attached, the dispatcher works as a load balancer, using either a RoundRobin distribution algorithm to randomly assign queries to available servers, or a ClientIP scheme, where each session stays on the same server until it expires.

This new product, called simply "Web Accelerator", is now available in Beta test . If you are not a beta tester, and and you want to become one, just ask us

During this phase, the Web Accelerator will be available free , with a limit of two servers attached. For documentation on how to use it, please see our wiki pages . If you prefer video, heres one from our friends at VarnishSoftware that gives a nice explanation.

We look forward to your feedback! Submit your thoughts, your problems, experiences, and yes, praise too, via this email address. Thanks!

Is 16 Million VLANs enough for you?

Thomas — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:18:00 -0800

Gandi is launching a revolutionary new product set this week. For the first time, a cloud service provider will offer a private VLAN using truly scalable, standards-compliant technology that will rock the cloud-computing world.

Gandi is launching a revolutionary new product set this week. For the first time, a cloud service provider will offer a private VLAN using truly scalable, standards-compliant technology that will rock the cloud-computing world.

For our customers, it’s going to be yet another cool new feature that we make available in our web interface, letting advanced users of our Gandi VPS Cloud systems network using private VLANs. For the world of cloud computing, however, the impact will be far larger, since once it's proven and reviewed, we plan to eventually offer the technology to everyone, as open source software.

It’s been a growing problem with cloud computing: as the virtual servers multiply, the ability of network infrastructures to keep up with the load has been stressed to the breaking point. The main issues appear first at the edge of the envelope, as cloud server providers like Gandi scale up and up to serve more customers.

We have been able to increase compute power and flexibility over the past year, but the network’s ability to offer VLANs to link user instances over private segments ran up against the issues of VLAN exhaustion, lack of redundant paths, and the overloading of even top-of-the-line switching infrastructures with too many MAC addresses.

Now the barriers have fallen.

The limit of 4096 VLANs on a given switching fabric is blown away: it’s the square of 4096 now, over 16 million VLANs.

Redundancy of links is assured, and our MAC-in-MAC implementation of the TRILL RFC relieves the stress on switch table space.

What does all this mean? It means that Gandi once again is showing the world that when networking vendors fail to address a market need with reasonably priced solutions, innovative companies and people come together to develop open source solutions. Sorry, network vendors, we won’t be buying that SDN solution. We can innovate and make our existing network infrastructures really sing, replacing nothing, just implementing innovative open technology.

For our customers, we are releasing a beta version of the Gandi Private VLAN and Web Accelerator proxy later this week, free. We are limiting the trial to one VLAN, and two VPS servers on one Web Accelerator until we have your feedback on the awesome speed and functionality of this truly (r)evolutionary product.

To be included in the beta test, email us at beta-hosting@gandi.net.

Read on for an in-depth description of the TRILL as implemented at Gandi.

Simple Hosting Turns One Year Old

Thomas — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:05:00 -0800

On January 19, 2012, after three months of beta testing, we launched the first European Cloud PaaS: Gandi Simple Hosting. It's now a year later, and Gandi now hosts over 16000 sites. In the USA, we have a strong presence, and while there are many choices for hosting, Gandi's unique, targeted PaaS products are catching on here too.

Simple Hosting offers an easier way to get your web applications deployed and running, hiding a lot of the complexity of self-managed instances, yet giving you the flexibility to load what you want, when you want, on a known, supported, and stable platform. It's perfect for a blog, an e-commerce site, or CMS for a company or association.

What's been done the first year?

Gandi's approach has always been to listen to what it's customers say (you are our product team!) and make it reality as quickly as we can. We listened, and over the course of the year we have added feature after feature. Here's some of what we added:

Snapshot backups

Multi-site management

SSL Certificates

SSH Console Access

PosgreSQL instance

What's next for Simple Hosting?

Gandi knows that the choices you have in hosting providers are many, and that there are advantages some of our competitors have that you are asking for. We think we have the edge on them in terms of value for the price, but we are still planning on more and more features and instance types over the next year. Really, we are just getting started here, and all of us are very excited to be working on this product. We never cease to be inspired by the sites you, our customers, put up each day. We want to keep enabling your success.

You will see more instance types, support for more configuration options, software versions, and management features. We are also increasing the availability of support with our online chat service. Yes, we are hiring in the USA!

It has been a good year, and like all good things, it's time to celebrate the anniversary. For this weekend, we are offering a promotion in honor of Simple Hosting's birthday. You can get deep discounts on new instances of all sizes until midnight CET Monday, the 21st. If you were thinking of putting up a site on Simple Hosting, now is the time! You can also get a 20% discount on an upgrade, so if you started with an S size and outgrew it, or wanted to add an SSL cert that needs an M size, get one for less this weekend.

Remember that you are also our marketing team. We rely on our customers (and only our customers) for promotion, and we never buy ads. If you like what we have done, or what you have been able to do with Simple Hosting, leave a comment about your site here. Tell your friends on Facebook, Tweet about it, and let everyone know how Gandi made your site fast, easy, and flexible.

SSL Certificates for your instance

Ryan — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:34:00 +0100

It is now possible to add a SSL certificate to your websites hosted on our Simple Hosting platform.

But first of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! And may your wishes come true, and your instances be filled with joy and your database mutate (or not, haha)

We are pleased to announce that we are starting 2013 with the ability to add SSL certificates to your websites hosted on Gandi's Simple Hosting platform. And not just those issued by Gandi, but ANY valid SSL certificate!

For this, you just need a valid certificate that corresponds to the name of the domain that will be used with the website and of course an M-size or greater Simple Hosting instance. The installation is childishly simple: just paste the domain's certificate and its associated private key into the form, and there you are!

If you need more instructions, check out our page in the Wiki on the topic.

And as we are still in the Christmas spirit, and some of you may want to test this without spending too much, we're giving you a special promo code that will let you purchase a M-size instance for one month at half off the usual price ($5 instead of $10).

The promo code is the following: PAASM4SSL and it must be added, then validated (as usual) in the 'Promo Code' field during checkout. This code is only valid until February 1st, 2013.
I'll also note that if you have a domain name at Gandi, and you have not yet used your promo code for 50% off an annual instance subscription, you can benefit from an M-size instance at half off, for the next 13 months

Why choose Simple Hosting for your website?

Ryan — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:03:00 +0100

We're glad you asked!

More and more customers want to know how Gandi Simple Hosting differs from shared hosting offered elsewhere. We know our platform can seem a bit alien compared to other webhosts, and we promise to provide the more detailed technical description we think it deserves very soon.

In the meantime, here are the basics that make us different.

0) It's not shared hosting

It might feel like shared hosting from a management perspective, but under the hood, Simple Hosting is a completely different platform. Unlike with shared hosting, your neighbor's usage can't degrade the performance of your instance, nor can your getting reddited alter theirs. This is because each instance is isolated from its neighbor. The number and size of your databases, the number of virtual hosts and so on are essentially unlimited; you are only restricted by the power of the pack you choose and the size of your disk (10 GB to 1 TB).
Simple Hosting, driven by the same technology as our VPS cloud hosting platform, comes in the form of a virtual container that is as isolated as it is flexible. Each instance type is made with a specific language and database in mind; it's designed to be sturdy and easy to use in a specific context.

1) Varnish-driven power.

An instance is composed of three primary elements: a webserver, a MySQL server, and a Varnish cache. We get a lot of reactions from people who would scoff at the S pack's limit of two active, simultaneous processes. But here's the thing: the Varnish cache eliminates the need to serve every request with an active process. Indeed, a significant portion of your website's requests are served straight from the cache. The number of active concurrent processes needed will depend on what you're hosting, of course, but most CMS and forum sites are super fast with Varnish behind them.

2) Our cloud can beat up your cloud.

Yes, we know it's a buzzword. All it means is that your instance is not subject to the limitations of a physical machine (which we happen to find quite liberating). In the case of a hardware problem, your instance is automatically moved to another server. It also means more flexibility: you can increase the size of your instance from an S pack to an XL pack for a week, for example, and then switch back down to an S pack if the demand on your content subsides, all without having to worry about migrating your data.

3) It comes with everything we've got.

We've been working on new features for the last few months, chosen based on user feedback. SSH console access and the option to customize PHP.ini are already available, and the ability to host multiple domain names on the same code, snapshots, GIT and SSL support are coming soon. An instance comes with all available features, regardless of pack size or commitment.

4) More instance types are in the works.

As we finalize these major improvements, we'll also soon be able to offer new instance families based on other languages and databases. PHP/PostgreSQL instances should be available soon, as well as node.js instances. We're also working on developing a platform based on the language Gandi itself is coded in, Python.

Still unsure? Try it for yourself! Until 15 December 2012, the promo code PAAS75 will get you a size S pack for one month for $1.25 / 1,00€ (plus VAT if applicable) – that's a 75% discount with no commitment. (One promo per person please.)

Want us to move your website for you?

Ryan — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:05:00 +0200

Website migration, now here is a vast subject that often causes webmasters to hesitate when thinking about changing web hosts. If you don't have the experience or time necessary for such a change, migrating a website from one provider to another can quickly turn into a nightmare...

This is why we are looking to put into place such a service at Gandi.net: a manual migration of your website from your current host to Gandi.net that is handled by an experienced team that specializes in just that.

The idea is for us to start by evaluating the demand and the extra workload for this type of service, as well as customer feedback and satisfaction.

The limitations will be: no bank payment module, database other than the one used by the CMS, one domain and subdomain, and up to 25 POP or IMAP email addresses.

If your website does not meet these criteria, don't worry: you can still contact us at this address and give us a description of your service (websites, servers, complex architecture...) so that we can provide you with a personalized price quote.

We are going to begin with a test and evaluation phase, that is exclusively designed for websites that will be moved to Gandi Simple Hosting instances (PaaS) and will only be for websites written in HTML and the following popular CMS and blog platforms

Joomla
WordPress
Drupal
Typo3
DotClear
iWeb

This service will be offered for $65 (€50, or £45) excl. VAT, and will be carried out by one of Gandi's partners, "Web site migration service".

If you are interested by this service then send us a mail at migration-en@gandi.net with:

the URL of your website
the name of the current provider as well as the offer you are currently using
the type of website (HTML, CMS, or other)
the version of CMS used
the number of email mailboxes to migrate
all the information that you feel is necessary for us to see whether or not it will be possible for us to move your website to our infrastructure.

Then, when all is ready, you will need to provide our partner with the following information:

1) Source data (your former web host):

provider name, pack, login access
domain name, login access (if not at Gandi)
type of website, name, CMS, version, and additional modules
FTP, SFTP, and/or SSH login codes
MySQL/phpMyAdmin login codes
for email mailboxes: list of accounts, aliases, user names and passwords

2) Target data (Gandi Simple Hosting):

SFTP and MySql login codes for you instance
Change the technical contact of the domain with the site to migrate, to be SG5573-GANDI (how?)

This of course implies that you have a Gandi Simple Hosting instance available.

Once your request has been validated by our service, we will provide you with an invoice for it at the price quoted above (in the event of a standard migration), and the migration will start as soon as we have received payment. If your request does not fall within the standard package, our partner will provide you with a migration price quote.

Once the migration has been completed at a test URL (your website will continue to remain live at the original address), you will be asked to definitively validate the migration. Once done, the domain name will switch to the website's new installation.

Warning: the offer is only for website migration, and is in no way a service for the management, optimization, or version upgrade etc. of you website.

VPS Cloud hosting: Snapshot Profiles

Ryan — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:56:00 +0200

We have been working on Snapshot 'profiles' for our VPS cloud hosting service for a while now, and we are pleased to announce that they are available! In this post we describe this new, useful feature and give a few examples of it in practice.

First of all, what is a snapshot? A snapshot is an image taken of a disk at a given time. This lets you roll back to a previous version of your disk in the event of a problem. It is also a way to make restoration points of a disk, similar to a backup, but more complete and easier to restore.

Snapshots themselves have been available since April. On the other hand, snapshot 'profiles' are new. These are snapshots that you can schedule in advance, to be taken periodically at pre-determined intervals. We currently have three profiles that you can use:

minimal profile: with this profile you can schedule a snapshot every 24 hours, saving the last two.
weekly profile: a snapshot is saved every 24 hours for a week, for a total of 7 snapshots
security profile - 2 versions per day (one every 6 hours and another every 12 hours), then 1 version every 24 hours for a week, followed by 1 version every 28 days.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and no one reads a thousand word blog post, here is a quick diagram showing the restoration points spaced out over time for each kind of profile:

To work, the snapshots require just a little bit more disk quota. It comes to about 10% of the target disk size per snapshot. For example if you havd a disk of 10GB and if you want to activate the minimal profile, you would need 2 free gigabytes, because it takes two snapshots, which is 20% of your total disk space. Likewise, for the same disk, you would need 7 free gigabytes for the weekly profile or 10 gigabytes for the security profile.

If you have a problem with your server, you can simply choose the restoration point that you want to roll back to, and you will have your server back to where it was when the snapshot was taken. You will still need to be careful though, since when you choose a snapshot, all of them that were taken afterwards will be deleted. Previous snapshots remain.

When can/should you use them? There are many applications for snapshots, though they work surprisingly well for system disks. This use allows you to restore in the event that you screwed something up, or if you have data corruption of some kind, like an infection of malware. The major advantage is that once a profile is in place, you no longer need to worry about it: the snapshots are updated automatically and always available.

To create a snapshot, simply go into your disk management interface (because snapshots are created from disks, and not servers), and click on the disk that you want to take a snapshot of. Then, choose the profile that you want to use, and activate it.

For additional information on this, please see our online documentation.

Gandi Simple Hosting Now Live in the USA

Thomas — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 07:14:00 -0700

Following a successful launch in Europe, Gandi has now rolled out our PaaS Simple Hosting offering to the US. Gandi customers can now choose to host their instances in our Paris or Baltimore data centers, making Simple Hosting more flexible, and bringing the benefits of our powerful, easy-to-use PaaS closer to US customers.

So far, Gandi's PaaS offerings have no real equivalent in France or Europe, but similar services are beginning to be seen in the U.S. Try out our simple hosting, compare it to the competitors for speed, power, and price. Let us know how we can make it even easier to spin up. We think we compare extremely well with other PaaS offerings.

What is it? Well, Simple Hosting is a Platform as a Service (PaaS), developed completely by Gandi, in-house. Our goal is to allow as much flexibility as our on-demand Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hosting gives you, but also to add a layer of simplification, relieving webmasters of most of the administration tasks of a web server, and bringing them the benefits of running in the cloud.

The kind of benefits we have given you with Gandi Simple Hosting are usually associated with "shared" hosting services. That's not what this is: Gandi Simple Hosting is true cloud computing. Your instance is a full, isolated, virtual host, with all the benefits of security, performance, and manageability that brings. It's just easier to use, like shared hosting is. This is the best of both worlds.

We decided to launch Gandi Simple Hosting with one platform to start with: the ever-popular Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL, or LAMP stack. This lets Gandi customers run dozens of applications designed for this platform in the cloud, and to get them up and running quickly, securely, and easily. Other versions featureing other languages and databases will follow in the coming months.

To create your Simple Hosting instance in the US, simply choose the Baltimore location on the instance creation form. We have made it easy to get started, with some flexible features: The billing for Gandi Simple Hosting is flexible: you are charged by the day. For example, an instance of size S run for three days and released will cost you all of 50 US cents. Scaling up to a bigger instance is also prorated over the period, so you really only pay for what you use.

if you have a domain name at Gandi, you have a coupon in your account giving you 50% off on your first year subscription to any pack. Note that annual subscriptions are not prorated.

One other thing to note: There is no facility to migrate instances between data centers. Just create a new instance and copy over your data if you want to move to a different data center.

We hope you enjoy Gandi Simple Hosting, now available in the USA!

Server shares are now more powerful!

Ryan — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:05:00 +0200

The power of our cloud infrastructure has dramatically increased in recent months, with machines that are ever more powerful. This therefore lets us provide you with more power for the same price. Want to know more? Read on for details

Beginning today, server shares, which are the foundation of our Cloud hosting solutions (IaaS), will have double the RAM, bandwidth and 50% more disk space. This means that for a single share you now get:

512 MB RAM (instead of 256 MB)
10 mbps of bandwidth (instead of 5mbps)
12 GB of storage (instead of 8 GB)

Of course this 'lifting' effect is automatically applied to all the server shares that you already possess

The other parameters (CPU and IP) remain identical. As a reminder, here are the maximum limitations per server:

100mbps per interface (and still 4 interfaces per server, or 400 mbps of bandwidth max.)
1 TB per disk (and still 8 disks per server, for a total of 8TB per server max.)
24 GB of RAM per server
12 processor cores per server

If you would like to know more about the configuration limits or functioning of Gandi's server network interfaces for example, come have a look at our wiki pages dedicated to this subject.

Simultaneously, we are stopping the support of Linux 2.6.36 kernels on our platform. We have applied many corrections to this version, adapted for Xen, although there are sill some bugs in XFS, memory management, and the transparent migration that we use to move your servers in the event of a hardware problem.

This version has been replaced by a more stable Linux 3.2 kernel on the images concerned. 2.6.36 is still available in the management interface, though not recommended. If you need the "cutting edge" features of a recent kernel, then it's best to use a 3.2 kernel.

Managing IaaS Cloud Hosting resources via API

Thomas — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:04:00 +0200

After the release of our Simple Hosting management API last month, in May we're adding an API to manage resources on our IaaS Cloud Hosting service.

To put it plainly, with the new API you will be able to add, delete, modify and renew resources in your hosting account. That includes shares, processor cores, live memory allocation, disk quota and network interfaces. The only prerequisite is having sufficient funds in your prepaid account.

This release opens up new possibilities, such as:

the ability to resell our servers directly from your external site linked with the Hosting API, with a personalized interface to Gandi's system that includes your services, for example.
the ability to add and allocate new resources to a server automatically according to the configuration of your own services, on the fly. The Flex system allowed you to add resources that were already in your Hosting account based on a single parameter: the resource share. Now, you can order CPU, RAM, network interfaces and disk quota and allocate them to your servers individually, all on the fly. In other words, you can now purchase and allocate any hosting resource you need with the API, as the need arises.

Documentation for this new API is available at http://doc.rpc.gandi.net/

Note: The API is available in test (OT&E) until the end of the week. It will be available in production on May 7th.

Simple Hosting API: Empowering Web Hosting Resellers

Thomas — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:58:00 -0700

Yesterday we added Simple Hosting management features to our public Simple Hosting API. If you are a reseller of Gandi's Domain Name and Cloud Hosting services, these features beg the question of reselling Simple Hosting: Can you do it?

Of course you can!

For example, imagine you want to resell hosted Ecommerce turnkey solutions to your customers. You use an app that runs in PHP on a MySQL database, and you know how to use an API. Then it's easy to offer Ecommernce solutions to your customers with Simple Hosting.

A simple command (paas.create) lets you create an instance. Another (paas.vhost.create) associates a domain or subdomain of your choice to the instance, and you then directly upload the code for your app to the the vhost, using sFTP. Presto, your customer is online in a few minutes! If you are short of instances, or need to beef one up to a larger size, the API supports commands to buy more resources as well.

Our API is XMLRPC, and supports many libraries. Lots of programming languages are available for accessing it (PEAR, for example, or PHP, or PERL).

Wondering about prices? Well, we've not implemented any sliding scale or reseller price breaks (mostly because the price is so low already) but, if you decide you want to resell our solution to your customers, either via the API or via the website, you can always contact us (reseller@gandi.net) to see what we can do for you.

SSH Key Authentication Added to Gandi Cloud Hosting

Thomas — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:53:00 -0800

In the last update of our cloud hosting platform , we added a small feature to that will appeal to some of you: SSH key authentication for Expert mode VPS servers.

Passwords are a good thing, but unless we have a great memory or a password manager we trust, it often turns out we use the same 3 or 4 passwords, themselves variations on our "master password". SSH keys encrypt the authentication, and can even obviate the need to type a password, unless you want to.
Now, when creating VPS Server in Expert mode (though not with Gandi AI), you can choose from three methods of authentication:

password

SSH key

Both SSH Key and Password

You can use SSH keys to log in as root, as well. The only requirement for keeping the connection secure is that you maintain the security of the private key file. You can add to this by adding a passphrase to the key when you create it, but that is up to you.

This feature is already available for any new Expert Mode VPS Server on our cloud hosting platform, and is enabled at creation time.

Simple Hosting at One Month In

Thomas — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:40:00 -0800

Our Simple Hosting has been available for a month now. This is our initial assessment, some feedback, and some links you may find useful.

After a month of availability, we now have about 3,000 active accounts on the platform. That's not bad. Most of the feedback we have had has been very enthusiastic, and users are saying it performs better than previous hosting offerings.

Many people have asked us to compare our Simple Hosting to the web hosting they currently use. Our main concern in doing this is that a lot of them use shared hosting. Even if these offers are comparable in terms of price, we can’t really make a direct point-by-point comparison, since the model is so different.

In a PaaS cloud like Gandi’s, each instance is compartmentalized. Resources are essentially dedicated to the instance. It’s completely different from shared hosting, and comparisons don’t make sense unless you are talking about what you can use it for.

Simple Hosting provides a single instance preconfigured with applications. While at the moment we offer only PHP/MySQL installed, you can run up to 100 virtual hosts under it. The database size is limited to the root disk size. That's it - Simple.

We chose to place functional limits on the number of simultaneous processes at a given time. For an instance of size S, this limit is 2. Of course, this does not mean that only two users can simultaneously access your hosted pages: we are talking about instantaneous process. Most of the pages of a website, CMS , shop, blog, wiki etc. are served by the cache system, so the process limitation really just introduces a small delay as the system switches context and serves up new content.

If you want a more technical explanation on the functioning of an instance, I highly recommend reading the note from our technical team on the technical side of this blog: The Gandi Kitchen. Even if you do not have a technical background, we think you will enjoy reading this; it is very detailed, very transparent and very rich, while remaining accessible.

For example, we discuss how we update the applications on Simple Hosting, including how we loaded and re-configured PHP5.3.10 fopen.

For general questions like "how to retrieve my password", etc., we have set up a list of frequently asked questions in our wiki. This should help most users to quickly find solutions by themselves. And of course, like we always do at Gandi, we are improving the interface using your feedback. You will, for example, soon be able to add an alias to a vhost without needing to create a symlink.

What’s next? Currently, most of us are taking a break from dev-hosting on the IaaS platform to finish the Snapshot backup options, and options to add and control bandwidth. We also have had a hard time with two of our storage units recently, which got all of our attention for a while. We’ll be right back to Simple Hosting to install the Snapshots options there as soon as they are done and tested.

Meanwhile, our infrastructure team is hard at work on the deployment of Simple Hosting at our US data center. It’s expected to be ready in early April! Yeehaa!

Once this part of the plan is complete, our team will move on to develop new types of Simple Hosting instances. Want a say in the priority? Add your suggestions and votes to the Wishlist!

What about our IaaS hosting?

Ryan — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:34:00 +0200
Since the launch of our Simple Hosting service in beta testing, many of you have asked us when we will implement the improvements that we have been promising to make on our IaaS servers.

Yesterday, a new version of Gandi's website was activated. This update moves the payment of server resources over to our new billing system. The visible part of this is that you can now configure and purchase your server by simultaneously combining shares and optional resources.

Being on the new new billing system means that you will soon be allowed to renew all of your resources at the same time. Also, you can set them so that they all expire on the same date for example.

Here is a list of some product improvements that we will be releasing over the next 6 months:

The ability to take Snapshots: This is already available online for all the disks created since March 2011 (by the way, if your disk was created before this, we recommend that you migrate it to a new disk). The first feature that we are going to add will be to make this operation automated. You will therefore be able to schedule an automatic backup of your website every X days or Y hours.

We are then going to work on giving you the ability to purchase additional bandwidth The bandwidth of each share will be increased, and there will be a bandwidth quota added (with a high limit) along with the possibility of modifying the both parameters as an option.

For private networks, something that many of you have been looking forward to for a long time now, we are getting closer to providing this, though there are some problems that need to be solved first. We are currently updating our network's hardware so that we can test how it works under real conditions. We will be able to release the product once we have fixed all the stumbling blocks, and when we are pleased with the results.

The load balancers, which were developed a few months ago were not up to our standards. With Simple Hosting, however, some of the technology used will allow us to offer you an alternative to that.

Gandi Simple Hosting: The best of both worlds!

Ryan — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:31:00 +0200
Do you want hosting that is simple, inexpensive, flexible, and that provides real service quality? In short, hosting Gandi-style?

Simple hosting is a new phase in the evolution of Gandi. Back in 2008, when we launched our VPS cloud hosting service, many people thought we were crazy. Some who have since changed their stance claimed, incorrectly, that it would never work. Others were disappointed, since the offer was too advanced and complex for their needs. To meet the needs of this latter category, we are proud to introduce our new Gandi Simple Hosting service.

What is Gandi Simple Hosting?
Gandi Simple Hosting is Gandi's version of simple web hosting. There are no "shares" to worry about, no servers, resources, or even "distributions" to deal with. No system administration either. We offer a platform built on our Cloud infrastructure that offers you the easiest possible hosting. In short, you get the ease of shared hosting and low-cost dedicated servers, but with the inherent advantages of using a Cloud infrastructure, combined with our usual excellent service.

What makes it Simple?
We let you choose the type and size of instance that you want to host. You can think of an instance as a server that has a specific set of applications.

For example, for our Beta testing phase, we are providing you with a PHP/MySQL instance, which is the most in-demand type. These will be limited in size to the Small package during Beta testing, and to hosting at our Paris datacenter. Though it is our smallest instance size, it still gives you 10GB of storage and will support about 100,000 pageviews per month. This corresponds to the needs of a personal website with many visitors, or a professional website with an average number of visitors.
Once the Beta testing period is over, it will be possible to simply modify the size of your instance with a few clicks, without the need for any content migration.

A closed, but still accessible, Beta testing phase
The reason we are having a closed Beta testing phase is so we can control the number of participants, test the limits of our system, and deploy the instances on just a small segment of our platform. This lets us see how the system reacts in a sort of "micro-environment", without risking any potential negative effects on the regular users.
If you participate, you will have the chance to test the new product before everyone else, totally free of charge. After the Beta testing phase is over, we will grant you a limited free period (probably 3 months).

The inconveniences of a Beta testing phase have to do with the volatile nature of the instances created. After all, it's a test, and so it is possible (though we will do everything possible to prevent this) that your instances might disappear due to a bug, or simply because we run into a situation where we need to reinitialize the platform, for example to correct a potential problem. You will also not have access to all the features of the product, such as the ability to resize your instance, to perform snapshots, or automatic configuration of your DNS.

Our customer support is not totally in place either, and will not be able to assist you during the beta period in the event of a particularly difficult case. The objective is to open the Beta testing phase to only about a thousand accounts.

Who are we looking for?
The profile for beta-testers that we are looking for is rather diverse. You only need to know how to configure your domain's DNS to point to the Simple Hosting server (or only use the gpaas.net service URL that is available to you). You must know how to use an FTP client and it is preferable that you know how to manipulate a database (via PHP or PhpMyAdmin).

If you have a website that is totally built on PHP/MySQL and you know how to import/export its database, you can also test the installation of your website on a Simple Hosting instance. As a reminder, when the product is fully released, we will also offer an instance for static websites that will also allow you to host HTML files.

Do you want to participate?
The sign-up form for the Beta testing phase is open to all customers that have a Gandi handle that was created before September 13th 2011.

Just go to the Simple Hosting, main page. Let us know why you would like to test it, whether or not you are already a Hosting customer at Gandi or elsewhere and for what type of offer, and your level of experience working with web hosting services*...,then, all you need to do is configure your instance.
Once we have validated your request, you will get an email that will tell you your connection settings.

NOTE: Each request is read and treated manually, so we ask that you be patient, and that you don't make multiple requests

How to give us your feedback
Did you encounter a problem? Have you found something that does not work and is reproducible? Do you have an idea for something that could be done better and how? Your participation in the beta is partly to help us make a better product for you, so don't hesitate to contact us by email at beta-simple@gandi.net to give us your feedback.

When is the Beta testing period over?
The right answer is: when it's ready!
We still have some interfaces to finish, notably the linking of the domain name to Simple Hosting, and some parts we know we need to make easier to use. The Beta testing phase will hopefully let us identify some problems that we have not yet seen, however we are confident that the final version will be ready for release in October.

With that, we'll let you discover the PaaS infrastructure and its many advantages for yourself

* this information will not affect your eligibility. We just need to be sure to have a variety of profiles in order to qualify the feedback we get.

VPS Cloud Hosting: Say Cheese!

Ryan — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:57:00 +0200

Don't see the relationship between Gandi's VPS cloud hosting and photography? How about if I give you a hint by referring to snapshots? ...now do you get it?
That's right! The week is starting out on a good foot, with a snapshot system that is currently available for disks that you have created on the new disk platform that has been in place for the past couple of weeks now.

For the uninitiated, a snapshot is a quick 'picture' taken at a given time of a disk (data or system) that belongs to you. This will allow you to, for example, perform a rollback in the event of a risky operation...

You will find this formidable option within the disk interface and not the server's (it is a snapshot of a disk that is taken) and this is therefore only possible on recent disks, since they must be managed by the ZFS filesystem.

How can you see whether or not your disk is compatible with this option?:

You may always make this option available, by replacing your current disk with a new one, however it would be necessary to import a total copy of your old disk into the new one. The snapshot is however, as its name indicates, instant.

And how can I restore a disk from a snapshot? This is just as simple as a snapshot, a button, a confirmation, and your new (well, actually only) disk is reconstituted:

Be careful, however, when using a snapshot: it will totally overwrite the target disk, by destroying it. If you are not 100% sure, then I recommend that you make a copy of the latter first. This brings me to the following point...

What is another use of an instant snapshot? The immediate duplication of a disk! This is also possible from your disk interface, right next to it: a simple click and it's done!

And finally, for those who wonder if it is possible to launch it automatically, I'll say yes... however not right away. We are in the process of fine-tuning our profiles and managing the snapshot calendar; however it should be available in a couple of months, with three different profiles, depending on your use!

256MB of RAM for free!

Ryan — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:03:00 +0100
From now until March 15th 2011, we are giving you 256MB of RAM for free for one year with every annual hosting share that you purchase.

This offer is only valid once per customer, but is addressed to a larger number of customers. It is available to all existing customers that would like to switch from monthly billing to annual billing, and for new customers that choose the annual subscription from the beginning. Just to be clear on one point, though, if you subscribe to 2 shares, the extra 256 MB of ram will only be added for the first share.
Bonus update

For all of our customers that already have an annual-commitment share and would like to add additional RAM, we are lowering the price of annual-commitment RAM so that everyone can have it at the E rate level, or $3.50 (£2.33, or $3.50) per month excl. VAT. This offer is also only valid until March 15th.

Here are some questions you may have:

I have a monthly share, how can I convert it to an annual share?
Our resources system constantly checks to see if the quota that is available in your pool of resources is enough to run your servers. To switch to annual billing, you just need to purchase an annual share and then release the monthly share. You will then be refunded for the unused time remaining for your monthly share's subscription.

I have 2 monthly shares, can I switch only one to be an annual share?
Yes you can. The resource system does not look at the subscription type, only the continual availability of the resources. In order to go from monthly billing to annual, you just need to subscribe to an annual share and then remove one of the monthly shares. You will then be refunded for the unused time remaining for your montly share's subscription.

I am a new customer, how can I get my 256MB of free RAM?
During the the initial resource subscription process, when you get to the contracts page, you will have the possibility of switching your shares to annual payment. As a reminder, if you would like to test our service before subscribing, just send us an trial share request.

Gandi AI 1.2 Version 2011

Ryan — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:30:00 +0100

UPDATE: The Beta testing period has ended, and Gandi AI 1.2 is live both at Paris and Baltimore.

We have just released the new version of Gandi AI (our automatically-installed VPS cloud servers) in beta testing at our Baltimore datacenter. After a brief testing period we will activate the image at the datacenter in Paris.
It should be noted that we will not provide an automatic migration of current versions. This is because there are too many changes between the versions, and so an automatic migration cannot be performed reliably. You can find a detailed tutorial explaining how you can do this in our wiki.

Here is a list of the changes that we have made:

Migration to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32 bits

addition of fail2ban by default

addition of rewrite for python

addition of www-data by default as an email alias

xcache opcode now depends on the quantity of RAM installed

Addition of supporting the following languages: fr_*, en_*, ko_*, zh_*, de_*, es_*, it_*, ar_*, thl_*, pt_*, pl_*

Version updates:

proftpd 1.3.2c-1

subversion 1.6.6dfsg-2ubuntu1

teamspeak 2.0.24.1+debian-1

postfix 2.7.0-1

apache 2.2.14-5ubuntu8.2 (peruser 0.4.0rc2)

mysql 5.1.41-3ubuntu12

php 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.1

phpmyadmin 4:3.3.2-1

ruby 1.8.7.249

ruby on rails 2.2.7debian-1.1

perl 2.0.4-6ubuntu1

awstats 6.9~dfsg-1ubuntu3

mod_python 3.3.1-8ubuntu2

django 1.1.1-2ubuntu1

magento 1.4.1.1-1

punbb 1.3.4-2

Special offer: We will be giving away 1 free share for two months to new hosting customers that are residents of South, Central, and North America (offer limited to the first 50 requests). If you would like to give it a try, write to us on this form, and put the keywords "2 free months" in the comment fields.

New hosting features

Ryan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:12:00 +0100
Some of the "coming soon" are now "released", and so here's a little entry to tell you what, and how.
Hosting API in open beta testing
After a month of closed beta testing (thanks to all of you testers!), we are moving our API to open beta. Your connection key is available directly from your account. Documentation is available at this address, and the XML-RPC production address is https://rpc.gandi.net/xmlrpc/2.0/

A newsgroup is also available. It is accessible by NNTP at groups.gandi.net or via the web. If needed, you may also contact our technical team at beta-hosting@gandi.net

A few quick examples f things that you can do with our API are available here:

an interface that lets you directly access your server statistics

a software interface

a Perl lib

33% reduction in the price of RAM
Now that we have a majority of machines with 48GB of RAM, we can allow ourselves to reduce the price of additional RAM. We are able to reduce the purchase and renewal price by 33%!
This comes to a rate of $5 (£3.16, or €4) excl. VAT) under A rates for 256MB ($4.50, £2.66, or €3.33 excl. VAT if you choose annual subscription).
As announced in our latest news headline, we will also be adding the possibility of purchasing additional cores by the end of the year, thus increasing the flexibility of our service.

Ubuntu 10.10 available
This refers to the 32-bit version, which is already available for new servers.

First 64-bit distribution
The 64-bit version of Debian 5 is currently available in the list of available Gandi distributions. 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 will also be available in a few days.

Please note that with the release of version 3.0.7 of Gandi in a couple of weeks, you will be able to have up to 12 GB of RAM on a server, as opposed to the current limit of 6 GB.
If you would like to have a nice explanation as to how Gandi prepares its distributions so that that they can be available to you, Aegiap has written a short article on the topic in the Gandi Kitchen.

Transform a data disk into a system disk.
This is not magic. Far from it - though nonetheless very technical. The hard-core geeks out there will find the feature very interesting,

Explanation of today's hosting incident

Stephan — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:20:00 +0200

I'll start by reminding everyone that our hosting platform has not experienced any major technical problem for a long time now; in fact, since the beta testing phase. And you know what? This is still true.

Let me explain: what do you do when everything is going well and you are progressing slowly but surely towards a wonderful success?

Well, here at Gandi, we evidently felt the urge to shoot ourselves in the foot. This is all the more ironic since we are our own cause of problems! What better way is there to keep things interesting here?

Gandi is a human company, and we take the definition of the word "human" to its extreme; We are imperfect by definition, and one of us has clearly demonstrated a perfect example of this today.

Yes, the rebooting of servers was a regrettably caused by human error, but there is nothing, not even through the various control and validation procedures in place, that I can to to fix this. We surely don't have a Kerviel in our team, and the consequences are not the same, however for me, for us, and for you, it's unacceptable.

As I write these lines, I do not yet know exactly who is directly responsible for causing the incident. There are more important things to be done, such as getting everything back in order, and to keep everyone informed of the status of the situation in the most transparent way possible.

I am not sure it is important to know who who did it, nor what our reaction will be with regards to it. We will see once all the details emerge;

It goes without saying that we will be offering you today's hosting for free, and we will see on a case-by-case basis if a particular situation requires going beyond that. And to think that we were about to make a big announcement for our hosting service...we will wait a bit for that now I think;(