Gandi Bar - Hosting - Comments

How to turn your website into a "Web Infrastructure" - Spi007

Spi007 — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:37:33 +0200

LAMP stands for Linux+Apache+Mysql+Php

Hosting - server performance statistics - Angel Wilson

Angel Wilson — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:13:09 +0100

Wow Genius efforts and i like the server statistics which you have given in the post

Hosting - server performance statistics - Alex Scheman

Alex Scheman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:20:03 +0100

Useful tool for checking Server Traffic and all

Hosting - server performance statistics - James Ferguson

James Ferguson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:21:50 +0100

Hi,

Excellent tool to check hosting server activity. Thanks for sharing.

How to turn your website into a "Web Infrastructure" - Movie

Movie — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:45:23 +0100

What is "LAMP"?

Virtualisation - and why it is the future of web hosting - pester

pester — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:59:21 +0200

Read more info about webhosting here - http://www.frogmix.com/search/webho...

Hosting - server performance statistics - bonee

bonee — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:50:27 +0200

you should make more details

Hosting - server performance statistics - William

William — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:29:29 +0200

Thank you to the team for this excellent work. The graphs are great and we can now have a good idea of the real work of the system. It is very useful because our statistics are made from the JAVA application itself and can not give a complete set of data.
These graphs are a key for choosing your virtualization offer.

Hosting - server performance statistics - Shahar Or

Shahar Or — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:05:59 +0200

Dear Gandi staff,

Thank you. This is much appreciated.

Many blessings.

Hosting - server performance statistics - Wendy (Gandi)

Wendy (Gandi) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:41:20 +0200

Thanks, Daniel glad it's of use.

Hosting - server performance statistics - Daniel de Kok

Daniel de Kok — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:44:36 +0200

I'd just like to thank the Gandi staff for this excellent new feature! It makes it much easier to see what sites need to be spread out to separate servers.

Hosting improvements - more, more, more - pascal

pascal — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:52:41 +0100

Hi,

Yes, driver domain has guaranteed ressources for virtual I/Os.

Today xen is configured with strict (credit) partitionning, equally important domains.
You get a fixed amount of credit with each share.

However, we do not want the share to appear excellent at the beginning (because you're alone on a node, you get full idle cpu for yourself) and degrade over time with no user idea of when it will stabilize. As people can try our servers "for a few minutes", that would be kind of lying. We want the user to experience an expected, stable performance level.

So we slightly overcommit on the credit, and as we'll get better at migrating vms accross nodes to achieve a little balance, we'll probably overcommit a little more.

Hosting improvements - more, more, more - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:32:59 +0100

Your data about CPU utilization reminds me of a couple of questions I have about Gandi's hosting service.

Do you have Xen configured to strictly partition CPU resources and not allow domains to exceed them, or can one domain take more CPU if another domain falls idle? The latter seems like a better way to ensure that CPUs stay near 100% utilization at all times.

Also, given how Xen does virtual I/O through domain 0, you should have Xen configured so that domain 0's VCPUs get dedicated physical CPUs which nothing else can run on. This will significantly improve I/O performance.

Get your site at Gandi! - joe

joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:10:34 +0100

Hi Anonymous (if that is your real name ;-),

I didn't mean to suggest that Flash was an upgrade to HTML in general, but more specifically that this was how it was handled with SiteMaker, e.g. for SiteMaker the Flash version is the full fat version, though the HTML alternative does have all the content present, just not presented with as much style.

SiteMaker started development 10 years ago when HTML wasn't capable of all the things Flash was, and browser compatibility wasn't what it is today. It is true that HTML has come a very long way since then and as you say can do all the things Flash can do, and sometimes more. In fact it is our objective to add more and more direct HTML features and improve further the HTML output so that ultimately the user could decide which version is their 'primary'. But this is still some way off.

The important part of my point was that regardless of which version is 'better' both are presented so that all content can be seen by all potential visitors, which I believe was the concern that El Bruno was raising.

Anyway, thanks for your input and we'll let you know as and when we produce new features. Take care,

Joe

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:39:08 +0100

Following up for the benefit of anyone else who finds comments 22 and 23: I did in fact contact direction@, and Gandi offered me an excellent Open Source developer discount. I won't give the specific pricing details here in case Gandi doesn't want them shared publicly, but Gandi's offer definitely represents the best Open Source discount I've ever seen. I can highly recommend Gandi's hosting to any Open Source developer who wants to host a project or a personal site.

Get your site at Gandi! - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:34:06 +0100

@Joe: Your post hinges on one unfortunate assumption: that Flash provides an "upgrade" to HTML.

Furthermore, what the tool itself uses and what output it produces need not have any connection. An easy to use site creator tool could still produce sane HTML rather than Flash. You certainly don't need Flash for "rich media"; at most, the Flash should represent a fallback for modern browser technologies. For isntance, you could embed a video with the video tag and fall back to Flash for browsers that don't support that tag.

At this point, HTML can do absolutely everything Flash can, and often better.

Get your site at Gandi! - Joe

Joe — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:02:18 +0100

Hi El Bunto,

It's true that the editor is in Flash, as this allows unparalleled easy of use for the site builder, please have a go to see what I mean. But for the output, the site is generated in both Flash and HTML.

SiteMaker sites use progressive enhancement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progre...) to produce the viewable site, so we start with a W3C compliant clean XHTML version and then upgrade this to the full Flash version if we detect Flash and Javascript. The HTML version contains all the same content as the Flash version, and is designed to be clean and easy to view/navigate. It has no 'tables' in it ;-), and uses a standard format to it is easy to understand.

The full Flash version is the best way to view the site, as it contains all the 'rich' media, but the HTML alternative is there for those that cannot see this. If you use a screenreader with Flash turned off, it will read the HTML version correctly. So you are right you cannot add HTML directly, but anything you add to your site is then rendered in the HTML and marked up correctly. So for users who don't know how to write HTML this is a better solution.

Standards are an extremely important part of making the web accessible to everyone, which is why our tools outputs in this way. The reality is that web professionals can create wonderful standard compliant sites, though these can sometimes be out of reach for non-professional users, or those just learning.

The SiteMaker tool is certainly aimed at these non-professional users or those building for the first time on the web. So we make sure that the sites that are produced by it are standard compliant and gracefully upgrade (rather than downgrade) if the viewer has the appropriate technology.

But the key for these non-professional users is to make a tool that is easy to use and not as frightening as handcoding HTML.

You are quite right that there are many bad tools out there, but ours is not one of them.

Having said that, there is always room for improvement. We've been working on this product for 10 years and we've still got more to do. I hope you will appreciate our efforts.

Joe

Get your site at Gandi! - El Bunto

El Bunto — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:50:46 +0100

From the linked site:

``Our sites are based entirely on Macromedia's Flash technology''

and

``You can't upload HTML for use in your site.''

I am really surprised that Gandi are promoting such a tool that ignores all web standards. I expect better from an ethical and considerate company such as this.

Get your site at Gandi! - Zhang

Zhang — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:55:56 +0100

Wonderful....
I will try this new feature shortly....
Keep up the good work Gandi.....

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Julian

Julian — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:12:09 +0200

Hi. I saw this WHT post and I'm curious if this is true, that we can't install CPanel on our share, because of the way you handle disk space...

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showt...

"[...]because the disk space is mounted to a single mount, but cpanel needs certain mount points to have certain space available [...]"

This could ruin it for many people...

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Nicolas (Gandi)

Nicolas (Gandi) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:11:26 +0200

a/ the speed limit is the speed of 1/64 of a quadri quad core AMD
b/ We don't sell extra IPs for the moment as the RIPE is more restrictive for 'new' hosting company, but it will come.

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Emmanuel

Emmanuel — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:32:04 +0200

LOL, I meant speed, not transfer!

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Emmanuel

Emmanuel — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:31:03 +0200

Hi and congatulations. Two small questions... a) do you have a speed limit per share (speed, not bandwidth) and b) what is the pricing for extra IPs? Thanks!

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:39:59 +0200

Hi Nick, no not at the moment. We're looking at options to get something into the US, but it won't be until next year at the earliest. However our Paris data centres are very well connected, so server performance should be comparable to an East coast data centre. Thanks, Joe

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Nick S.

Nick S. — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:03:40 +0200

Do you have any servers located in the U.S.? If so, where?

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - Wendy(Gandi)

Wendy(Gandi) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:02:27 +0200

Thanks Ciprian, we're all very excited, if you use the service let us know how it goes.

Cloud Infrastructure is finally concrete! - ciprian

ciprian — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:32:48 +0200

Congratulation on the launch, i'm sure that all will work super.

Cheers

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Nicolas (Gandi)

Nicolas (Gandi) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:55:47 +0200

Anonymous => of course you can contact us at the email address direction@

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:29:59 +0200

Would you consider offering discounts to the Open Source Software developers who write the software that powers your hosting solution? If so I can contact you privately with further details, but I wanted to find out if you had any inclination towards the idea.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Nvi

Nvi — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:58:51 +0200

Thank you for the detailed answers.

I read about the Flex system and the auto-Flex possibility in the future, although I'm a bit worried about "spikes" that could occur, ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. How would a share react? One could never know when the ability to scale is needed and, provided that there are free resources in the server, this could be a solution. If my share would run at 50% at a given moment, I wouldn't mind to loan the rest of it when another customer needs it for a couple of hours.

About the digg-proof question, let's say about a post in a standard Wordpress blog, with a few (not power-hungry) add-ons.

Finally, I forgot to ask about backups. Do you offer them as a standard or as an add-on?

For us VAT-affected Europeans, your service and price is roughly similar to Slicehost and Linode (although Linode offer 40% more RAM), about $20 per share. I'm positive that all of you offer a respectable service, but the devil is in the details and each customer should choose according to his top priorities. For example, I'm sceptical about the 5 Mbps cap. I won't use 1.5 Tb per month (more like a third of this), but even if my server is responsive and configured properly, the line cap could present a downside for visitors. A 10Mbps line with a 500 Gb limit would be preferable.

P.S.: OK, one more point for Gandi. Someone actually is a Monty Python fan!

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:51:52 +0200

Hi Nvi, wow, what a lot of questions! But fortuneately we have the answers

i) What is the CPU power of each share, in MHz?

Well, roughly speaking in each machine we have 4 x 4 physical processors each of which is about 2Ghz, so 16x2Gz, meaning each share gets roughly 500Mz each. It's not always quite that straighforward to divide it, so we have a benchmark page which shows you the equivalent power here:
https://www.gandi.net/hosting/propo...

ii) Can a share go over its CPU and RAM limit for a limited period, if there are free resources in the server?

No, but that's partly the point of the Xen system. It means that the resources are truely yours and cannot be used by anyone else even if you are not using. Which means the reverse is true too, you cannot get access to other shares, even if they are unused.

However we do have Flex, which is a system where you can increase the amount of shares you use for small periods only. So if you know you need more, you can book it in advance and get it.

iii) Is a single share digg-proof (I have this single-slice example in mind => http://forum.slicehost.com/comments...)?

This is almost impossible to answer as it really depends on what you're running on your share and how your site is written. If you just had static files on your site, it would be cached and served out even at high volume with minimumal problems. If you had a complex database, so each query kicked off a script, then a high volume could cause problems. So really it depends on what you've got on your share, and you'll have to adjust things as you go depending on your needs. We try to give you some guidance here:
https://www.gandi.net/hosting/propo...

iv) Will you run your servers to a fixed limit (e.g. 90%) or each one will be filled 100% with 62 (+2 for management) slices?

There is no fixed limit on our machines, though we do need to always run with spare capacity, as customers can upgrade/downgrade at any time, or book flex resources. So in practice there will always be free room in the system, though how this is spread between individual machines will not always be the same. Though once again, the physical resources of each share are fixed and guaranteed.

v) Will you offer SMS support for outages and other similar problems?

Our network ops team get alerted by SMS (and other methods) in event of a failure, but this is not something that we offer as standard direct to our customers (though we could do it in the future). It would be possible for you to setup monitoring services on your shares which alerted you by SMS, though you would have to configure this yourself.

vi) Are there any real-world examples of sites with a decent amount of traffic/visitors, running on 1-2 slices?

We have many thousands of servers running now, each with different amounts of shares. I believe this one, www.webeden.co.uk has 2 shares running.

vii) In general, why do you think your service (leaving support aside) is better than them?

Well, looking at the slicehost.com offer it is a Xen based system, but there are many reasons why our offer is superior. Which are;

* Price - Ours is $16 per share, there's is $20
* Flexibility - Our contract is by the hour, there's is by the month (though if you signup with them, I was surprised to see a minimum of 3 months)
* Scale - We have 750,000 domain names and manage many thousands of customers each day. We have built our hosting over 2 years to make sure it is robust for the scale we need. In a few months from the beta launch we had 7000 servers created to test our systems, and following that we refined the offer to tighten it up. We expect to deal with many tens of thousands of servers in a very short time, and are confident we will be robust.
* Transparency - We tell you exactly what is going on and what our servers and disks are made of. We promise to always keep you informed even if we suffer problems.
* Disks - We are running RAID 60 with SAS disks, which is the best solution on the newest disk technology.

viii) What is the speed of an african swallow?

The average flight speed of a European swallow is about 11 metres per second. http://www.style.org/unladenswallow... However the African swallow is generally of similar size and weight. So if I had to guess, I would also say 11 metres per second

I hope that helps,

Joe

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Nvi

Nvi — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:16:01 +0200

I have some questions, since your service (pricing, specifications) competes with Slicehost, more or less (they offer more storage, you offer way more bandwidth but with a capped line etc.). The choice is not easy, since they also run a respectable service.

The machine is a Dell PowerEdge R905. From dell.com I see that this uses 4 Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processors from the 8300 series. The 8300 series has processors from 1900 to 2500 MHz, therefor I'm unable to determine the real CPU power of a slice.

i) What is the CPU power of each share, in MHz?

ii) Can a share go over its CPU and RAM limit for a limited period, if there are free resources in the server?

iii) Is a single share digg-proof (I have this single-slice example in mind => http://forum.slicehost.com/comments...)?

iv) Will you run your servers to a fixed limit (e.g. 90%) or each one will be filled 100% with 62 (+2 for management) slices?

v) Will you offer SMS support for outages and other similar problems?

vi) Are there any real-world examples of sites with a decent amount of traffic/visitors, running on 1-2 slices?

vii) In general, why do you think your service (leaving support aside) is better than them?

viii) What is the speed of an african swallow?

I don't mean to sound (read) rude, but there are many recent fiascoes in the "cluster" sector of the hosting industry and the sceptics among us, need more info to process. I know I can try before buying, but time is precious.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Surfa

Surfa — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:37:50 +0200

Hi there..

I've been one of the betatesters for a while now and improvement of the service is significant. In the beginning I was experiencing all kinds of problems with the virtualization itself, but for month or two the service has been almost perfect.

Also I have to mention that the price of 12eur is very competent compared to local service providers here. Thank you for that.

I hope that the quality of the service remains at the level as it has been lately. In that case I'm more than happy being a client also in the future.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:14:06 +0200

Hi guys, I'm glad to hear that you're happy with the offer. It should be available to everyone by the end of next week, so not long to wait now.

@ Chris - yes the issues that would cause servers to become unavailable are solved. We have network ops staff available 24/7 so any issues will be dealt with promply.

@ Jonas - the VAT rate is the French rate, which is 19.6%. If you are a European company you can provide a European VAT number and will not be charged this amount. Also if you are outside of Europe you will not be charged either.

I hope that helps, Joe

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Jonas

Jonas — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:00:31 +0200

For us European users, could you please give us the prices including VAT? Or at least tell us what the applicable VAT percentage is.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Chris

Chris — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:28:18 +0200

Good to hear that things are moving out of beta.

One remark however. Since you will now be hosting servers that are LIVE instead of some sandboxing servers, I do hope that the doubling of the price includes a support staff that is on call 24 hours a day.

You can't run a hosting company with customers having to wait 24+ hours to get their server back online if there is a problem. I do trust that you have that solved and simply forgot to mention it, because otherwise I would still consider the hosting platform 'beta'.

I do hope to hear some good news on this regard so we can make the decision whether we will go ahead and migrate all our servers to your company.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Abhishek

Abhishek — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:16:54 +0200

thats very Good news .. but when gandi will open for every one .. means i want to by a server please let me know...

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Barry

Barry — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:58:39 +0200

Thank you guys!

Even with the price increase, your service still offers more benefits compared to similarly priced offerings from other providers.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Daniel de Kok

Daniel de Kok — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:29:24 +0200

That's a good price for the service that's offered. Most Xen-ish competition is more expensive, and not as flexible as Gandi. As with domain names, I'd rather pay a bit more for a good quality service, and it sounds like all preparations have been made to make it solid.

And thanks for giving us beta testers a few more months at the old price ;)!

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Wendy (Gandi)

Wendy (Gandi) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:49:15 +0200

Hi guys glad to see you're so keen to get your hands on hosting! Word on the street is .... the Beta will reopen to everyone in the next few days and the service will go live by the end of next week. Look forward to seeing what you're all going to do

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Eugene

Eugene — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:41:22 +0200

Wow. To many letters on screen. WHEN, GUYS, WHEN???
You have a testers, you have your fanky service for slected, but what about others?

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Delfi_r

Delfi_r — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:09:20 +0200

The day is now! great announcement!

Now er'll try to rise the service to the maximum. We are at 38 shares now, and growing. ¿There will be bulk rates?

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Alex

Alex — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:49:21 +0200

Any word on when we will be able to order a server? (It's still showing the beta invitation message)

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Donald

Donald — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:13:24 +0200

The beta price was always a bit too good to last. But even USD16 for what you're offering (Xen/256MB/5GB/5Mbit) is pretty competitive.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - PJ

PJ — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:12:30 +0200

Glad to hear it's coming... but could you announce again once i can actually orde some hosting ?

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Ryan (Gandi)

Ryan (Gandi) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:15:56 +0200

@Jake: Thanks for your compliment!

We too were unsure as to what the final cost per share would be (within a certain ballpark of course). In the end, we needed to set the price where we did because we chose to go with better hardware and performance.

Between the ramifications of offering cheap equipment and low prices, or those of top notch equipment and a somewhat higher prices there is really only one possibility that would hold true to Gandi's reputation and engagement to you.

So yes, the rates are perhaps a bit higher than anticipated, but the performance will leave nothing to be desired

However, you must not forget the very uniqueness of Gandi's offer: absolute flexibility. By being able to add and remove shares depending on your needs in real-time, both manually and using our automatic GandiFlex service, you can actually greatly reduce your cost, as you only use pay for what you actually consume. So not only are you gaining in performance, but in the long term you are gaining in savings!

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Jake

Jake — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:58:29 +0200

Ryan, that was a long-winded way to say you are doubling your prices.

Three months at the same price is at least some advance notice, but a 100% price rise is a lot to stomach, whether it was a Beta service or not. I didn't get the impression prices would rise like this when we signed up.

That said, the service is great so we will stick with it.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - Anurag

Anurag — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:07:07 +0200

Ryan, at $14 prices are still extremely cheap, thanks for keeping it low.

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:32:35 +0200

Hi Goranche, just a little bit longer yet, then you'll get your annual shares. We'll be sure to tell you when it's ready, but it has to bake just a little bit more...thanks for waiting! Joe

Gandi hosting, no longer quite so beta... - goranche

goranche — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:48:54 +0200

Yeah, great, congrats and all that :D

if however, I go clicking to order my anual share and find I can't yet, I'll... I'll... I'll...
well, I guess I'll wait a bit longer...

and also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who actually cares about the color of the diodes :D

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - vasanti mataji

vasanti mataji — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:00:57 +0100

I have registered an email address with you. Now I am wondering if you can host my website as the current host is rather irresponsible in returning communications. We also wish to change the present look of the site.
Please let me know the details in simple English as to what services you provide as a host and what are the charges in US dollars.
Thank you in advance
Vasanti Jayaswal

Friendly reminder on how to renew your hosting account - ngungo

ngungo — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:29:00 +0100

My account is not operational for 10 days now due to I/O disk error. Ticket was filed 7 days ago. Except for automatic acknowledgment, there is no answer. No resolved. I just a reminder for account renewal. If I don't here anything today, I will cancel my account.

--ngungo

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - rvb

rvb — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:06:29 +0100

Hi again!
I have been thinking about all of these interessant posts. I think the best way is to give them a try, which is, for most of the hosting providers, not really possible. Well, for 1 year, or at least 6 months, this is not a try anymore... Here at Gandi they give 1 month or less... or better is more time to test, without any time-based contract (Stephan, this is a MAJOR move in the online business! Thank you. Thinking of us, poor mobile phone's costumers :'(

So I took one share, and I am discovering the back-end management of Gandi AI (I am fine and full enough with my local FreeBSD server and the CLI/shell without graphic interface. I am not a pure geek ;-). And while I am planing the move from my current hosting provider, I share (it is all about sharing here, isn't it?!!) a migration procedure for the email on the Gandi's groups (no need for Gandi hosting, it is about GandiMail included with domain name services)
http://groups.gandi.net/en/topic/ga...
and I hope to complete the web server migration this week-end. Nobody replies or amends it so far... it can not be perfect, yet. So please have a look and share your points! (@Ryan and @Elliott, no copyrights, even I prefer the GNU Free Documentation Licence GFDL, of course)

Then I will share my experience after the whole move from my current provider to Gandi. No more speculations, but Real Life and back to business!

Sheare... sorry, Cheers

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - rvb

rvb — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:05:07 +0100

Well, late post, I did not read all the previous entries, was busy with a server at that time. A team in Ireland? Why that? You mean some US companies have teams here? 8-0 (ok, only joking dear friends from the other side of the ocean
Sure, I should rather have a temporary server with Gandi... It gives me an idea then...

Sorry for the useles post, just good mood to share. Talk to you next time Ryan

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Zeno

Zeno — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:35:49 +0100

I for one think this service is very promising. Gandi has been a reliable registrar, so I put a lot of trust in new offerings from Gandi.

As someone who maintains some servers in a datacenter, I can say that a flexible virtualization-based solution is very welcome. Especially in the lower end of the market, bare hardware servers can be fairly painful. If you grow out of a production server, you can't easily expand its disk space or replace its CPUs. A service that allows you to easily add and expand VMs, and add other resources like disk space is very useful. You can care less about physical hardware and more about deploying your applications. (You don't really want to go to the data center when you are enjoying the night with some friends when a stick of memory dies, and users/customers are calling. Unless you get paid very well ;).)

For all the people who are looking for affordable webhosting: one share with 256 MB RAM and some CPU time can easily serve static websites and websites that do not have high database or web application loads. In contrast to OpenVZ-based solutions or shared hosting, resources isolation is good with Xen (meaning that someone else's heavily-loaded VM won't affect your own VM in any significant way). A very important difference with shared hosting (as somebody mentioned) is that you have full control of the virtual machine, you can administrate it, serve as many domains as you like, add Apache modules, use your favorite database server, etc.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:15:32 +0100

Hello Berto,

Welcome to the bar!

Gandi's servers are indeed located in France. You can test the latency by pinging, for example, the following 217.70.184.1.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - rvb

rvb — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:46:23 +0100

Is there is something wrong with gandibar? I am just asking, sorry to be off-topic (well, it is dotClear and Gandi hosting, usually all works well :-), because there is no new comment here, neither on the French version about Gandi Hosting. Nevertheless I posted yesterday and this morning. Discussions were very interesting that far !-(

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - rvb

rvb — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:40:44 +0100

(sorry for maybe double post, but still nothing published since yesterday evening...)
@ Ryan, thanks for your reply and your details about your new offer. It obviously need to be wide explain because Gandi pretend it to be very unlike the other players in the hosting industry.
@ msr, thanks as well, I was talking about annual price indeed. I was not clear enough obviously, as I wanted to write shortly.
I understand very well the advantage of flexibility by adding or removing shares at any time, even for a few hours. I have no problem at all with that, it could be helpful when a higher traffic occurs. But, like anyone running a business, an non profit-organization and even a single person who is passionate with the web (you might have loads of them ;-), it is important to know how much you will pay for a year, at least, for a service. I am talking about budget and prevision, not about expectation. As far I cannot get less than one share, the cost is 72 Euros a year, but more likely 144 Euros a year when Gandi's definitive prices will take place. (Well Stephan, I don't find that way of pricing more fair than other ISPs you point in your posts, if you see what I mean... )
And after an hour reading both offer description pages and gandibar in French (lebardegandi), I still did not find any thing stating the opposite. So maybe we could buy shares at the beta price in advance for at least a year for the initial configuration (maybe with some limits to avoid smarty and “medium” people who know that they won't move to another hosting provider). I am sure it will ease the move from a lot of small websites/servers who will need months to make the most of the “unlimited” possibilities Gandi promises us !!

PS: I mentioned above Stephan/Gandi's comments #101, 109 and 121
www.lebardegandi.net/post/2008/01/02/Beta-publique-de-Gandi-Hebergement-ouverte#c163510
PS2: What about Online.net hosting services? How will you compare to them, if I only have once contact their support service?

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - rvb

rvb — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:40:59 +0100

@ Ryan, thanks for your reply and your details about your new offer. It obviously need to be wide explain because Gandi pretend it to be very unlike the other players in the hosting industry.
@ msr, thanks as well, I was talking about annual price indeed. I was not clear enough obviously, as I wanted to write shortly.
I understand very well the advantage of flexibility by adding or removing shares at any time, even for a few hours. I have no problem at all with that, it could be helpful when a higher traffic occurs. But, like anyone running a business, an non profit-organization and even a single person who is passionate with the web (you might have loads of them ;-), it is important to know how much you will pay for a year, at least, for a service. I am talking about budget and prevision, not about expectation. As far I cannot get less than one share, the cost is 72 Euros a year, but more likely 144 Euros a year when Gandi's definitive prices will take place. (Well Stephan, I don't find that way of pricing more fair than other ISPs you point in your posts, if you see what I mean... )
And after an hour reading both offer description pages and gandibar in French (lebardegandi), I still did not find any thing stating the opposite. So maybe we could buy shares at the beta price in advance for at least a year for the initial configuration (maybe with some limits to avoid smarty and “medium” people who know that they won't move to another hosting provider). I am sure it will ease the move from a lot of small websites/servers who will need months to make the most of the “unlimited” possibilities Gandi promises us !!

PS: I mention above Stephan/Gandi's comments #101, 109 and 121
http://www.lebardegandi.net/post/20...
PS2: what about online.net hosting services? How will you compare to them, if I only have once contact their support service?

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Berto

Berto — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:54:09 +0100

I'm in the US and am wondering if there would be any significant latency issues with using Gandi hosting. As I understand all servers will be housed in Europe.

Thanks!

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - thefuture

thefuture — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:52:58 +0100

Thanks for taking the time to respond, Ryan.

I think it's fantastic that a European host is pushing the boundaries and, please note, I did not say that we were not going to sign up. I just said that it helps to know the actual/eventual prices of the services you are signing up for. Even if the total is based upon your own settings and consumption.

I think you will find, somewhat contrary to what you say, that people will actually compare services along with prices within the same context: the hosting industry. Even if you call the services apples and oranges, people will then compare apples to oranges and look for similarities along with pros and cons.

Keep in mind too that many have another launch of unproven technology with the promise of scalability (endless bucket provided, pay per GPU as you go) fresh in memory. It is, I think, fair to say that the aforementioned solution still has not proven itself and the flexibility came at the cost of reduced performance. This is not an acceptable trade-off for many.

Hardware resources can never compete without actual server/system performance (what really matters; bang for buck) and the three most important things in hosting: stability, stability and stability. Xen/Virtuozzo VPS packages from quality European providers are already divided along the lines of your shares and you can upgrade/downgrade according to your blling cycle. In addition, extra GBs of HD and bandwidth can be added at a very reasonable cost, paid per GB unit. That's probably acceptable for 99% of users and just leaves the 1% paranoid about the buzzword-compliant digg/slashdot effect.

A new solution, however great, does not void all others. In fact, all scaleable products presented thus far seem to have scaled to an ego set on taking over the entire hosting industry upon launch of the beta ;-). Sign of the times, etc.

Anyways, we look forward to trying it out and, once more, it's great to see this type of thing in data centers within decent ping range.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:38:16 +0100

Our final price for one share will not exceed 12 euros, but the real question is not there...

It is important to avoid falling into the trap of looking for what may appear to be the best bargain with regards to hosting for a couple of reasons.

First, Gandi has deliberately not chosen to be a discount web host, this is something that we are proud of, and something which should also reassure our customers on several levels. Discount services buy cheap hardware, divide it among as many customers as possible, and sell it with classic deceptive marketing tricks (with full knowledge that only 20% of the customers will take full advantage of the resources...).

Gandi, on the other hand, has purchased extremely high-quality equipment (with all the security that comes with that), maintains multiple data centers at different locations, and provides free customer support. These are not things of little consequence Also, one of the major points of Gandi's hosting service is the *flexibility* that you have - which is why the whole discussion of price must be taken into a different context.

Because you can add and remove shares in real time, and without any contractual obligation in terms of time, as your need for power changes, you determine how many shares you actually need. This is the key to understanding Gandi's web hosting service.

Our service lets the customer (You!) decide how much power they need. Consequently, our customers consume better over time and in a real-life environment and therefore, less! For example, you can start your project with one share, and then if you find that you need more power, then add another, or another...or remove one...or add more disk space...or more disks...etc.

You are also the one that decides how much disk space your server has...and when. You can create and add a disk of 250 GB if you need more disk space...or make a more modest disk of just 1 GB...or 6 GB...or remove an unused 10 GB disk from one server and attach it to another, or remove disk space that you purchased that (as it turns out) you may not have needed in the end. You can change your server as your needs change... We don't tell you what to do and what you can do; even with our services, you tell us what you want.

The whole notion of a fixed cost per year, or even per month, no longer exists with web hosting. It is very important to steer the discussion away from simple price comparisons, and towards a discussion on how to best manage your resources in real time so as to provide the best and most intelligent services - to YOUR customers or web visitors

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - thefuture

thefuture — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:27:26 +0100

For the benefit of other English speakers, the French version of the blog operates with a price of E12 per share/month. Apart from RAM, that's a little high for the specs (only 5 GB disk). Good to know before signing up.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - thefuture

thefuture — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:47:14 +0100

Your hosting solution looks great. However, without knowing what it will eventually cost, it makes no sense to pay (a reduced price for an unspecified time) for beta testing. Seriously, why pay to test something that in the end may not be competitive with other Xen/Virtuozzo VPS packages? It's a waste of time. Publish your actual prices and get a solid and loyal customer base from the start, or not.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - msr

msr — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:20:15 +0100

Hi.

Probably, RVB were thinking in the price of a full year for one share: 6 * 12 = 72 (excl. VAT).

But. That price is for the Beta "Gandi Hosting". What about the price when in full production? Do you know the final price?

Thanks. (and Good job, as always).

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:21:22 +0100

Hello rvb,

Happy new year to you too!

I need to correct one figure you quote in your post: our Beta price is *6 euros* a share (not 72 euros). And of course it is necessary to stress that our hosting service and domain name service are totally separate...

As Gandi provides virtual dedicated servers, the question of sharing resources with different domains does not enter in to the equation - you have much, much more flexibility with Gandi's hosting service. For example, you can host as many websites on your server if you want, by simply creating virtual hosts in your Apache http server, or by configuring your server's resources as needed (you just need to point your domain's A record to your server's IP address so your domain knows where to find your server...).

The possibilities are limitless indeed, and very flexible. This is unlike any shared hosting solution which only give you "X domains per hosting package" or "X services". Gandi's service adapts to *your* needs, and not the other way around.

Our customer support would be pleased to answer any questions you have about our service - we look forward to hearing from you!

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - rvb

rvb — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:17:54 +0100

Happy New Year !!

Well, I was really on the way to move all from my hosting provider (email and a few static files), and for my wife as well, and... it is pretty above my current 30 Euros excl. VAT a year
Your offer looks revolutionary indeed, but 72 Euros for one share + domain name 12 E, I am not sure if it will equal my current basic hosting (of course, not with your beautiful customer service with no need to ask any support (FTP and I am done).

Anyway, thank you to try something new. I really want to use more your services, for my peace of mind !!

A question: could I, with one share, share hard drive for 2 different domains (both register at Gandi of course)?

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - NB

NB — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:37:25 +0100

Congratulations, it looks really good. Well done!

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - tenzo

tenzo — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:39:36 +0100

Thank Ryan

Now I'm getting on...

Why have you decided to propose the "General terms and conditions of domain name registration" in the contract step ? I've just chosen to create a server with 1 part!

I'm reading the "Hosting terms and conditions"...

I'll be back soon!

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:02:03 +0100

@tenzo

Happy new year to you too!

We are under fire by the huge number of simultaneous connections that we are getting at this time, so the front-end is suffering a bit. This will calm down soon, however.

Gandi Hosting in public beta is open! - tenzo

tenzo — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:58:02 +0100

Happy new year Sosso, Steph & Co !

I'm running the new web hosting service in an effort to get...

...and I come to the "Please come back later"...

How should I deal with this ?

Help appreciated !

(4/6) Our hosting will be innovative - grrrrreg

grrrrreg — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:17:41 +0100

Keep it up folks, you've had the most brilliant idea ever - no matter if you're beyond schedule, we all now the result will be worth the pain.
This is hosting the way I've always thought it. This is hosting that doesn't waste energy and reduces ecological footprint by allocating the just necessary ressources. It is definetily time someone says he doesn't want to sell underused dedicated servers to people too lazy to tailor the correct amount of bandwidth/proc/ram/disk.

Now if you tell me I can also brag about my server in hiring an overkill box, I'm even more impressed.

You guys got something from the very start. Keep on making it happen.

(3/6) Our hosting will be for everyone - Stephan

Stephan — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:26:55 +0100

"Or do you have plans to create a flexible hosting platform on top of a cluster set-up, decoupling traditional users, sites, systems and services?"

Something like that

"I like what Gandi's done with the email so far, don't stop developing it."

We don't GandiMail is a core service we plan to continue developing, including the already really appreciated extended version for SMEs and expert users (aka paying GandiMail)

(3/6) Our hosting will be for everyone - Wouter

Wouter — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:38:09 +0100

That all sounds very interesting, but I'd like to see some more tangible, factual information instead of long posts without any real informational value. There is an obvious benefit in being able to link domain sales with web/email hosting. Is Gandi moving into the ISP business with all of shared, dedicated, virtual hosting? Or do you have plans to create a flexible hosting platform on top of a cluster set-up, decoupling traditional users, sites, systems and services?

I like what Gandi's done with the email so far, don't stop developing it. With spam, viruses, backscatter, brute force user name scanning, fallback relays and on top of that growing end-user requirements such as server-side filtering, (redundant) storage space and all of webmail, POP3 and IMAP, running mailservers isn't as straightforward anymore as it used to be; corporate email hosting might be interesting for a lot of smaller companies that don't want to go through the burden of a complex multi-server set-up just for reading email.

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:42:34 +0100

@AC: Our service will give you all control that you are used to having over your server, yet with far greater flexibility and reliability

...but this is for another entry...

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:29:57 +0100

@Tony: We'll definitely keep everyone posted on our progress and the various release dates here in the blog Once the system has been released for general use, you will finally be able to control your own server as you wish (not sure how your friend will take the news though...I wish you luck on that

We don't have any immediate plans for helping design web pages, however, as that is a whole other bag of worms. Our hosting service will open up by focusing on providing a highly versatile platform that you can use for your website(s)... Nonetheless, we do have the ready-to-go GandiBlog now, that comes free with each domain name registered at Gandi, and that has many different themes and widgets that you can use to personalize it.

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - Tony Ramos

Tony Ramos — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:17:37 +0100

Please let me know when you launch the web hosting. I have a friend doing it now and it sucks, I don;t know much about making a web page so with your hosting will you help us design our web page?

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - anonymous coward

anonymous coward — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:08:22 +0100

Do you will provide full access to host?? (Do you whisper virtual?)

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - RegisTrust

RegisTrust — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:13:22 +0100

I am hosted in the US at the moment, i seriously need a faster multi-domain hosting in EU. "Waiting hard for your offer".
Regards,
Jean.

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - pradtf

pradtf — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:53:39 +0100

sounds great!

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - Nicolas (Gandi)

Nicolas (Gandi) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:49:00 +0100

Right: a part of what we will offer looks like what can be found on some good hosting companies in the US...but just a part

(2/6) Our hosting will be flexible - Mystic

Mystic — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:48:40 +0100

This is sounding more and more like the on-demand infrastructure setup, like that of Joyent. Looking forward to it!

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:13:37 +0100

@tenzo: wow - poetry! Thanks for your words

@w0: It sounds to me like you will indeed find our new hosting system just to your liking! The degree of your involvement in your server's operation is just one of the many things that can be customized...

As to the performance of our customer care department, it has never been better! -of course you can always try it out yourself

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - w0

w0 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:48:03 +0100

I stopped using payfor hosting a while ago, and I got back to handmade solutions since then. I'm growing tired of hosting myself, so I think that your announce is perfectly timed

I remember the quality of the services you used to provide, and although I don't have any information that could prove it, I'm sure you maintained the same level of quality over the years. I'm eager to see the new hosting service in action, and have great hopes about it.

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - tenzo

tenzo — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:39:47 +0100

My dearest friends,

Congratulations ! Ya deserve this! The best of luck to ya in this new challenge. Let us know how you are getting on and remember to take care of the ones on the steps below ya, just in case you meet them coming down again.

I never doubted ya would get to the top of your profession. I have followed your illustrious rise with baited breath.

Wish ya every good fortune in this your latest challenge.

(1/6) Launching of Gandi Hosting - kevin v

kevin v — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:33:50 +0100

Interesting... I wonder if I should hold of renewing my hosting contract at AIT. I am not real happy with them.

I am still wondering if any progress has been made however on the sieve install on email? I will switch over to you guys if I can control my level of spam control to none.