What's up, week 44
By Ryan on Friday 31 October 2008, 20:13 - Gandi - Permalink
It has been some time since we have last brought you up to speed with all the latest developments here at Gandi, and if this is the case, it is because we have been hard at work for you! New hosting features, payment options, mail upgrades, blog improvements, we have a list of new services that will, I hope, have made the wait worthwhile!
We are pleased to announce that the hosting API XML is ready, and freely available for resellers, or for other account types upon invitation (yes, we really like invitations). We are keeping things limited at the start so that we can analyze the behavior of the API, as well as to be sure that we have thought of everything, mainly any possible abuse of the system. You will also notice that certain options are missing for now (including GandiFlex, Gandi AI, etc.). This will be implemented shortly. You may find all the necessary documentation here!
Continuing along the lines of hosting innovation, we now give you the possibility of starting from a disk image! You will therefore be able to create your disk image, and then create servers from that image
Here is how it works:
And since we are talking about the size of the disk, we have been receiving many emails from you requesting the option of increasing the size of your disk. We have listened to you and are pleased to confirm that this option, a "resizeFS upwards" will be in production in a couple of weeks. The "resizeFS downwards" will take some more time to complete, but we are working on it.
Otherwise, we are also preparing a new distribution between Gandi AI and Gandi MI (the expert server). This will be a version of Ubuntu with a management panel that will let you manage your server even if you are uncomfortable with using the SSH terminal.
Concerning the migration of SATAs to SAS, we about one third of the way to completing the task, which is currently underway.
With regards to payment, we now accept payment via PayPal (in Euros only), as well as "virements administratifs" for French public administrations.
We have also updated our hosting payment system, which some customers were unpleased with. Indeed, if you choosed to pay by check or bank transfer, our system was waiting for the reception of the payment before completing the order - even if you had credit on your prepaid account. We did this to avoid taking, for example, money that was destined to the renewal of a domain name. We now give you the possibility - from your orders in progress page - of forcing the debit from your prepaid account.
From the domain name side of things, we are currently in the testing phase of .ES (Spain) domains, which should become available next week. .CAT and .IM ccTLDs will follow shortly thereafter.
For GandiMail, we have updated the platform which greatly reduced the load on our servers, despite an initial slowing of the platform during the first hour of the maintenance. We therefore have a much more stable platform that will deliver mails on time. Our team also corrected many problems with the antispam system that has increased its performance, and even too much in some cases. We are therefore working on a faster, but even more precise solution. We are happy to finally be able to say that the "quota bug" is dead!
Finally, GandiBlog has been upgraded to version 2.02, as you may have read in our info blog, where we also mention that the cache system has been improved along with the import/export function.
Continuing along the lines of hosting innovation, we now give you the possibility of starting from a disk image! You will therefore be able to create your disk image, and then create servers from that image
Here is how it works:
- start by creating a data disk of a maximum of 3GB (a temporary limitation),
- attach the disk to an existing server,
- make an image of the system disk that you want to copy via the UNIX command, "dd" or upload your own image to the disk,
- once the image is ready, you will remove the disk from your server
- change the type of the disk to the "Image" mode from the disk's description page,
- go to create a new server. You will now be offered the possibility of using the disk image you have made!
And since we are talking about the size of the disk, we have been receiving many emails from you requesting the option of increasing the size of your disk. We have listened to you and are pleased to confirm that this option, a "resizeFS upwards" will be in production in a couple of weeks. The "resizeFS downwards" will take some more time to complete, but we are working on it.
Otherwise, we are also preparing a new distribution between Gandi AI and Gandi MI (the expert server). This will be a version of Ubuntu with a management panel that will let you manage your server even if you are uncomfortable with using the SSH terminal.
Concerning the migration of SATAs to SAS, we about one third of the way to completing the task, which is currently underway.
With regards to payment, we now accept payment via PayPal (in Euros only), as well as "virements administratifs" for French public administrations.
We have also updated our hosting payment system, which some customers were unpleased with. Indeed, if you choosed to pay by check or bank transfer, our system was waiting for the reception of the payment before completing the order - even if you had credit on your prepaid account. We did this to avoid taking, for example, money that was destined to the renewal of a domain name. We now give you the possibility - from your orders in progress page - of forcing the debit from your prepaid account.
From the domain name side of things, we are currently in the testing phase of .ES (Spain) domains, which should become available next week. .CAT and .IM ccTLDs will follow shortly thereafter.
For GandiMail, we have updated the platform which greatly reduced the load on our servers, despite an initial slowing of the platform during the first hour of the maintenance. We therefore have a much more stable platform that will deliver mails on time. Our team also corrected many problems with the antispam system that has increased its performance, and even too much in some cases. We are therefore working on a faster, but even more precise solution. We are happy to finally be able to say that the "quota bug" is dead!
Finally, GandiBlog has been upgraded to version 2.02, as you may have read in our info blog, where we also mention that the cache system has been improved along with the import/export function.
Comments
Go... Go.... Go.... Go Gandi..... Go.....
Love to hear the improvement....
Keep up the wonderful work !
Salute......
Is there any plan to accept Paypal in USD?
The blog post is a little unclear on the disk resizing. Is this the long-awaited possibility of combining the disk quota of more than one share on a server into a single large disk? Example to clarify: A 4-share server can take the 4 x 5 GB quota and attach a single disk of 20 GB?
@Zhangjia - Thanks! Paypal in USD comes with hefty fees, which is why for the moment we are only offering this means of payment for Euros. We will not rule out however an eventual USD possibility...
@mc - it is already possible to combine disk quota from several shares to create a big disk. When you add a share to your account, the 5GB go into your disk quota. From that pool, you can create disks that use the disk space from your quota. At present, however, once you have created a disk, you cannot resize it. The improvement we are working on will allow you to increase the size of an *existing* disk, using disk quota (either from a share in your resources, or from extra disk space that you purchased)
Hi. I was reading about Gandi AI and I saw that lighttpd is supported.
http://www.gandi.net/hosting/autoin...
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List of available servers
If you choose to use Gandi AI, the list of servers available at this time are posted below. If the installation that you would like is not available yet, you can go to the Gandi AI wishlist and request a new server, a new language, etc.
* HTTP servers
Apache, lighttpd
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Well, it seems that it's not supported in AI, since it doesn't come up when signing up... Will you offer this? The performace difference is big. Easy to fix from your side and matters for those of us who prefer not to mess too much with configurations...
Here is a response about my experiences with Gandi. I felt the need to post the following to their User Group. I am sure the poor service is down to their new UK office as the French were always very good in the past. Such a shame:
I am absolutely livid. I have been a Gandi client for a number of years with accounts SL85-GANDI and BL03-GANDI.
I have always had a dedicated server but thought I trusted Gandi and decided to experiment with their hosting and if it all worked OK to migrate my business domain jumbocruiser.com to Gandi hosting. This is a big deal for me as I have been with Cybercon in the USA since 1988.
We set up our website and database on a Gandi site and just messed around a bit checking speeds etc and was about to migrate when I got an e-mail claiming I had been spamming and that my acccount had been
suspended.
I can tell you now that we have no interest in spamming, no evidence was submitted by Gandi, and our password is strong and known only by two people.
I explained this to Gandi in detail and all they did is repond with irelevant boilerplate statements preaching to me about how I have abused the system and not to do it again and that I am responsible for all activities on my domain.
IF SOMEONE ACCESSED MY DOMAIN IT MUST BE DOWN TO GANDI'S POOR SECURITY AS ONLY I AND MY TECHNICIAN HAVE THE PASSWORD.
They have reinstated my account but what I REALLY needed was an apology and promise never to shut us down again without consulting me. That was an absolutely disgraceful way to treat a long term client and there is no phone number to call anyone.
Unless that apology appears shortly I am closing my account and will cease recommending Gandi even for domain registration (as have done often in the past).
How about it Gandi ? You have my phone number - pick up the phone and call me or do you want to get the same sort of reputation that Paypal got in the early days for treating their customers like criminals ?
Your domain registration services have been superb, do not tarnish your reputation now by shoddy customer service. I will support you but you must be responsible with us. Reputations are hard to gain and very easy to lose.
Stephen, Baron Lee of Coolock.
What about the lighttpd? Could someone answer that? Is it available on AI?
@Johnster: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The presence of lighttp in the list of modules is a holdover from our beta phase but has not been removed from the list of modules currently offered in the English interface. This will be fixed right away, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
As you have contacted us publicly in both the Groups and here in our blog, we will reply to both posts to demonstrate once more our reactivity. Please note that we provided you with a 15-day deadline to reply to our notification and request for account verification, to which you did not reply. Upon the reception of your fax however, we reactivated your account within hours.
In your particular case, the presence of an invalid telephone number, and the non-response to our account verification mail following a complaint for your server within a delay of over 2 weeks obliged us to suspend your hosting service.
As a service to protect you as our customer, we regularly proceed with contact information verification, and this, for several reasons. If, for example, there is a problem with your domain name or web hosting, we need to be able to contact you rapidly, and to identify you as the legal owner of the domain name and hosting account. The other significant reason for our need to assure the validity of your account information is that Gandi must uphold our contractual obligations with ICANN and the registries, which require that our whois database remain completely accurate and up-to-date.
Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact Gandi's customer care team at: http://www.gandi.net/faq/form_contact_support/
Thank you for your understanding.
Can you please post links to test the characteristics of a single share (ping, traceroute, speed)?
Hi Konio,
We provide some benchmark information at http://en.gandi.net/hosting/proposa... which you can use to see the comparable performance of the machines.
If you want to check the response time/ping/tracert, it depends on where you are to run the check in a way that is useful.
Probably the best thing would be to take a share and run your tests on it. There is no minimum contract at Gandi, so you could take it juse for 1 day (e.g. monthly price/30) and try it out. If you don't like it, just delete it.
I hope that helps,
Joe