Gandi IWI Blog

Today we are opening the beta-test phase for the implementation of IPv6 on our hosting platform.

As a reminder, IPv6 is the successor to the current IPv4 upon which the internet is based, and given the generous attribution of the early IP addresses, the IPv4 address space is rapidly running out of available adresses.

Its replacement is gently making its appearance across the internet.  An IPv6 address is made up of 128bits as opposed to 32bits for an IPv4 address.  We are moving from 2^32 available addresses to 2^128 (excluding reserved allocations, of course) which gives us a few decades.. erm.. centuries to breathe!

If you wish to participate in the beta test phase, you must:

- Have some basic knowledge of IPv6
- Have a Gandi server in expert mode (i.e. with root access)
- Send us a request to participate to ipv6beta@gandi.net and include your gandi handle/user-id.  (You will receive an email by return with the procedure to follow).

Initially, we will limit the beta test to approximately 50 servers, so don't wait to send in your request!

As usual, you can comment on this post here...

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1. Change the volume of your disk,
2. Run the necessary update on the file system itself.

If you want to comment this news, follow me.

So here we are, proud parents of the Gandi hosting infrastructure. Our little baby has now been live (or alive) for 4 months now since the full launch on 1st Oct. Like any new parent everything is possible for our baby, and the future is really exciting. But also like any new parent, there is lots to learn and always things to be done.

We've made it!

For some it has been a four year labour of love, for others, less. In any case, an important step has just been taken by the team, of whom I am ever more proud: our Cloud Infrastructure is now operational. Yes, we are pleased to announce the grand opening of our Gandi Hosting service!

This wild dream is fuelled behind the scenes by the desire of a team to create something truly different, that will provide a unique combination of flexibility and transparency - two crucial elements often missing in the market. The desire to see people only consume what they really need, to provide them with the ability to migrate their resources from one location to another when needed, to move about freely...in short, everything that we dreamt about as customers ourselves.

The entire industry, all the players in this market, know very well that this technology will replace shared hosting, and possibly even dedicated hosting. The advantages for customers are too great to be ignored, which is why the traditional players, having down played this new type of hosting, are using buzzwords around virtualization in order to continue to sell to customers who are insufficiently informed.

It is our mission: to explain, again and again, why everyone needs flexible and dedicated resources, and those that accept this are turning to these solutions. Today we are talking about web hosting, but the infrastructure is really based on and can be used for "Cloud Computing". In other words, the rental of 'super computer' processing power which can be accessed from anywhere in the world for needs as diverse as 3D rendering, gigantic databases, etc...

To get back to hosting, our choice has been to offer a product with the following components:

- a technology that allows a degree of flexibility and security that is unrivalled among current web hosts/discounters,

- a price that is within reach of the largest number of people, maintaining one of the the core values of Gandi,

- a service that is worthy of being called such, or even more! Our mission is to serve you individually as best we possibly can, not to create an enormous mass of faceless customers.

I sincerely believe that, every day that has gone by and is yet to come, every effort is being made to meet our objectives, whether they are technical or personal.

Of course, the miracle solution, the one with the biggest pipes, the most massive machines etc.. that many players in the market are bragging about, does not exist. No technology will ever be flawless and we would not be providing you with an honest service if we made that claim.

But we do believe that:

Our role as a partner in your online presence (which is far more than simply hosting of your website), includes knowing that we need to help you see that you must use common sense in all situations, for example, the prominent mention in our hosting contract of the necessity to perform regular backups of your data.

We have months, or even years ahead of us to adapt our service to meet your needs, to perfect it so that it increasingly becomes one that cannot be ignored.

We are asking for the thing that is most important in our eyes, your confidence, to show you the way to go, not to hide from you all that we are doing, and to ensure that the service is as good as it can be. In our mind, this is achieved by proving the quality of our products to you.

When you entrust your online presence with us, we must be responsive if things go wrong (and this, even if I obviously do not want it to occur, does happen), be transparent with regards to what is taking place, and to do everything in our power to fix it, and of course to back this up with a commercial gesture.

All of this is clearly mentioned in our contract with you.

I do not know what you, our customers, will do with this service. Judging from the thousands of you that have joined us, even before the grand opening, it has already been a huge success, and one that all of us here wish to continue!

Despite the length of this entry, please allow me to warmly thank all the beta testers that have been with us these last nine months, without whom we would not have been able to make the right choices. I hope that by keeping the current rates for a few more months, and that the various rate schemes will encourage you to stay with us. As a side note, our American customers find that our offer is quite inexpensive for this type of service, compared to other offers of the same type.

As a conclusion, I just wanted, before totally delivering this service, to say to my team that they did a simply fabulous job, and that this can never be taken away from them. Simply put, we have suffered, but this is one of those things that can be remembered for ever with pride.Thanks to all that have contributed to this project!.

If I have been smiling in recent weeks - while I should have been more "stressed" due to the accumulated "delays" - it has been for this very reason: we are doing something long-term, and I am very proud of this, given all that we have achieved.

PS: The hardest part is just beginning, hang in there!

Stephan

• On Thursday, May 12th, we experienced the simultaneous failure of 2 disks on filer 13. That evening, right before we finished the RAID reconstruction, a third disk failed (on new 'quality' hardware). We therefore stopped the servers so as to avoid the corruption of the volume group and tried to recover the data throughout the night and on Friday.
  
  
• Friday morning, we contacted customers on filer 13 and began the reconstruction of the servers. Given the large number of servers, the process was rather time consuming though should have been completed between Friday night and Saturday...except that the filer used began to experience the same symptoms as filer 13; as did the following ones. Depending on the attitude of the manufacturer involved in the coming days, we are not ruling anything out, given the prejudice caused by their defective hardware.
  
  
• After several hours of setting up new filers from other manufacturer, the reconstruction process picked up again Sunday night, and by Tuesday morning 90% of the customers were ready to go. We then spent a day manually processing the remaining 10% and dealing with the side-affects, notably on GandiMail which suffered (though the situation has returned to normal). We are implementing massive resources to GandiMail, so as to be able to provide an excellent level of service.
  
  
• Today, all the servers on filer 13 have been reconstructed, and all the customers that ordered a server since Thursday have been served.

• Customers impacted by filer 13 and the subsequent loss of all their data are in the process of being fully refunded for all of the amount paid fromt their prepaid accounts. We are in beta testing now, but we are intransigent.
  
  
• We have extended the 5-day period of validity for the shared of everyone blocked between Thursday and Monday.
  
  

• The changing of the architecture to provide the readily available hosting promises during the launching of the service was decided even before the crash of filer 13. Indeed, if a machine on which your server is hosted fails, the incident will be transparent to you; if a disk (or 2) stop working, the RAID 6 will assure that the incident also goes unnoticed for the customer. We wanted this to even be the case if an entire filer failed. The storage architecture is therefore being modified. The final version of the service will be announced once this takes affect.
  
  
• A backup system is also being prepared that will assure you that all your data will not be stored in the same data center as your main disks. The centers are either completed or being fine-tuned.
  
  
• We holding discussions with the supplier of the defective filers (and I strongly suggest that they recognize the gravity of the situation) and other manufactures in order to take all the necessary measures as required.

Some servers are unreachable because of a hardware problem.
Our technical staff is going to fix this as soon as possible.
Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

-- Edit: everything should be up and running now.