We have been alluding to this option since the beginning of our hosting service, and we are particularly proud of it quite simply because it is a tool that we would like to have seen at one of our competitors...

To make a metaphor (I like metaphors), imagine that you drive to work every day, say, 50 miles round-trip each day, from Monday to Friday. You have a small, fuel-efficient, 2-door car, with a small trunk that is just enough for your daily needs. The problem is that on the weekends with the wife and kids, it is just too small for a comfortable family trip... Your only real choice is therefore to purchase a bigger car : a 4-door gas-guzzler with a huge trunk and one that is therefore more expensive. Or even, in the worst-case scenario, you would need to purchase two new cars...

Well, at Gandi, we just invented modular back-seats and an optional additional trunk! Ah...no, wait. Actually, as we do not yet manufacture cars, we have applied this excellent idea to servers. And we must say that this is far easier than with cars :)

Therefore, concretely, this means that with GandiFlex, you may schedule in advance at what time during the day, the week, the month, or even the year, when you will need more power, more RAM, more of everything. Since our hosting system is based on server-shares, we provide you with the possibility of adding from 1 to 7 to your server depending on the program of your choice. You will notice that we have initially limited the Gandi Flex service to 8 shares. This is because we so not yet know how such as service will be used by you, though mainly because for now, the number of servers with more than 8 shares totals only 0.1% of our supply. Here are a few examples that do not allude to cars that will help you see how it works (note: all prices below are excl. VAT):

You manage a news website, and you have a daily newsletter that you send out at around 4 PM. Set up a repeating weekly GandiFlex program from 4 PM to 5 PM from Monday through Friday to increase your server's power during that period and forget about it. Your mails will be sent faster, without disrupting access to your website. How much will this cost you? 1 Flex-share costs €0.07 per hour. In the case of this example, you will only pay an additional €1.40 per month :)

Another example, demanding more power: you created a guild of online gamers, and your team holds training matches every Friday and Saturday on your virtual dedicated server. You therefore need more resources to use your gaming server, in addition to your website, your forum, and TeamSpeak... You decide to program a schedule that will add 2 Flex-shares every Friday and Saturday from 9 PM to midnight: 2 Flex-shares (€0.14) X 3 hours X 2 days = €0.84 per week, or €3.36 per month!

Obviously, the addition or the removal of a share will not require a reboot of your server. In the two previous examples, in order to assure an optimal rendering, you would have needed to purchase more shares all the time, or in the case of a dedicated server, have a machine configured from the start for peak consumption. It would not be very environmentally friendly, like using a huge SUV to drive to work by yourself everyday.

Here is another illustration of use, depending on the peaks encountered in the load on your server. This one is running on 2 server-shares, though has a clearly identified need from 6 PM to 8 PM daily. This need may be estimated at 4 shares for two hours. Starting from the final price of a share at Gandi (10 euros) this user would need (without GandiFlex) to pay €60 per month to assure an optimal service for his or her server (6 shares X €10). With Gandi Flex, it is a simple matter to only use the strict minimum daily need, 2 server-shares (eg. €30 per month) for two hours - in other words €0.56 per day, or an additional €16.80 per month. This translated to a total of €36.80 per month! A monthly savings of €23.20 by just using what is needed is nothing to sniff at eh?

All of this is now available at Gandi! You just need to log into your account, and go to your server's control panel, and from there, by clicking on "Change" after "Flex operations active".

And tomorrow? Imagine that you are driving along the highway and come across 3 hitchhiking friends that you pick up. How are you going to pick up the 4 Norwegians sticking out their thumbs 2 miles further up the road? We have a solution to this, and will soon tell you all about it ;)

Come chat with the team here.