Following Debian's announcement and several weeks in beta on our HVM platform, we're pleased to announce the availability of the Debian 8 image on our public IaaS platform.

The Jessie package tree is available at https://mirrors.gandi.net/debian.

Note: We will not be providing a 32-bit version of Debian 8 for HVM.

Users of the Gandi CLI can create a VM using this image with a command like the following:

gandi vm create --image "Debian 8 64 bits (HVM)"

And to see all Debian 8 images:

$ gandi vm images 'Debian 8'
label         : Debian 8 64 bits (HVM)
os_arch       : x86-64
kernel_version: 3.12-x86_64 (hvm)
disk_id       : 3315704
datacenter    : FR
----------
label         : Debian 8 64 bits (HVM)
os_arch       : x86-64
kernel_version: 3.12-x86_64 (hvm)
disk_id       : 3315992
datacenter    : US
----------
label         : Debian 8 64 bits (HVM)
os_arch       : x86-64
kernel_version: 3.12-x86_64 (hvm)
disk_id       : 3316076
datacenter    : LU

We look forward to your feedback! As always, feel free to contact our support team or send us an email at feedback@gandi.net.

After studying how our IaaS services are used, and evaluating how they are priced, we have decided to cut prices and simplify the pricing model. As of 02/19/2015, you will be able to save up to 40%, depending on your usage pattern.

We aren't just cutting prices across the board. There is a boost in capacity for bigger users, too. The prior limit of 500GB of free outbound traffic per month is now lifted to 2 TB (4 times as much!) per month. Of course you can still use more, we just ask you to pay a bit for really extreme loads over 2 TB/month. This higher limit is possible due to investments we have made in optimizing our infrastructure, and we are passing the benefits on to you. Also, as IPv4 has become more expensive, the price of an IPv4 interface has actually gone up, while IPv6 is (and always was) free. Also, a vCPU is now $0.004 / €0.0033 per hour, and we no longer charge more if you don't use as many - it's just a flat, predictable cost per unit.

If you are a heavy user of Gandi Cloud hosting, you will see a big drop in your overall cost of ownership. Smaller footprint users will see smaller benefits, proportionally.

Also, on top of the recent fluctuations in currency values between the US dollar and the Euro, we have decreased credit prices in USD by 7.5%.

Here's some examples of pricing in dollars / euros for typical configurations (based on buying a 2 Millions credit pack):

• 1 CPU + 1GB RAM + 20GB disk + 1 IPV4: from $17.30 / €13.31 (264 credits / hour) to $13.79 / €12.67 (220 cr / h) per month
• 2 CPU + 2GB RAM + 50GB disk + 1 IPV4: from $33.28 / €25.60 to $23.95 / €19.96 per month
• 4 CPU + 4GB RAM + 200GB disk + 1 IPV4: from $72.73 / €55.94 to $49.71 / €41.43 per month

If you choose only IPv6, you can save even more, and end up paying less than 10 dollars a month for a server:

• 1 CPU + 1GB RAM + 20GB + 1 IPV6 would cost $9.56 / €7.96 per month.

If you recently purchased a bunch of credits, dont' worry! You will still benefit from these changes, since your credits will last that much longer.

Check out the full cost breakdown here. If you have questions, please contact our support team.

We want to help, and we want your feedback, so be sure to let us know what you think at feedback@gandi.net, any time.

Happy provisioning!

We have released a new version of our server management scripts and invite all Gandi Server users to update the `gandi-hosting-vm2` package. Version 2.5-1 contains several improvements for both Xen and HVM platforms.

You'll find more details in the Changelog (below). In a nutshell, these are some the improvements you might notice:

• Fixed a bug that created oddly named files at the system's root (see swap and untar in the changelog)
• Improved boot speed (related to the bug fix)
• Better network interface configuration
• Better handling of configuration variables

You can follow these steps to update the package on your distribution:

On Debian / Ubuntu 

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gandi-hosting-vm2

On Fedora / RedHat / CentOS

sudo yum update gandi-hosting-vm2

On Mandriva / Mageia

sudo urpmi gandi-hosting-vm2

You should then copy the new configuration files or merge the new contents with your existing files, by comparing the old and the new versions.

You can use the following command to get the new file list:

On Debian / Ubuntu

find /etc -type f -iname "*.dpkg-dist"

On distributions that use ''rpm''

find /etc -type f -iname "*.rpmnew"

With this new version of the package, the main network interface (eth0) is no longer configured via DHCP by default. If you still want to use DHCP, you just have to remove the name of the main network interface (eth0) from the CONFIG_NODHCP' variable setting in the config file located at "/etc/default/gandi" (or /etc/sysconfig/gandi depending on your distribution).

You should get:

# /etc/default/gandi or /etc/sysconfig/gandi

CONFIG_NODHCP="eth0" # to disable DHCP on the listed interfaces

Or:

# /etc/default/gandi or /etc/sysconfig/gandi

CONFIG_NODHCP="" # to enable DHCP on all interfaces, including eth0

If you have any trouble, please contact our support team (http://www.gandi.net/support/contact/mail) or join our staff and other customers on #gandi, on the Freenode IRC network.

--

CHANGELOG

• Resize: fixing device name when resizing main disk on hvm
• Use CONFIG_* we need to source the default file in gandi-mount initscript.
• If device is swap, do not try to untar configuration from it. This speeds up boot in some cases.
• Do not show error on link up if iface is not ready.
• Link up the net iface in all cases.
• Route IPv4 using the first net iface available.
• Fix default route configuration.
• Use detected version of ip command everywhere.
• dhclient does not rewrite the resolv.conf file when attaching a dhcp-enabled interface, CONFIG_NAMESERVER is checked.
• SSH management key has been removed from images and from the package.
• Re-add action for variable CONFIG_SYSCTL

Just over a year after their release, we've upgraded our private VLAN feature to make it even easier to use.

It was already possible to create your networks and isolate your servers by configuring your systems and network interfaces manually.

Now, thanks to the new version, you can create your private networks directly from the hosting management interface in your Gandi account or with the ever-more-delightful Gandi CLI, no extra configuration needed.

To get started, just choose a data center and a name for your new private VLAN, then link private network interfaces to the servers of your choice. Interfaces and servers will be automatically configured to communicate with each other without any further setup needed on your part. By default, our platform will assign the IP addresses automatically, but you can also configure the subnet mask and gateway if you're so inclined.

One common use case for private networks is to isolate one or more public servers (for a web application, for example) from a database server or cluster, only exposing the application servers to the internet. These private interfaces can have up to 200 MB/s of bandwidth, making private connections much faster than public ones.

The PVLAN feature is available at no additional charge.

Get started with your first PVLAN today with these tutorials on our wiki:

• Getting started with Gandi Private VLANs
• Create a Private Network with Gandi CLI (VLAN)

If you have questions, let us know.

Enjoy, and don't hesitate to send us your feedback on this new feature!

We have updated mirrors.gandi.net following today's announcement of the GHOST vulnerability. This newly-discovered flaw is in the popular glibc library, which is used in many Linux distributions and different flavors of Unix. The newly-discovered flaw, which has been present since November 2000, enables an attacker to execute code remotely on a vulnerable system.

We recommend that you upgrade your servers immediately. The following patches have already been made available by the distribution teams:

• Debian: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2015-0235
• RedHat: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2015-0235
• Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-2485-1/

We will keep this list and our mirrors up-to-date as more affected distributions release their fixes.

If you are a Simple Hosting customer, we recommend that you restart your instance.

The year 2015 is coming and it's bringing a slew of changes with it. One of those changes affects the way VAT tax is applied on "electronic services" (such as a domain name) purchased by European residents.

Simply put: people living within the European Union must pay for these electronic services (i.e. "nonmaterial goods", more info on this is linked to further down on the page) no longer with the TVA of the country where the merchant is located (practically speaking, from where the services were purchased), but rather, the VAT of the country of residence (country where the service was consumed). The territorial rules pertaining to purchases made by European organization which have an intra community VAT number (mainly companies) remain unchanged.

Since Gandi sells electronic services, all of our products (except t-shirts) will be affected by this change.

To give you a concrete example, take the VAT rates of a few EU countries:

• France: 20%
• Spain: 16%
• Denmark: 25%

If a French customer buys a domain that costs €10 from a company located in Spain, he or she will pay €12 (€10 + 20% French VAT). A Danish customer buying the same domain from the same Spanish company would pay €12.50 (€10 + 25% Danish VAT). And finally, a Spanish customer would pay €11.60 (€10 + 16% Spanish VAT).

Note that this measure only affects so-called "Telecommunications, broadcasting & other online services", as defined by the VAT Directive. Therefore, actual physical goods sold via "distance selling" (clothing, etc) over the Internet are not affected by this change.

Note also that the sale of electronic services to persons who reside in a non-European Union country will not be subject to European VAT (export), even if these countries are geographically European (ex. Switzerland).

For more information on the different VAT rates in Europe, see this PDF or this website.

Some examples of electronic services concerned by this are:

• Providing and hosting of websites, remote maintenance of programs and hardware,
• Providing of software and their updates,
• Providing of images, information and texts, and databases,
• Providing of music, films, videogames and online gambling, as well as political, cultural, artistic, sports, scientific, or entertainment programs,
• Providing of online educational services.

•      Go to the Simple Hosting instance creation page,
•      Select the programming language, size and database you want
•      If it isn't already the default, select the "10 free test days" duration option 
•      Complete the instance creation form and confirm the instance creation

We are pleased to announce a new version of the statistics tools for Gandi Simple Hosting and Cloud VPS servers.

You can now see detailed usage stats on your instances and servers, enabling more advanced performance analysis. This feature makes it easy to see at a glance that you need to increase or decrease instance size, RAM, or CPU amounts, or use Gandiflex to do so automatically, allowing you to optimize the behavior of your applications in the cloud.

These new statistics tools are already available on your instance or server administration page or via our API. The new statistics tools are still in active development (please see notes below), and we're eager to hear your feedback and ideas at feedback@gandi.net.

Accessing stats via the admin interface:

Check the "Statistics" tab of your Simple Hosting page or VPS admin page. We have added new visualizations that allow you to see several types of information:

• Processor use (CPU)
• Network utilization and throughput
• Free and used disk space (on Simple Hosting) or Disk I/O (on VPS Servers)
• RAM used (on Simple Hosting only)

You can filter the data by instances/servers, date, and even periodicity of visualization (e.g. by hour, day, or week).

Accessing stats via the Gandi API

A new method has been added to the Gandi API to allow you to integrate performance data into your scripts and applications, or to import it into another tool for monitoring or automated alerts, according to your needs.

Just call the method api.hosting.metric.query, passing your API key and the details of the request as arguments, as explained in the API documentation.

Notes

If you aren't seeing any network usage data, you may need to stop and start your Servers for data collection to start.

We will soon start displaying maximum usage values (95th percentile), instead of average usage values, for the selected time period.

Getting help

We hope you find this to be a useful tool. More information is available on our support wiki (instance stats | server stats) and, as always, our support teams are here to help.

This December, we will be making a change to make Simple Hosting easier to use, as well as more manageable.

Currently, there are three separate signatures, one for each datacenter, for the SFTP protocol you use to transfer files to Gandi Simple Hosting instances.

In a few days, we will replace We have replaced these keys so that they are all the same (and thus easier to manage). The new key will have the following signature, whether your instance is hosted in our Paris, Baltimore, or Luxembourg datacenter:

2048 35:e0:5a:a9:54:12:55:6b:ce:41:8c:c1:9e:35:1d:f6 (RSA)

1024 80:c7:a8:05:dc:79:92:f1:9c:b7:61:46:a7:ad:2d:f7 (DSA)

For reference, the outdated key signatures were as follows:

Paris (sftp.dc0.gpaas.net):

2048 02:15:f6:35:d7:01:3c:58:74:8c:e4:0e:96:61:35:6f (RSA)

1024 36:c2:9c:5c:5b:d0:7e:5b:78:e4:ee:47:ad:aa:1c:8e (DSA)

Baltimore (sftp.dc1.gpaas.net):

2048 f8:ed:00:17:1a:88:9f:4d:15:fb:84:46:1e:19:4f:c5 (RSA)

1024 69:84:9b:dd:3b:cd:9a:20:df:60:60:e0:6d:cd:5e:e7 (DSA)

Luxembourg (sftp.dc2.gpaas.net):

2048 c1:0b:b5:1d:57:cb:00:75:22:a5:6b:d3:bc:73:64:5a (RSA)

1024 7c:ac:f0:23:6b:d6:e8:78:67:4c:72:95:9b:14:61:eb (DSA)

How does this affect me?

In most cases, all you need to do is accept the new key when you log into your instance via SFTP. The client will prompt you the first time you use it to connect after we make the change.

If your client doesn't handle the changed signatures gracefully, you can manually flush the key on the command line (replace dc0 in the command below, if necessary: dc0 = Paris datacenter, dc1 = Baltimore, dc2 = Luxembourg):

$ ssh-keygen -R sftp.dc0.gpaas.net

and then use your sFTP tool and reconnect again and accept the new foreign key.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, let our support team know. We are here to help!

On Tuesday, 7 October, we experienced a series of serious incidents affecting some of the storage units in our Parisian datacenter. These incidents caused two interruptions in service for some of our customers, affecting both Simple Hosting instances and IaaS servers.

The combined effect of these interruptions represents the most serious hosting outage we've had in three years.

First and foremost, we want to apologize. We understand how disruptive this was for many of you, and we want to make it right.

In accordance with our Service Level Agreement, we will be issuing compensation to those whose services were unavailable.

Here's what happened:

On Tuesday, October 7, shortly before 8:00 p.m. Paris time (11:00 a.m. PDT), a storage unit in our Parisian datacenter housing a part of the disks of our IaaS servers and Simple Hosting instances became unresponsive.

At 8:00 p.m., after ruling out the most likely causes, we made the decision to switch to the backup equipment.

At 9:00 p.m., after one hour of importing data, the operation was interrupted, leading to a lengthy investigation that resulted in eventually falling back to the original storage unit. Our team, having determined the culprit to be the caching equipment, proceeded to change the disk of the write journal.

At 2:00 a.m., the storage unit whose disk had been replaced was rebooted.

Between 3:00 and 5:30 a.m., the recovery from a 6-hour outage caused a heavy overload, both on the network level and on the storage unit itself. The storage unit became unresponsive, and we were forced to restart the VMs in waves.

At 8:30 a.m., all the VMs and instances were once again functional, with a few exceptions which were handled manually.

We inspected our other storage units that were using the same model of disk, replacing one of them as a precaution.

At 12:30 p.m., we began investigating some slight misbehavior exhibited by the storage unit whose drive we had replaced as a precaution.

At 3:50 p.m., three virtual disks and a dozen VMs became unresponsive. We investigated and identified the cause, and proceeded to update the storage unit while our engineers worked on the fix.

Unfortunately, this update caused an unexpected automatic reboot, causing another interruption for the other Simple Hosting instances and IaaS servers on that storage unit.

By 4:15 p.m., all Simple Hosting instances were functional again, but there were problems remounting IaaS disks. By 5:30 p.m., 80% of the disks were accessible again, with the rest following by 5:45 p.m.

This latter incident lasted about two hours (4:00 to 6:00 p.m.). During this time, all hosting operations (creating, starting, or stopping servers) were queued.

Due to the large number of queued operations, it took until 7:30 p.m. for all of them to complete.

These incidents have seriously impacted the quality of our service, and for this we are truly sorry. We have already begun taking steps to minimize the consequences of such incidents in the future, and are working on tools to more accurately predict the risk of such hardware failures.

We are also working on a customer-facing tool for incident tracking which will be announced in the coming days. 

Thank you for using Gandi, and please accept our sincere apologies. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The Gandi team