New storage infrastructure
By William on Monday, January 24 2011, 23:42 - Hosting - Permalink
Our new storage infrastructure is being deployed.
Disk Management is now handled through virtualization... and we are excited to share it with you!
As you will be seeing, the features are very interesting and we will be integrating them over time in your management interface as well as in the new API.
Improvements
Besides the disks, still using RAID for redundancy and a write cache resistant to a power failure, the storage servers are now organized in clusters: in case of controller failure, a standby controller is ready to take over the management of disks.
The storage capacity has been improved as well as disk I/O. Moreover, you will be soon able to create larger disks.
Creating, copying and resizing disks will be faster and more automated.
Snapshot
This mechanism enables you to create a snapshot of your disk that is either in use or detached. The snapshot can be used to achieve a consistent backup of your disk. Within a few weeks, a snapshot on demand will be available. We are also working on periodic management of snapshots. For example the ability to create a snapshot every day and only the last seven.
Copying disk
Thanks to the snapshots, it will be possible to create a fast and live copy of your disk, even with activity on it. This feature will facilitate fast deployment (clone) of servers.
Rollback
From a snapshot you will be able to create a disk, getting back your lost data or apply a rollback operation on your disk.
Automatic backup drive
A backup system, disk to disk, will be available in the future; we are still working on the specifications. For most of you, the snapshot mechanism will probably fulfill your needs.
Disks and Partitioning
Gandi disks are logical drives, meaning that we provide an access to disk already optimized, secured; it is easy to create new one, resize or delete them.
The partitions, or RAID algorithms are for your virtual machine, at best an unnecessary overhead, and at worst a reorganization of disk accesses that can result in performance degradation (see below). In addition, you can deprive yourself of convenient features: a snapshot made on a disk that is part of a RAID has no interest, resizing a partitioned drive (our old system) is complex even dangerous if not made carefuly.
Like with SSD and new hard disks, blocks are not 512 bytes long anymore but 4KB. If you are using partitions, access to your data may not be aligned, and performance divided by three.
Partitions are helpful for physical disks. This complicates the management of your disks for nothing: consolidate your data on a single disk or create multiple data disks is the right solution.
The disks created by Gandi will no longer use partitions. Currently only the system disks have a default partition (system and swap): it will disappear. The system disk will be managed like any other disk, which will facilitate management. To keep the same level of service, we will provide a temporary disk for swap. To remain consistent with the current configurations, we will emulate virtual partitions to present the system disk and swap: the system will be seen as xvda1, the swap as xvda2, like on the current system but it will be two different disks.
Note that the new storage infrastructure is available form the beginning in our Baltimore data center; features will be along the time.
Comments
Gandi used to be a good company with NO BULLSHIT. Remove the bull, and the negative, and you get the SHIT. Gandi erased by mistake my webmail. I had to beg to get something in exchange for that. Imagine what I got. 256 MB of free memory for my server, for six months. Ouuffff.
Even better now. I could not access my server anymore. Which is just great for a freelancer who is making business online... But that is not the worst. I say to myself, ok, ok, let's erase the server, create a new one from scratch...
I am waiting since yesterday 2 PM to have it online....
Of course I sent an email to the support, but WITHOUT ANSWER of course. Only the generic answer, we are working PROBABLY on it. I love the PROBABLY.
Probability of my server being down, 100 percent.
Probability of my leaving GANDI. 100 percent.
Probability of losing time and money. 100 percent.
Phew, with statistics, I am getting better.
Please do not use GANDI for hosting your website. It used to be good, but now GANDI is worthless. Just worthless.
Frederic Erk
Technical writer and translator
@Frederic Erk: checkout our answer on http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/0...
My server is up and running again. At last.
After the big mess of November resulting in the deletion of all my web mail, Gandi wrote a few words telling me that it is unfortunate I was provisioned with the wrong IP (something related to the new Gandi AI OS). All right, but again, nothing more. I mean, my server was down for 24 hours, and I only get a very terse apology, in the style - you know shit happens. This is not what I expect from a company hosting my server. I don't expect apologies, even if they would be welcome, but just 100 percent reliability. I read again about the philosophy of Gandi, which is explained with the 'No Bullshit' motto. I think that Gandi should be less pretentious about not bullshitting its clients. It is not a good message, because it means nothing and invites criticism when things go wrong. Which happened twice in less than two months in my case.
Time to go down to earth and begin working instead of using fancy words, or criticising other companies. Gandi has grown and it is time to assume its responsibilities as a global provider of services. 'No Bullshit' is juvenile and inadequate. That is my opinion.
Frederic Erk