Linode helped to sponsor YAPC|10 this year, and a few of us attended the conference in Pittsburgh, PA.  It was really great to meet many of the influential and contributing members of the Perl community.  Surprisingly, a fair number of Linode customers also attended, so that was great to put faces to the names.

We got to hang out with the likes of Larry Wall, met some of our very own IRC channel personalities like Yaakov, and even had a VIP tour of Heinz/Steeler's Stadium.  We really enjoyed our time in Pittsburgh, too - it's a great city.

We came equipped with some promotional items (t-shirts) which went like hotcakes.  Everyone seemed to really appreciate our presence there, and we liked being able to give out some free swag.  It was good times all around.

A big shout out to The Perl Foundation, the speakers, and the four organizers of YAPC: Rob Blackwell, Casey West, Tom Moertel, and Dan Wright.  You guys did a great job - thanks for all your hard work.

We'll definitely be sponsoring and attending next year's YAPC, rumored to be in Columbus, OH.  Mark your calendars.

Filed under: linode by caker
5 Comments »

It almost went by unnoticed, but today marks Linode's sixth birthday. It was six years ago today that Linode opened its doors for business, and since then we've helped to define our industry -- building one of the most respected VPS brands. We've enjoyed phenomenal growth over the years, constantly improved our features and offerings, and been able to pass a better value down to our customers at the same time.  And we'll continue with that trend -- stay tuned for some exciting announcements.  There's always neat stuff coming down the line on our roadmap.

Also, we have some hiring announcements -- please join me in welcoming two new members to our team:

Jed Smith accepted a position of Systems Developer at the beginning of the month.  He hails all the way from Phoenix, AZ by way of Eugene, OR, by way of Detroit, MI.  He's gone crazy these past few weeks, like a kid in a candy store, learning about our systems' architectures and associated tools.  I can already tell he's going to fit right in around here.

Sam Kleinman has also joined the Linode team, accepting a technical writing position for a new effort we're putting into place.  Stay tuned for more details on that. Sam's a prolific blogger, compulsive knitter, and *nix tweaker.  He's moving out here from St. Louis, MO, and we're looking forward to his contribution.

Linode has been such a privilege to operate.  We appreciate your business so much. So on behalf of the Linode team, I want to thank you, our customers, for making our success possible.

Filed under: linode by caker
28 Comments »

We've had requests for additional security and notification options for the Linode Manager, and recently we've noticed an upward trend in Linode Manager brute force attempts, so we decided to tackle a couple related features on our long and ever-growing feature request list (keep them coming).

Login IP Whitelisting and Notification Feature
You'll receive a notification via email if someone attempts to log into the Linode Manager as your username from an IP not on your whitelist. The email contains instructions for adding that IP to your whitelist. IPs not on your whitelist are denied access.

Passwords are required to be more complex
Passwords must contain characters from three out of four sets: lower case, upper case, numbers, and punctuation, in addition to the old requirement of being a minimum of 6 characters long.

DNS Manager zone AXFR control
You can now specify whether a zone can be AXFRed from our nameservers. Right now it's an on/off thing, but we'll soon be adding support for specifying ranges and/or specific IPs that can transfer the zone.

We've also laid the groundwork for passwords with an expiration date (we're now keeping track of when a password was set). Some other ideas are still on the table, like only allowing a few failed log in attempts within a short time span, to reduce the possibility of brute forcing accounts that may not have the IP whitelisting feature enabled...

Security can be a pain, but it's a necessary evil. It's a compromise between security and convenience, and we hope we've struck a fair balance.

Filed under: announcements, features, linode manager by caker
36 Comments »

I'm pleased to announce that Linode has scored another worthy employee - Phil Paradis.  In addition to his rich technical talents and accomplishments, Phil runs ClassHelper.org, an "educational resources site dedicated to providing useful tools and materials to the teaching community."  He'll be helping us with the support load, as well as carrying development, documentation, and system administration responsibilities.

Phil has a strong addiction to caffeine and can often be seen carrying around an open 2-liter of Mountain Dew. I'm already worrying about this one. Please join us in welcoming Phil to our team!

Filed under: announcements, linode by caker
14 Comments »

We've cooked up Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty templates fresh from the folks over at the Ubuntu project.  Available now from the Distribution Wizard for both i386 and x86_64.  Enjoy!

Filed under: distros by irgeek
5 Comments »

For no good reason other than we like to keep you on your toes, we've gone and added 33.3% more disk space to our plans, for both existing and new customers, available immediately!  You can utilize this space by resizing your existing disk images or by creating new images and attaching them to your configuration profile.

Linode 360 goes from 12GB to 16GB
Linode 540 goes from 18GB to 24GB
Linode 720 goes from 24GB to 32GB
Linode 1080 goes from 32GB to 48GB
Linode 1440 goes from 48GB to 64GB
Linode 2880 goes from 96GB to 128GB

We appreciate your business and are pleased we're able to continually increase our offerings and value. Thank you, and enjoy!

Filed under: announcements, linode, upgrades by caker
69 Comments »

Tonight we release two new images for the distro wizard:

Gentoo 2008.0 x86_64
This is the same build as the x86 image, but for 64-bit

Slackware 12.2
Basically the same as the 12.0 build with updated packages

Enjoy them!

Filed under: distros by irgeek
4 Comments »

I'm pleased to announce that we've started the beta program for our new service: Managed Backups.  You can learn more about the progress of the beta program here:

Linode Backup Service Beta Forum

Linode Backup Service

We want you to have backups. Hell, I want backups. But they're tedious to configure and monitor. We've all heard the stories (and possibly experienced them) when you need a backup long after configuring them you realize they haven't been running successfully for months. So, our goal for the Linode Backup Service was ambitious: create a reliable, redundant and highly available system, that's easy to use (set-it-and-forget-it), affordable, and Just Works.

Description
The Linode Backup System is designed to be an easy to use, reliable and redundant on-site backup solution for your Linode. It performs backups without causing any interruption of your running system, and is seamlessly integrated into the Linode Manager.

Backing Up
There are four backup slots: Three of the slots are executed and rotated automatically: a daily backup, a 2-7 day old backup, and an 8-14 day old backup. The fourth backup slot is a user-initiated snapshot and remains in place until another user-initiated snapshot is taken.

You can configure the time upon which the automatic backups are initiated from a list of 2 hour windows -- you'll want to perform any database dumps before this window. You can also configure which day of the week to consider for the weeklies.

Restoring
You can restore a backup to any of the Linodes attached to your account, even if it does not have backups enabled. Currently only a full restore is possible.

Redundancy
We built a custom distributed and scalable storage engine which will replicate your files across at least two storage nodes. Even your backups are backed up!

Features and Limitations
The backup system must be able to mount your disk images on the host. If you've used fdisk on your images to create partitions, or created encrypted volumes, or done anything other than use our deployment or disk image creation tools, we won't be able to back up the data. The backup system operates on files, not at the block level.

A failed backup will never rotate out a good one. If a backup fails on the day of a weekly backup, the next oldest backup will be used for that weekly slot.

Files that have been modified, but are the same length and without any metadata changes (like mtime) will not be considered "changed" during a subsequent incremental backup.

Currently, only ext2/3 volumes can be backed up. This limitation will be removed in an upcoming release.

ACLs are correctly backed up and restored.

Pricing Structure (tentative)
Linode 360: $5.00/mo
Linode 540: $7.50/mo
Linode 720: $10.00/mo
Linode 1080: $15.00/mo
Linode 1440: $20.00/mo
Linode 2880: $40.00/mo

Backup Service Beta

How do I participate in the Backup Service Beta?
Participating in the beta is free of charge.

We've only deployed the storage hardware in the Newark, NJ facility. So, for now, you must have a Linode in Newark to participate in the Backup Service Beta. Open a ticket under that Linode and request that we enable backups.

What happens at the end of the beta?
The backup service will be scheduled to be turned off automatically. However, we'll give everyone the chance to retain their backup service and will start charging for it.

What kind of risk is there? Is this thing going to work?
There's little risk to your existing data. However, I wouldn't rely on our backup service as your only form of backup just yet. During the beta period, backups may be inconsistent or incomplete, or we may need to wipe all of the backup data and start fresh. In other words, keep your own backups and don't rely on this thing working. You've been warned!

What about the other facilities?
Atlanta and Dallas sometime later this month, and Fremont early May.

Want to learn more?  Following along in the Backup Beta Forum

Filed under: announcements, features, linode manager by caker
13 Comments »

Gentoo 2008.0 is now available for installation via the distro wizard for i386. Enjoy!

Filed under: distros by irgeek
2 Comments »

Debian 5.0 (codenamed "Lenny") is now available for installation via the distro wizard for both i386 and x86_64.

If you've got a previous version of Debian installed, you can check the Debian documentation to find out how to upgrade.

Filed under: distros by irgeek
10 Comments »