NodeBalancer is a managed load-balancer-as-a-service (lbaas), built upon a high-available cloud cluster architecture. Placing a NodeBalancer in front of your Linode cloud servers allows you to scale your applications and service horizontally and also adds conveniences like being able to perform rolling upgrades across your fleet without affecting existing sessions.

A NodeBalancer is $19.95/mo and can balance multiple ports at no additional cost. Public network transfer is deducted from your existing Transfer Pool. For complete details, please see

• NodeBalancer Product Page
• NodeBalancer Howto
• NodeBalancer Reference Guide
• NodeBalancer API

You’ll notice a new ‘NodeBalancer’ tab in the Linode Manager where you can manage your NodeBalancers.  Enjoy!

-Chris

Given how critical backups are, our goal for the Linode Backup Service was ambitious: to create a completely managed, reliable and highly available system, that’s easy to use (set-it-and-forget-it), affordable, and “just works”.

One click is all it takes to enroll your Linode in the backup service and to start protecting your data. We manage the entire system, from making sure our backup boxes are healthy, to monitoring for failures. We’ve done the hard work so you don’t have to. What’s your data worth?

For pricing and additional details: Linode Backup Service.

StackScripts™ provide a flexible way to customize our distribution templates. They’re very easy to use — find a StackScript, answer its questions, and click deploy. When the deployment is first booted, the script is executed and does its thing. You can even watch its progress by viewing the console.

StackScripts can be private to your account, shared to the Linode community, or chosen from our library of open source StackScripts. The Linode Manager Users and Grants permission system enables you to restrict who can use or edit your private StackScripts. The Linode API can even handle StackScripts, so management can be rolled into your existing workflow.

You can browse the repository of public StackScripts.  You’ll also notice a new link off the deploy page for deploying from a StackScript, and on the main Linodes tab a link to the StackScript editor.

This Month’s Network Transfer Pool
400GB Quota, 125GB Used, 275GB Remaining

This also does the right thing when adding or removing Linodes or Network Transfer Extras mid-month, eliminating any confusion as to how the network transfer pro-rating is done.

We’re very pleased to announce the release of Linode Manager for iPhone, a new way to access your Linode account on the go.

Designed for iPhone OS and compatible with iPhone® and iPod touch® devices, Linode Manager for iPhone puts control of your Linodes right in your pocket. The official mobile Manager lets you reboot Linodes, edit configurations, manipulate disks, and view activity graphs in an easy-to-read format optimized for the mobile administrator. A fully-functional DNS editor is included, meaning you’re never out of reach of your entire Linode account.

For more on this exciting new app, check out the Linode Manager for iPhone site. You can install right from our entry on the App Store℠ in iTunes or on your handheld itself through the App Store interface.

Enjoy!

You choose the plan, your account is invoiced (or credited) based on the difference in cost and the number of days left on your billing cycle, and then your Linode is migrated to its new host server.  Simple.

Resizes are supported in the API via the new linode.resize() method.

This new version allows for complete Linode life-cycle management.  Now you can add and remove Linodes under your account, manage their disk images and configuration profiles, list IPs, issue boot and shutdown jobs, and query the status of host jobs.

The API is governed by the existing Users and Permissions system, so you’re able to create users under your Linode.com account, generate their API key, and allow them access to only the objects you’ve specified.

As always, Linodes added through Linode.com (and now the API) are invoiced through the pay-period you’ve selected.  Removing a Linode issues a credit back to your account for the remaining unused portion, effectively providing instance-day billing.

• Linode API 2.0 Reference – Reference Documentation
• Python Bindings – by TJ Fontaine, Ryan Tucker, and others
• PHP Bindings – by Kerem Durmus
• Perl Bindings (v1)

The automation provided by the Linode API allows your applications and tools to directly control your Linodes in our Cloud.  We’re excited about the possibilities and really look forward to seeing the creative projects that will undoubtedly grow alongside our continued development of the API.

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.

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

We’ve turned it into a competition at the Linode office — who has the most activations, who has the shortest average activation delay (who do you think wins?) — but it’s still a drag when we lose out on an account because someone had an emergency need for a Linode, or when a legitimate signup has sat in the queue for hours waiting for review.

So, we’ve figured out a way to have those legitimate signups (based on our special secret-sauce criteria) receive their account activation instantly, whilst the more questionable signups go into our review queue.

Combine this with a completely reworked sign-up system, which is simpler and easier to use, and you have the makings of a happy Linode Team.

Check it out:

https://www.linode.com/signup/