Need a way to quickly get a LAMP stack up and running that’s automatically tuned, tweaked and optimized for you? Ever wished there was a way to deploy a Wordpress stack that worked right out of the box? How about an easy way to deploy a cluster of identically configured Linodes?

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.

Filed under: features, linode manager by caker
16 Comments »

While we’ve had network transfer/bandwidth pooling in our internal accounting for some time, it’s never been displayed in the Linode Manager — until now.  At the bottom of the main Linodes tab, you’ll now see a new section that displays the cumulative network transfer quotas for all your Linodes for this month, how much you’ve used, and how much is remaining:

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.

Filed under: features, linode manager by caker
11 Comments »

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!

Filed under: announcements, linode manager by Jed Smith
81 Comments »

Linode is pleased to have been selected by Cloudkick as their newest supported provider.

Cloudkick is an award-winning utility for efficient cloud server management; leveraging technologies such as the Linode API, their Web 2.0 application unites easy administration, detailed server health monitoring, and automated alerts to make a busy administrator’s life all that much simpler.

You may remember full libcloud support for Linode that we announced in September. It has been our privilege to work with the Cloudkick and libcloud teams to bring Linode support to an eager clientele. Cloudkick offers a 30-day trial on all of their plans, and they also have a free developer plan to get started.

Filed under: announcements, linode by tasaro
7 Comments »

Recent media coverage of cyber attacks appearing to originate from China against Google and other companies have mentioned a Linode VPS being involved.  No Linodes were involved in malicious activity related to this event.  In fact, it was Google itself that chose to use Linode to aid in their investigation of the attacks.  Google has authorized us to release this statement:

“Google signed up to become the operator of the VPS on Jan. 1, 2010 for the purposes of an investigation. At no point did malicious parties have control.” – Jay Nancarrow, Google Global Communications & Public Affairs

Although our part was a small one, we’re glad to have been a component in this investigation. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Filed under: announcements, linode by caker
20 Comments »

We wanted to thank you for your business and wish you a Happy New Year!  2009 continued our trend of growth, both in customer base, and features and offerings.  Linode continues to grow as a company, and as such we’re pleased to announce three new hires:

Brett Kaplan and Peter Sandin have joined Linode as two new customer support techs.  Brett is from the area, is a Linux geek, and has a den full of consoles and other gaming equipment (can you say LAN party?).  Peter is relocating all the way from Oregon, and has just finished his CompSci degree (and wanted me to add that he is incredibly handsome).

Amanda Folson, also a CompSci grad, has joined us as a Technical Writer and Quality Assurance person.  She’s moving up from Maryland, and we’re excited to have her on board.

So, on behalf of everyone at Linode, have a happy, healthy, safe, and productive New Year!

Filed under: announcements, linode by caker
11 Comments »

For a while now we’ve recommended our Newark and Atlanta datacenters to our European customers, which both have under 100 ms latency to the UK. However, there is nothing better than having your services closer to you and your clients. So today, we are proud to announce a brand new Linode deployment in London, England, UK!

This new deployment is located at Telecity Group’s state-of-the-art Powergate facility (tour) with peering to many well connected providers including Deutsche Telekom, Interoute, Level3, PCCW-BTN, Telia and Tiscali.  You can use our speedtest page to test latency and download speeds.

Our new London facility has immediate availability.  Please open a support ticket if you’d like to migrate your existing Linode to London.  Alternatively, you can add a new London Linode to your account and clone your existing Linode to it. When you remove your original Linode you will receive a prorated credit for the unused time.

In response to your requests for a European presence, we’ve had this effort in development for many months and are extremely pleased to be able to go live today.

Filed under: announcements, datacenters, linode by tasaro
124 Comments »

Eivind Uggedal, author of the free wasitup.com website monitoring service, recently posted an exhaustive performance comparison of cloud/VPS providers and their benchmarks over time. The post compares Linode, Rackspace, Slicehost, Amazon’s EC2, and Prgmr, and tests performance of Unixbench, SQL-bench, and page rendering times using Django and PostgreSQL and SQLite.

Unixbench single process score (higher is better).

This quote from the article speaks volumes: “Summarizing the benchmarks gives us one clear winner: Linode”. You can view the full article here.

Filed under: linode by caker
36 Comments »

We’re excited to announce that Danny Ariti has joined the Linode team as a Customer Support Liaison Extraordinaire. Danny is from the land down under in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia — which is about 14 hours ahead of Linode Headquarters — where he’ll be contributing to our night shift support coverage.

Danny was previously with IBM Australia and also helped establish a VPS service for a local provider. We’re thrilled to have him on board.  Please join us in welcoming Danny to the Linode family. You can catch him as ‘array’ in #linode.

Filed under: announcements, linode by tasaro
22 Comments »

We are pleased to announce support for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) in the Linode Distribution Wizard. Additionally, we’ve updated the Linode Library to include many helpful guides for getting things done in Karmic.

Please note: If you’re performing a do-release-upgrade from an earlier release, be sure to edit your Linode’s configuration profile and select our Latest 2.6 Paravirt kernel. If you are running a 64-bit deployment, don’t forget to ensure that you’ve selected the 64 bit flavor. A word of caution: it’s a good idea to be sure you’ve got a good backup of your current configuration before performing an upgrade between releases.

As always, we value all feedback and suggestions for improvement. Have fun!

Filed under: distros by Phil Paradis
5 Comments »