Gandi.net Groups

I've just been doing some comparison benchmarks between a 8 share gandi
hosting account and the low-entry hostgator reseller package.

I've noticed that especially in disk performance, Gandi is about half
the speed of Hostgator. 

Also the real world php benchmark and overall server benchmark I've run
puts the hostgator account at 2-2.5x faster than the gandi account. This
while the 8 shares gandi is double the price.

What is being done to resolve this? Also the addition of extra packages
and cpanel+fantastico in GandiOS would be welcome.

I'm still trying things out but would love to hear solutions to the
problems above.

I've used phpspeed (from phpspeed.com) to do the extensive tests.

Any reply on this?

I am currently testing your system and this is quite an important factor
for me. 

I was very interested early this week but slow responses to important
questions like this as well as ambiguity on the beta period and final
price may prove to be too many uncertainties...

I've seen the same sort of problems. I know that a VPS solution demands
different expectations than a shared hosting environment, but the
performance here seems very poor. I'm using Gandi MI and I've been
through what seems like every aspect of my system configuration trying
to figure out why performance is so poor. Like you, I've ended up
putting it down to disk I/O.

I have a 2-share server that sits almost completely idle (CPU idle =
99.7%, plenty of free RAM, virtually no swap usage, very little disk
activity) and yet the load average spikes to 3.0, 4.0 or higher at
various times during the day for no apparent reason. That is to say,
there are sometimes 3 to 4 processes contending for the CPU at one time,
despite the fact that the CPU is almost completely idle. It's not just
metrics that suffer, of course -- loading static and dynamic pages from
my server is slower than with any shared host I've ever used. The only
explanation I can come up with is really, really bad disk performance.

The network infrastructure doesn't seem to be great either. The ping
times to my server are highly unpredictable. They'll be rock-solid at
80ms or 85ms 99% of the time, but the other 1% they'll be insanely high
(1900ms). Throughout the day there will be brief periods of time (30
seconds or so) where my server is completely unreachable. Bear in mind
this is on a server that receives almost no network traffic apart from
what I generate. This is also far from the first Linux server I've set
up, so I don't think there's a configuration problem at my end here.

I have a support ticket in about this, and I'll post here when I receive
a response. I really like Gandi's people and policies, but putting up
with bad infrastructure while waiting 48 hours or more for support
responses is very trying.

On Avr, 3 2008 21:12 CEST, Michael Proctor wrote:

I have a support ticket in about this, and I'll post here when I
receive
a response.

Any response? It would be great if they got this sorted as the offer
holds promise.

On Avr, 8 2008 11:24 CEST, mc wrote:

Any response? It would be great if they got this sorted as the offer
holds promise.

I've only received a response from a support agent saying that my
concerns would be relayed to the technical support team and that they
would respond. It took about 48 hours to get that initial response, and
there's been no communication from them since.

Gandi, if you're reading this, this is no way to run a hosting business.
Your customers need responses to their support questions in hours or
minutes, not days. I know this is a beta, but the purpose ought to be to
win customers, not scare them away.

I will post here when/if I hear anything back from Gandi support.

On Mar, 30 2008 19:17 CEST, chrisbkk wrote:

[...]

chrisbkk,

Sorry for the delay. 
One of the server on your account was stuck in deletion process. 
It has been deleted and you have been refunded on your prepaid account
for the used of this server, that you actually did not use.
I'll answer your support ticket as well.

On Avr, 11 2008 15:02 CEST, samos zaka wrote:

On Mar, 30 2008 19:17 CEST, chrisbkk wrote:

[...]

chrisbkk,

Sorry for the delay. 
One of the server on your account was stuck in deletion process. 
It has been deleted and you have been refunded on your prepaid account
for the used of this server, that you actually did not use.
I'll answer your support ticket as well.

Has anyone looked into the issue I mentioned? I also have a support
ticket in that has not been responded to in over a week.

On Avr, 11 2008 19:28 CEST, Michael Proctor wrote:

On Avr, 11 2008 15:02 CEST, samos zaka wrote:

On Mar, 30 2008 19:17 CEST, chrisbkk wrote:

[...]

chrisbkk,

Sorry for the delay. 
One of the server on your account was stuck in deletion process. 
It has been deleted and you have been refunded on your prepaid
account
for the used of this server, that you actually did not use.
I'll answer your support ticket as well.

Has anyone looked into the issue I mentioned? I also have a support
ticket in that has not been responded to in over a week.

I agree with that on you Michael. 
You have made a very interesting post that really should be followed up
on.

Also Gandi's post over here is posted in the wrong thread. I post
another thread about horrible support and a server hanging in
installation for 2 days.

The very bad benchmarks I've been having were when I was first testing
the server using 8 shares and tests with both 8 cpu slices and 1 cpu
dedicated. I spent about 3-4 hours setting up the different
configurations just for benchmarking and they were slower than shared
hosting.

All I can think of is that the server would be busy configuring servers
all the time. However, I think some cpu time and space and bandwidth
should be set aside for that. Not only I/O suffered. PHP suffered
equally bad which I have absolutely no explanation for. 

Please post a follow-up on this with more information and what is being
done about it.

Chris

Well, I give up.

I've moved to a Xen VPS service operated by a competitor (that costs
twice as much) and I couldn't be happier. My load averages are fine and
the speeds are amazing compared to shared hosting. Chris, speaking of
PHP: One PHP page that took 5 seconds to load on my Gandi VPS now takes
less than half of a second. In other words, this has nothing to do with
VPS or Xen -- Gandi has a serious problem somewhere.

Gandi, you've lost a customer, and you had every opportunity to keep me.
I posted in the groups, on the blog, I put in a support ticket that you
ignored -- what I did is the equivalent of shouting, and I received no
response whatsoever.

A simple explanation, or anything at all to convince me that you were
interested, would have sufficed.

I will no longer be doing business with Gandi for hosting, but if anyone
would like to contact me to ask for more information about the technical
and customer service problems I observed, they are welcome to do so
(michael@4d2.org).

On Avr, 12 2008 23:16 CEST, Michael Proctor wrote:

Well, I give up.

I've moved to a Xen VPS service operated by a competitor (that costs
twice as much) and I couldn't be happier. My load averages are fine
and
the speeds are amazing compared to shared hosting. Chris, speaking of
PHP: One PHP page that took 5 seconds to load on my Gandi VPS now
takes
less than half of a second. In other words, this has nothing to do
with
VPS or Xen -- Gandi has a serious problem somewhere.

Gandi, you've lost a customer, and you had every opportunity to keep
me.
I posted in the groups, on the blog, I put in a support ticket that
you
ignored -- what I did is the equivalent of shouting, and I received no
response whatsoever.

A simple explanation, or anything at all to convince me that you were
interested, would have sufficed.

I will no longer be doing business with Gandi for hosting, but if
anyone
would like to contact me to ask for more information about the
technical
and customer service problems I observed, they are welcome to do so
(michael@4d2.org).

Sorry Michael for the (very) late answer, the guy who keep an eye on the
English part of our forum was badly sick this last weeks and nobody
reports to me or to R&D engineers your problem.

Your problem is probably due to a current filer issue we had on specific
servers, do you have the possibility to test the same script on your
current server (still running for 2 days) and tell me if you still have
the problem ?

Nicolas 
Head of Product
Gandi

--
Nicolas (Gandi)

On Avr, 16 2008 17:21 CEST, Nicolas (Gandi) wrote:

On Avr, 12 2008 23:16 CEST, Michael Proctor wrote:

Well, I give up.

I've moved to a Xen VPS service operated by a competitor (that costs
twice as much) and I couldn't be happier. My load averages are fine
and
the speeds are amazing compared to shared hosting. Chris, speaking of
PHP: One PHP page that took 5 seconds to load on my Gandi VPS now
takes
less than half of a second. In other words, this has nothing to do
with
VPS or Xen -- Gandi has a serious problem somewhere.

Gandi, you've lost a customer, and you had every opportunity to keep
me.
I posted in the groups, on the blog, I put in a support ticket that
you
ignored -- what I did is the equivalent of shouting, and I received
no
response whatsoever.

A simple explanation, or anything at all to convince me that you were
interested, would have sufficed.

I will no longer be doing business with Gandi for hosting, but if
anyone
would like to contact me to ask for more information about the
technical
and customer service problems I observed, they are welcome to do so
(michael@4d2.org).

Sorry Michael for the (very) late answer, the guy who keep an eye on
the
English part of our forum was badly sick this last weeks and nobody
reports to me or to R&D engineers your problem.

Your problem is probably due to a current filer issue we had on
specific
servers, do you have the possibility to test the same script on your
current server (still running for 2 days) and tell me if you still
have
the problem ?

Nicolas 
Head of Product
Gandi

Dear Nicolas,

Can you also please provide us with more information as to why
benchmarks on Gandi Hosting are this slow and what is being done to
improve it?

Regards,
Chris

Hi Chris,

Main current problems are on the disk stability / quality /
performance....
We will :
1/ Reduce number of customer/access per disk
2/ implement better QoS in case of
3/ test new hardware

RnD's guys here are 100% focused on this problem. 

I will keep you updated here, once status on disk will change.

Nicolas

--
Nicolas (Gandi)

On Avr, 16 2008 17:21 CEST, Nicolas (Gandi) wrote:

Sorry Michael for the (very) late answer, the guy who keep an eye on
the
English part of our forum was badly sick this last weeks and nobody
reports to me or to R&D engineers your problem.

Your problem is probably due to a current filer issue we had on
specific
servers, do you have the possibility to test the same script on your
current server (still running for 2 days) and tell me if you still
have
the problem ?

Nicolas 
Head of Product
Gandi

Nicolas,

I really appreciate you getting in touch with me, but unfortunately I've
already completely migrated my data to my new host and I won't be able
to do the test you asked for.

I haven't checked these groups in several days or I might have seen your
message earlier. Again, sorry I can't be helpful.

If you do improve the disk performance as you mentioned in your message
to Chris, then I am sure this will be a worthwhile hosting service and I
wish you the best of luck.

Thanks
Michael

Hmmm, I actually got decent performance on Gandi. Below is four
different VPSs.

I dd with /dev/zero.

1) 642392576 bytes (642 MB) copied, 8.17475 s, 78.6 MB/s
2) 359513088 bytes (360 MB) copied, 9.46075 seconds, 38.0 MB/s <GANDI>
3) 241410048 bytes (241 MB) copied, 10.2057 seconds, 23.7 MB/s
4) 108779520 bytes (109 MB) copied, 7.58587 seconds, 14.3 MB/s

Gandi is the second one. Since Gandi is the only one not in US and
business hours probably affecting the I/O poundage.