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Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

status.gandi.net

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Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#241

Post by mprev »

binarysaurus wrote: post #156
EnderMB wrote: post #28

Oof, this Twitter thread looks particularly bad, especially the response from the official Gandi account. https://twitter.com/andreaganduglia/status/12151991477012316... While I appreciate that there are real people behind these companies that are probably having a really rough time right now, the criticism that Gandi are getting as a company is justified - and if Gandi are truly a "no bullshit" company they need to…

Julie Pelloille, responsible for comms, appears to be going a bit too far with this.

Wrong or not let’s be careful about using full names as it’s how these things get whipped up into pile-ons.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#242

Post by icebraining »

ben509 wrote: post #171
devit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the criticism. If they lost all the data, then obviously the only option for customers is to either use their own backups if they have them or accept that the data is permanently lost. One can criticize their lack of additional redundancy, but don't see what's wrong with the response.

The customers are being stupid and rude: assigning blame, asking redundant questions, making threats. Nothing in any of the twitter threads I've seen has any potential to solve any problems, they're yelling thinly veiled abuse at support. The industry standard is sucking up to them and groveling, and it's led to customers being very badly behaved. The trouble is no one has a good working alternative to the industry s…

The alternative is simple: always behave professionally, and if they are abusive, point at the ToS that forbids that and fire them as customers.

Here I'd just avoid engaging one-on-one at all, just broadcast the situation status.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#243

Post by icebraining »

oefrha wrote: post #166
nradov wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your business can't afford external backups then you don't have a viable business in the first place. And of course egress costs have to be considered when choosing a hosting provider.

Not everything that’s hosted in the cloud is a business. In fact, the Internet wasn’t even created for the purpose of profit-generating business.

The Internet was created by the military, so yes it was.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#244

Post by Operyl »

capableweb wrote: post #232
Operyl wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never had a real "no bullshit" policy. When I had my domains with them, I had been asked to verify my identity 34 times in 12 months. 34 separate fucking times. Because "ICANN says so" or some stupid shit (their words, not mine). It stopped the moment I moved to Google Domains, where they asked once and never again. EDIT: And, to make things worse, each time I was threatened with the "confiscation" of my domain,…

Since you're giving a anecdote, let me do the same. I have about 30-40 domains with Gandi, and have been using it for about ten years. I don't remember ever verifying my identity, but guess I most have done it at least once. I have not been asked to verify anything for at least the last five years of using it. Disclaimer: I don't work there or have any relationship, except I'm a happy customer

It was a matter of them refusing to keep my identity on file, and the threatening tone of each ticket. It grew tiresome quickly.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#245

Post by icebraining »

jermops wrote: post #139
abtinf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This type of incident is extremely rare in the web hosting industry. Why would they include that sentence? Are they trying to imply it is rare for them because it is rare for the industry? Are they saying they are not as good as the industry, so customers should move to other providers? Or are they trying to show they apply the same inattention to their customer communication as they apply to their data backup/reco…

If you're not paying for backups... what archive?

They say you can backup by using their snapshoting tool, but they lost those snapshots too.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#246

Post by twodayslate »

maximente wrote: post #67
djmobley wrote: post #6

Gandi have something of a cult following, but in my only experience with them they literally lost my domain name during an inbound transfer. Their response was awful and rude and completely unprofessional. I never got my domain back. Based on that experience, this incident doesn’t surprise me at all.

what can you recommend as an alternative?

https://www.namesilo.com/

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#247

Post by dorian-graph »

corford wrote: post #211

I'm a long term user of Gandi for my domains but have wanted to get off them for some time now. Can anyone recommend a domain registrar "equivalent" of a Fastmail or Letsencrypt or DNSMadeEasy i.e. truly no bullshit, geek friendly and polished at the same time ? I'm not too bothered about price. I just want a well run outfit that has a wide selection of TLDs and ccTLDs (and ideally isn't a mega corp like google but i…

+1 to this.

I've got a few bookmarked, but I haven't tried them: Porkbn, Nuage, Hover, and Namesilo.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#248

Post by Operyl »

tluyben2 wrote: post #224
djmobley wrote: post #6

Gandi have something of a cult following, but in my only experience with them they literally lost my domain name during an inbound transfer. Their response was awful and rude and completely unprofessional. I never got my domain back. Based on that experience, this incident doesn’t surprise me at all.

Why do they have a cult following? I never heard about them and reading all this here, I cannot say I understand why anyone uses them at all. Edit; I use (and have been for a very long time) namecheap for registration and (recently) Cloudflare for DNS. I used to host all DNS myself, but that became a bit of a pain with many domains as that's definitely not my core business.

They were a freenode sponsor.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#249

Post by jdmguit »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #196
jdmguit wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a Linode employee, I can confirm this is true. Linode's backups live in the same data center as the server, but the systems are separated so that they don't directly affect one another.

Do they have separate power supplies? Have steps been taken to ensure that fire can’t spread from one room to the next? What would happen if there was an explosion?

In all seriousness, these are good points. I'm not a data center expert by any means, but here's what I know: The data center hardware has failsafes present by design, but they aren't disaster-proof being that they're in the same building.

To answer your questions: Yes, the backup storage box is in a separate chassis than the host machine that the Linode lives on; they have separate power supplies. The DCs themselves also have some sort of fire suppression. I don't know what would happen if there was an explosion.

Re: Gandi loses data, customers told to use their own backups

#250

Post by edoceo »

toast0 wrote: post #220
edoceo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the whois command line tool when searching and have yet to get squatted. My experience is only about 500 domains over 20 years.

i use host -t NS cooldomain.example as a pre-filter. If a domain has NS records, it's definitely registered, although there are some registered domains without NS records (makes them pretty much nonfunctional, but if that's what the registrant wants, it's their business)

This is a neat trick, thanks. Adding to my toolbox
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