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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

#201

Post by iruoy »

eg312 wrote: post #27
aosaigh wrote: post #13

I don't have hosting with Gandi, but I do use them for domains and DNS. I'll be considering migrating my domains from them after this. Their response to this is exceptionally poor. To say essentially "this could happen to any other web host" it nonsense. I've never had this happen with any of the providers I've used for hosting and I'd be very angry if I had just lost an entire VPS. The fact that they've lost all sna…

I use Gandi for domains & DNS too. I've never had any problems so far but I don't want any surprises... Where do you want to migrate? What is a better alternative?

I used to use Gandi for all my domains. I've switched to OVH though. Their DNS also propagates in like a minute.

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

#202

Post by teh_klev »

bluesign wrote: post #199
teh_klev wrote: post #130

The key question is, did Gandi offer and explicit backup service for your data on their plans? I just had a look and I don't see this being offered. As a former hosting engineer, at the risk of pissing on everyone's outrage parade, but unless an explicit guarantee of a backup is included in your plan's contract, or you can pay for backups as a bolt-on, then if you've lost data it's your fault for not planning for thi…

"unless they paid for this add-on we made no guarantees about the permanence of their data in the event of a storage problem" To be honest this is not a good way to do hosting business. If you provide a service called "Simple Hosting", putting backup requirement on customer (when it is your fault) is pretty unfair. PS: I think price of the product shouldn't effect minimum requirements.

> putting backup requirement on customer (when it is your fault) is pretty unfair.

Then they need to pay more for their "Simple" hosting.

> I think price of the product shouldn't effect minimum requirements.

See above. Sigh.

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

#204

Post by rob-olmos »

marcinzm wrote: post #76
tbyehl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Intelligent people can argue all day about whether a snapshot should be considered a backup or not, but it won't change the fact that a snapshot doesn't provide any protection from a failure in the underlying storage and it's ridiculously foolish for the owner of data to solely rely on snapshots as their backup strategy.

>snapshot doesn't provide any protection from a failure in the underlying storage That depends on how snapshot storage is implemented by the hosting provider. They can use different storage for it, or tapes or whatever. On AWS I can easily have my snapshots on Glacier or copy them to a different data center.

How do you move your EBS snapshots to Glacier?

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

#205

Post by sam1r »

Anthony-G wrote: post #186
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.

If I understand the domain name infrastructure correctly, that would imply that it's the registrar who is collaborating with the squatters. A command-line whois query would still have to query the servers of the registry for a particular domain (others on this thread speculate that it may be the domain registry that shares data with the squatters).

Curious about this as well. When you query the servers of the registry [gandi, namecheap, godaddy] for a particular domain example.com, doesn't it update the one of the datetime fields for last queried?

Then again, the squatter would have to know what to search. Isn't it against rules for domain registrars to publish their recent query history [private or public]?

Any more light on this subject would be greatly appreciated!

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

#206

Post by blihp »

devit wrote: post #98
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…

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.

Sure, if the data is lost there isn't much that can be done to go back and fix it. However, the company response appears very dismissive/flippant which sends a bad message.

The tone any company hosting customer data should take in the event of data loss is along the lines of 'regretfully... we screwed up... unfortunately... steps we are taking to ensure this doesn't happen again...' i.e. the company should either be humble and apologetic or they should expect to lose a large chunk of their customers after something like this. This isn't merely to say the right thing, it is to demonstrate that they acknowledge this was their issue and something they need to fix going forward rather than a 'sucks to be you' customer issue. This is basic customer relations / crisis management stuff.

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

#207

Post by bluesign »

teh_klev wrote: post #202
bluesign wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unless they paid for this add-on we made no guarantees about the permanence of their data in the event of a storage problem" To be honest this is not a good way to do hosting business. If you provide a service called "Simple Hosting", putting backup requirement on customer (when it is your fault) is pretty unfair. PS: I think price of the product shouldn't effect minimum requirements.

> putting backup requirement on customer (when it is your fault) is pretty unfair. Then they need to pay more for their "Simple" hosting. > I think price of the product shouldn't effect minimum requirements. See above. Sigh.

To be honest your approach looks like:

- Some airline is selling plane ticket and insurance on website. (insurance covers change of plans, rebooking etc, and even if you don't fly that flight, they are booking you another one same day)

- Then when a flight got canceled, telling customers "we rarely cancel flights, please use your insurance. (you should have bought insurance)"

PS: Simple hosting [0] I am referring seems like managed hosting.

[0] https://docs.gandi.net/en/simple_hosting/index.html

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

#208

Post by ocdtrekkie »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #195
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most web hosts have some courtesy backups, but it does sound like the Twitter user they're responding to fundamentally doesn't understand that snapshots aren't backups, and the screenshoted page explicitly states that the snapshots are for you to back up. Which he presumably did not do. The idea that someone would entrust their sole copy(s) of critical business data to a service provider is insane to me. Always keep…

1. He says he has made regular backups, but now needs to restore all VPSs 2. The website says "Snapshots allow you to create a backup copy." 3. He says "No they do not allow snapshots download."

It sounds like snapshots are directly reachable from within FTP in a directory. Snapshots are a clean copy of the file system you can back up, but they are not backups.

He also states he has his backups, so he's mostly just whining because he's annoyed he has to reupload stuff. Which I get, but again, he should understand what snapshots are and aren't.

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

#209

Post by dwild »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #178
alpaca128 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big words for a company that's in trouble for not backing up data themselves.

Most web hosts have some courtesy backups, but it does sound like the Twitter user they're responding to fundamentally doesn't understand that snapshots aren't backups, and the screenshoted page explicitly states that the snapshots are for you to back up. Which he presumably did not do. The idea that someone would entrust their sole copy(s) of critical business data to a service provider is insane to me. Always keep…

> The idea that someone would entrust their sole copy(s) of critical business data to a service provider is insane to me. Always keep your own backups.

You can consider it insane, they still sold snapshot as being backup. Insane or not, it doesn't change that's what they sold wrongfully.

Can you point me where that screenshot show what you say it does? The user goes further to specify that you CAN'T download theses snapshots.

Companies should be called out when they lie about what they sell, I hope you understands why it's important.

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

#210

Post by forgot-my-pw »

dcchambers wrote: post #85
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…

Wow. I've never used Gandi but I have seen it recommended before as a low-cost option. I will actively encourage people to avoid it from now on. That's scary.

Guess they cut cost by not doing backups
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