Referral System; Annual Discounts

July 31, 2008 12:50 pm

Referral System

We've considered adding a referral system for quite some time.  Linode does very little advertising, and most of our new business comes from word of mouth -- meaning, it comes from you, our customers, referring your friends and colleagues.  We appreciate that, and believe that such loyalty deserves a reward.  So, we now have a referral system which works as so:

  1. You refer someone and they use your referral code during sign up.
  2. They keep a Linode for 90 days.
  3. You then receive a $20.00 credit applied to your account.

Your personal referral code and referral statistics can be found on your My Profile page.

Annual Discounts

We're now offering discounts for pre-payment.  Annual Linodes get a 10% discount while 24-month Linodes receive a 15% discount.  Please note that this is not a contract -- you can remove your Linode at any time to receive a pro-rated credit applied to your account. Feel free to open a support ticket if you have questions or would like to take advantage of these offers.

The Web 2.0 Show

July 19, 2008 10:16 pm

Linode is sponsoring a few episodes of The Web 2.0 Show -- a podcast about emerging web technologies.  Josh Owens, the lead developer of Tastyplanner (Rails Rumble 2007 Grand Prize winner) and Adam Stacoviak are the hosts who "focus on interviewing the developers and entrepreneurs who are creating the next generation of web services and media delivery".  Go check the show out!

Introducing the Linode API

June 24, 2008 5:45 pm

We just released the first version of the Linode API.  For now, it only has methods for control over the DNS Manager, but we'll be continually adding more stuff...

To use the API, you must first generate an "api key", which you can do from your "my profile" page in the Linode Manager.  The API honors the permissions you have, so you'll only be able to manipulate objects you have access to (the grants system was implemented in our last Linode Manager release).  There are already Python and Perl bindings, with more to come.

More information is available here:

Linode 5 Year Anniversary; 20% Disk Increase

June 16, 2008 11:04 am

Today marks Linode's 5th birthday, and we wanted to extend our sincere thanks by increasing the disk space on all plans by 20%.  The extra space is available now for both existing and new customers.  We appreciate your business, so enjoy!

To take advantage of your Linode's new space, simply log into the Linode Manager, shut down your Linode, and resize your disk existing disk by clicking on it and entering in a new size.  Alternatively, you could create another disk image and add it to your existing configuration profile, reboot, and mount it.

Again, on behalf of the Linode team, I thank you for your patronage.

New Datacenter: Newark, NJ

May 31, 2008 10:02 am

Last night we turned up our initial deployment of machines at a facility in Newark, NJ.  It's operated by NAC, who runs an impressive facility, has many great peering arrangements, and doesn't block any ports.  We've got redundant gigabit uplinks, plenty of power and cooling, and room to grow.  We're hoping that this facility will improve ping times for those in Europe, Canada, and north east US.

Did you know that you can migrate your Linode to any of our four facilities? Switching datacenters is simple: One button press and your Linode and its contents are automatically migrated.  If you're interested, please submit a support ticket.  We'll set up a migration and issue you the new IPs, and you can shutdown and initiate the migration when you're ready.

You can test ping and download times for all four of our facilities with the links provided in this forum post.

New Linode Manager released

May 15, 2008 3:46 pm

We've released a new version of the Linode Manager with many goodies.  Besides a reorganization of the code (which makes us devs happy), the locations of many pre-existing features have been reorganized as well. But, the real news is this has enabled us to implement some cool features...

Single Sign On

  • Multiple Linodes can now be managed much more intuitively under one Linode.com account.
  • Linking multiple accounts together is no longer necessary.
  • Linodes can be tagged with a label that you can change at any time, which makes identifying multiple Linodes much easier
  • Adding a Linode to your account is a piece of cake.  It's as easy as: "Add a Linode" link off the Linodes sub-tab, select the plan, confirm. Done.
  • A much requested feature, you can now change your username at any time.  Amen.

Multiuser Support

  • You can now create additional Linode.com users that are able to log into your account.
  • Our system now allows you to restrict a user's access to specific Linodes, DNS zones, or even create a "billing only" user.
  • Timezone preference setting is now per User vs per Customer

Instance-Day Billing

  • Similar to Amazon's EC2, this feature allows you to add Linodes or extras and receive a pro-rated credit to your account when you remove them. This is perfect for short term projects or tasks (or if you want to show your friends how cool Linode is without giving them access to your production server).

Linode.com Account Persistence

  • If you remove all of your Linodes from your account (but don't cancel your account), your Linode.com login will remain valid.
  • You can return at any time and use any of your credit remaining.
  • Your DNS zones will remain, but they won't be served unless you have a billable Linode.

Web-based AJAX Console

  • Although we implemented this many months ago, there was no official announcement.  Welp, there's browser based console access to your Linode.
  • The browser console automatically authenticates you.  Entering in your username and password is no longer required
  • There is a console server in each data center.  Launching the console directs you to the console server in the same data center as the Linode.

Graphs

  • Disk IO Graphs to compliment the CPU and network graphs
  • A new graph history interface

Support Tickets

  • Tickets can be opened regarding a specific object (a Linode or a DNS zone).
  • All users with access to that object will be able to see the ticket, receive ticket updates via email, and can participate in the ticket.

My thanks go out to those that helped test the new version -- you guys were a big help!

Linode 2880 now available

May 13, 2008 4:18 pm

We've had a few requests for larger Linodes.   So, a new plan has just been created -- the Linode 2880.  Enjoy!

James Barrett joins Linode

1:05 pm

James Barrett (aka jadoba), of PLUG fame, has joined the Linode team effective today.  Jim maintains the Debiosk, which is a system for quickly building Debian based kiosks.  Welcome aboard Jim!

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

April 24, 2008 4:14 pm

Ubuntu version 8.04 Hardy Heron is now available for installation via the distro wizard.

Existing installs can, of course, upgrade.

Linodes in Xen

March 28, 2008 12:42 pm

It's official -- Xen is now live at Linode. It's been a long road, almost four years in fact, but, with the help of our community, the most recent beta program has finally proven Xen to be ready for action.

What does Xen mean for you? Xen has less overhead compared to UML. Xen Linodes have 4 processors. They support kernel modules. They support 32 and 64 bit kernels. We're running the latest Xen version (3.2.1) which means we can support paravirt_ops kernels (pv_ops), which means we can have kernels newer than 2.6.18 (which a lot of our competitors force you to use). In short, Linodes will be much, much faster under Xen.

From here on, all new host hardware will be deployed running Xen. New accounts should land on these machines, but there's still a chance a new Linode will land on a UML host. If this happens, or you are already on a UML host and want to move over, just submit a ticket. However, it's just a matter of time before all our machines are running on Xen -- we'll announce the upgrade schedule in the next few weeks.