5 ms·

Gandi.net Major Outage

53 points by Donckele 6y ago

stevehawk 6y ago
what's gandi.net?
- ahonu 6y ago
  domain registrar, email host, VPS provider, etc. all on the front page
- heckerhut 6y ago
  they’re hands down the best domain registrar on the interwebs. been using them for years.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    I use them for some of my domains but the fact that they do not have standard dynamic DNS management is pitiful. I had to write something to interface with their API - it works but I could have used the OOTB solution in my router.
    - rozab 6y ago
      Their API is first class to be fair, I have a tiny dynamic DNS script in a cronjob
      - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        Yes, this is a very good API (the previous one was very bad, the current one is great). This does not change the fact that dyndns kind of updates is standard and they should support it to make their customer's life easier (and avoid coding an intermediate something to handle the changes). I wrote a webservice that translates dyndns requests into Gandi API calls but I would very much prefer avoiding to maintain that.
        majewsky 6y ago
        I don't know where you're running your scripts on, but https://github.com/brianpcurran/gandi-automatic-dns https://github.com/brianpcurran/gandi-automatic-dns worked well for me when I had a DynDNS scenario going a while back. So that might be worth a look if you want to reduce the amount of code you have to maintain yourself. I still maintain the AUR package for it FWIW.
  - ldng 6y ago
    They used to be and reasonably priced. But not so much anymore. Domain prices have risen significantly IMO.
  - anoraca 6y ago
    As long as you never have a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    Why do you think so? They're expensive and have some unnecessarily intrusive policies.
edvinasbartkus 6y ago
There is no good outage. But, it is great to see that when their portal/admin/webmail is down, DNS, SMTP, IMAP/POP3, SSL, Network is not affected by this.
- tym0 6y ago
  Some of it seems to be down. I use Gandi for my DNS, I can still access my site at www.example.com but the redirection I have from example.com to www.example.com doesn't work.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    That's... Weird. How are you accomplishing a redirect with just DNS? I always thought you needed some sort of web server for that.
    - hackeraccount 6y ago
      CNAME?
      - capableweb 6y ago
        CNAME is aliasing, not redirecting. If www.$domain.com is CNAME for $domain.com, loading www.$domain.com will make you remain on www.$domain.com, not redirect you.
    - catblast01 6y ago
      Maybe that is what the issue is? Some, well many, DNS providers provide value add transparent additional features like redirect and email. If their web infrastructure is down then that might not work even though the core DNS shit does.
      - capableweb 6y ago
        Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too, so the original point of edvinasbartkus still stands, because actual networking is not affected, only hosting.
tyingq 6y ago
Kudos for a status page that actually works during an outage. And a nice granular display of what's down, and what's not. There are very large companies that haven't been able to do this :)
sdevonoes 6y ago
So, sorry to hijack the thread, but if I want to buy a domain name for my saas, which domain registar would you recommend? I value: - whois privacy - minimal downtime (:p) - full featured (I don't actually know what I need from a domain registrar, but I don't want to find out after months of usage that I need some feature that my domain registrar doesn't support)
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  I've had a great experience with porkbun after being recommended them on HN. I've never had to open their website or think about them since I bought the domain, which is exactly what I want in a registrar.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  I think that whois privacy is required by ICANN for .com or something like that. I mean that every or almost every registrar provides that. So if your only requirement is minimal downtime, I'd choose something like Cloudflare.
- srhngpr 6y ago
  I've been using Name.com for more than a decade and have had zero issues.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    We were using them for DNS hosting as well as a registrar. About 6 or so years ago suddenly all of our sites went down. A quick look showed their nameservers were returning completely incorrect records for all of our domains (e.g., the A record for each domain resolved to a bunch of different IPs that were not ours and seemed to be other customers'). They had no status page to indicate there was/wasn't any issues. I contacted support and they said it was resolved but wouldn't tell us what or why it happened. When we started transferring domains out, sales contacted us and asked what was going on. They had no idea what we were talking about when I explained what happened. I asked them if they could provide any more information, or if the company would be publishing an incident report. They contacted some tech teams and said all they could tell us was that it was fixed and wouldn't happen again. The issue itself wasn't so much of concern as the complete lack of transparency or communication. No idea if things have gotten better since because there are about a zillion options for registrars and DNS hosting so I've had no reason to go back.

53 points by Donckele 6y ago

stevehawk 6y ago

what's gandi.net?

ahonu 6y ago
domain registrar, email host, VPS provider, etc. all on the front page
heckerhut 6y ago
they’re hands down the best domain registrar on the interwebs. been using them for years.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  I use them for some of my domains but the fact that they do not have standard dynamic DNS management is pitiful. I had to write something to interface with their API - it works but I could have used the OOTB solution in my router.
  - rozab 6y ago
    Their API is first class to be fair, I have a tiny dynamic DNS script in a cronjob
    - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      Yes, this is a very good API (the previous one was very bad, the current one is great). This does not change the fact that dyndns kind of updates is standard and they should support it to make their customer's life easier (and avoid coding an intermediate something to handle the changes). I wrote a webservice that translates dyndns requests into Gandi API calls but I would very much prefer avoiding to maintain that.
      - majewsky 6y ago
        I don't know where you're running your scripts on, but https://github.com/brianpcurran/gandi-automatic-dns https://github.com/brianpcurran/gandi-automatic-dns worked well for me when I had a DynDNS scenario going a while back. So that might be worth a look if you want to reduce the amount of code you have to maintain yourself. I still maintain the AUR package for it FWIW.
- ldng 6y ago
  They used to be and reasonably priced. But not so much anymore. Domain prices have risen significantly IMO.
- anoraca 6y ago
  As long as you never have a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22001822
- FDSGSG 6y ago
  Why do you think so? They're expensive and have some unnecessarily intrusive policies.

edvinasbartkus 6y ago

There is no good outage. But, it is great to see that when their portal/admin/webmail is down, DNS, SMTP, IMAP/POP3, SSL, Network is not affected by this.

tym0 6y ago
Some of it seems to be down. I use Gandi for my DNS, I can still access my site at www.example.com but the redirection I have from example.com to www.example.com doesn't work.
- capableweb 6y ago
  That's... Weird. How are you accomplishing a redirect with just DNS? I always thought you needed some sort of web server for that.
  - hackeraccount 6y ago
    CNAME?
    - capableweb 6y ago
      CNAME is aliasing, not redirecting. If www.$domain.com is CNAME for $domain.com, loading www.$domain.com will make you remain on www.$domain.com, not redirect you.
  - catblast01 6y ago
    Maybe that is what the issue is? Some, well many, DNS providers provide value add transparent additional features like redirect and email. If their web infrastructure is down then that might not work even though the core DNS shit does.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too, so the original point of edvinasbartkus still stands, because actual networking is not affected, only hosting.

tyingq 6y ago

Kudos for a status page that actually works during an outage. And a nice granular display of what's down, and what's not. There are very large companies that haven't been able to do this :)

sdevonoes 6y ago

So, sorry to hijack the thread, but if I want to buy a domain name for my saas, which domain registar would you recommend? I value: - whois privacy - minimal downtime (:p) - full featured (I don't actually know what I need from a domain registrar, but I don't want to find out after months of usage that I need some feature that my domain registrar doesn't support)

iudqnolq 6y ago
I've had a great experience with porkbun after being recommended them on HN. I've never had to open their website or think about them since I bought the domain, which is exactly what I want in a registrar.
vbezhenar 6y ago
I think that whois privacy is required by ICANN for .com or something like that. I mean that every or almost every registrar provides that. So if your only requirement is minimal downtime, I'd choose something like Cloudflare.
srhngpr 6y ago
I've been using Name.com for more than a decade and have had zero issues.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  We were using them for DNS hosting as well as a registrar. About 6 or so years ago suddenly all of our sites went down. A quick look showed their nameservers were returning completely incorrect records for all of our domains (e.g., the A record for each domain resolved to a bunch of different IPs that were not ours and seemed to be other customers'). They had no status page to indicate there was/wasn't any issues. I contacted support and they said it was resolved but wouldn't tell us what or why it happened. When we started transferring domains out, sales contacted us and asked what was going on. They had no idea what we were talking about when I explained what happened. I asked them if they could provide any more information, or if the company would be publishing an incident report. They contacted some tech teams and said all they could tell us was that it was fixed and wouldn't happen again. The issue itself wasn't so much of concern as the complete lack of transparency or communication. No idea if things have gotten better since because there are about a zillion options for registrars and DNS hosting so I've had no reason to go back.