News, incidents, developments

Debian 8 Jessie is now available for traditional automatic installation. It was already available in Flex* mode.

Jessie comes with a new default init system called systemd. The systemd suite provides several exciting features such as faster boot times, cgroups for services, and the ability to isolate certain services. However, the sysvinit init system is still available for Jessie.

This release includes a significant number of updated software packages, such as:

Apache 2.4.10

Asterisk 11.13.1

GNU Build Collection 4.9.2

Linux 3.16.7-ckt9

MariaDB 10.0.16 and MySQL 5.5.42

Nagios 3.5.1

OpenJDK 7u75

Perl 5.20.2

PHP 5.6.7

PostgreSQL 9.4.1

Python 2.7.9 and 3.4.2

Samba 4.1.17

Tomcat 7.0.56 and 8.0.14

Xen Hypervisor 4.4.1

Over 43,000 ready-to-use packages, built from nearly 20,100 source packages.

Following a problem with one of our electrical panels, we had to perform emergency maintenance on one of our hosting rooms (nearly 500 services). We therefore notified our clients of a 45-minute power outage 30 minutes beforehand. Right in the middle of the holiday season, with a reduced team.

Unfortunately, during the 30-minute restoration, one of our core network switches rebooted with an old configuration, causing a global incident that was difficult to manage. As a result, we experienced an incident that lasted not just 45 minutes in a single room, but more than two hours across the entire OrdCom network.

We had to check the services one by one. A significant number of machines did not restart properly. Configuration issues, disk problems, etc., were the cause. Also, some didn't actually restart until late in the day.

Finally, due to this important recovery work and the period, we were unable to communicate properly and we apologize for this.

Since the beginning of January, we've noticed a resurgence of security issues on the Internet.

Website hacks, attempted SSH penetrations using dictionary methods, denial of service attacks, etc.

The most recent being the exploitation of an OSPF vulnerability in one of our routers, which disrupted the broadcasting of routes to connected services. This caused a major network disruption for 5 to 8 minutes yesterday (12/01/15) and for 20 minutes later that evening. The issue has been identified and the vulnerability is now fixed.

We therefore encourage our customers to audit their services. Rkunter and chkrootkit will help you detect potential problems. A #netstat -laputen command is also useful to see which services are listening on the network.

Finally, we recommend changing your SSH passwords to a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers.

The fail2ban tool is also a good solution to avoid ssh dictionary attacks.

The latest version of Debian is finally out. It's version 7, known as Wheezy.

It's now available for automatic installation. Two modes are possible: Simple, with everything installed on a single EXT4 partition, and Advanced via SSH.

By logging in via SSH with the "install" user, you can perform an advanced installation and partition disks and RAID as you see fit.

OrdCom has just extended its network by 500 km, reaching Amsterdam, Holland, and has connected to one of the largest Internet exchange points
in the world, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX).

The Internet, being a network of networks, is built on exchanges.
This is where exchange points (IXPs) come into play: the networks of service providers (ISPs), telecom operators, access providers (ISPs), and hosting providers can exchange traffic directly.

Thus, more than 56,000 additional networks (routes) are directly
connected to OrdCom's network, representing more than 10% of the global Internet (which has approximately 440,000+ V4 routes). Many new exchange requests are still being negotiated.

This operation (which wasn't without some issues) is worth it, as it provides many more direct connections for your services and infrastructures hosted by OrdCom. That's now over 60,000 V4 routes. The direct consequences are better throughput, less latency, more security, and greater stability.

Next stop: London with Linx.

More information on AMX-IX: http://www.ams-ix.net

OrdCom's peering policy is, as usual, open, and all agreements are welcome. If you are an AS interested in peering with the OrdCom network (AS), please contact us: contact@ordcom.net We are present on FranceIX and via SFINX in Paris and now AMS-IX in Amsterdam.

Prices are reduced at the beginning of the year for new OrdCom service orders. If you choose to pay over 3, 6, or 12 months, you can benefit from discounts of up to 20% for certain services. The first configuration is available from €11.99 excluding VAT / month instead of €14.99 excluding VAT.

Dedicated services, transit, housing, hosting infrastructure: many new features are available to discover in OrdCom's offerings.

Dedicated Services: New Enterprise-Class Configurations

Evolution of Intel XEON services, with new components on dual-processors:

LSI Hard RAID SAS drives, designed for 24/7 operation, with a proven reliability of 1.2 million hours
ECC RAM
Up to six drives of 3TB each

New: AMD Opteron services (dual or quad-processor), including the OC Pro, a quad-processor machine
built specifically for the cloud and virtualization: ideal for those of you who want to sell VMs
- Up to 256 GB of RAM (and 512 GB on request)
- Up to eight SAS drives of 3TB each
- A 2x1 Gbps connection
- LSI Hard RAID

Other New Features
- Free installation fees
- Up to 100 GB of free FTP backup space
- And as a reminder, now unlimited bandwidth

Solutions Hosting Infrastructure

New offerings for web professionals: customized and scalable infrastructures
- High-availability application hosting (redundancy, load balancing, MySQL cluster, etc.)
- Cloud computing solutions: multiple multi-core machines interconnected in a private network to migrate VMs, NAS, etc.
- Neutral hosting: rent and operate your own hosting infrastructure under your brand name
- Colocation in Strasbourg

Network Solutions

Customized very high-speed offers

- Interconnection/point-to-point between Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris, via optical link up to 40 Gbps
- Transit

All dedicated service plans are now offering unlimited traffic.

From now on, you no longer have to worry about respecting your transfer quotas!

Although these quotas are relatively high (5,000 GB for the Stud plan, 10,000 for the Perso plan, and 20,000 for the Pro plan), they were a legitimate concern in the event of a denial of service attack or a major traffic incident.

In addition to "best effort" bandwidth, you now benefit from a premium bandwidth of 250 Mbps guaranteed per account for unlimited traffic.

From now on, no more worries about respecting transfer quotas!

Although these quotas are relatively high (5,000 GB for the Stud plan, 10,000 GB for the Perso plan, and 20,000 GB for the Pro plan), they raised legitimate concerns in the event of a denial of service attack or significant traffic disruption.

In addition to "best effort" bandwidth, you now benefit from a premium bandwidth of 250 Mbps guaranteed per account for unlimited traffic.

OrdCom now exchanges approximately 10,900 IPV4 routes and nearly 500 IPV6 routes with 86 service providers (AS). This provides your dedicated services with more direct connections, higher throughput, and minimized latency.

If you are a Numéricable customer, for example, the hunt for milliseconds has been yielding significant results over the past few days. Other benefits include optimized data exchanges with services in other data centers, more efficient services (access to AFNIC DNS roots for the French Internet, indexing of your sites by Google, etc.). A list of the providers with which OrdCom exchanges can be viewed at https://www.ordcom.net/networks.php .

OrdCom's peering policy is open. We hope to see new agreements concluded, while regretting that some telecom operators are not fully participating, to the detriment of network users.

If you are an AS interested in exchanging with the OrdCom network (AS), do not hesitate to contact us: contact@ordcom.net

Internet companies are now among the world's largest energy consumers and are therefore increasingly promoting environmental sustainability. This is understandable given that the energy consumption of large data centers already exceeds that of air traffic.
This is very worrying given the growth of this particularly energy-intensive activity.

To date, communication has primarily focused on reducing electricity consumption, which is the primary cost center of a data center. Ultimately, hosting providers are reducing their prices and making their offerings more accessible, resulting in higher sales and, ultimately, higher energy consumption.

The remaining solution is to urge our energy suppliers to develop renewable solutions rather than all-nuclear power. This, even if it means running the risk of making us less competitive.

OrdCom has just taken a significant step towards the environment by signing a contract allowing it to offset not 10% or 20%, but 100% of its energy consumption with renewable energy.

With this new contract, for every kWh purchased by OrdCom to power your services, EDF commits to putting 1 kWh produced from renewable energy into the grid. This approach results in an additional cost for OrdCom but contributes to the financing and creation of sustainable energy production projects.

At the same time, OrdCom is continuing its efforts to control its energy consumption. Previous initiatives and innovations have already resulted in a PUE of less than 1.3 (ratio between total energy consumed and the energy actually used to power the services), while this value is 2.6 on average for traditional data centers. While this efficiency doesn't allow us to further lower our prices, it does allow us to maintain them.

OrdCom customers participate in this initiative and can display this commitment themselves, thus promoting their approach and their services.

To better meet your needs, several categories of OrdCom dedicated services are now available in pre-configured versions, with express delivery, and most importantly, NO INSTALLATION FEES. Simply select your future machine from the list and then choose the associated services: number of IP addresses (up to 8), OS (Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, BSD, Windows 2008, etc.), software support, and RAID architecture (from RAID 0 to RAID 10).

Express delivery machines for each range can be found in the corresponding sections: Perso and Pro.

Custom dedicated services remain one of OrdCom's strengths: if you can't find the ideal machine in express delivery, configuration wizards allow you to choose the CPU(s) (up to two quad-core XEON 4x2x2.3 GHz), disks (up to 4 x 2TB), and RAM (up to 32 GB).

The new Debian 6.0 Squeeze is now available for automatic installation from OrdCom.

For more information: http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a

After being the first to offer a €15/month excluding VAT plan in 2009, OrdCom went even further with a €9.99/month excluding VAT plan, which remains the cheapest custom dedicated service offer in the world to this day.

Today, OrdCom is tackling mid- and high-end offerings.

The Perso plan: A machine starting at €19.99 excluding VAT instead of €29.99 excluding VAT/month, still custom-built, up to the Phenom II X6, with 16GB of RAM and 4 x 2TB of disk space.

And finally, the Pros XEON plan starting at €39.99 excluding VAT/month instead of €69.99. A professional TYAN-based machine equipped with a dedicated KVM/IP and a remote CD/DVD drive sharing system via the Internet. This last feature offers the ability to boot the service from any installation or maintenance CD independently. This gives you complete control, as if you were right at the machine, but without leaving your desk. This means you're almost completely independent of the hosting provider. Here again, we offer a service, always custom-made, ranging from a single-socket quad-core XEON X3430 to a dual-socket with two quad-core, eight-thread XEON processors (16 threads in total), 32GB of RAM, and 4 x 2TB hard drives.

Another unique and significant advantage: All of these offers are scalable over time! Even more freedom for customers, who are no longer stuck in their initial configuration and can upgrade their services as their needs change, such as adding or changing a processor, adding RAM, disk space, etc.

How is it possible that a young, independent company like OrdCom can compete to such an extent with the major players in the low-cost market while still offering scalable solutions?

Simply through innovation.

The company has its own infrastructure in Elsass where its services are installed. These large 30m³ boxes are each powered by a high-efficiency double-conversion inverter and equipped with powerful mechanical ventilation systems that can completely renew the air in less than 10 seconds. This approach, which the company cannot provide details on for competitive reasons, allows it, among other things, to achieve a record PUE* of 1.1, which only Google currently approaches. And OrdCom optimizes even further by equipping its services with very high-efficiency power supplies. Thus, in addition to saving significant amounts on the primary cost of a data center: energy, OrdCom is helping to protect the planet.

*PUE: 2 to 2.5 for a traditional data center. That's twice the electrical power required to power the services.

The promised new range is now online with a record price starting at €9.99 excluding VAT/month. A more high-end offer has been added for Pros with two sockets for Xeon 5500 or 5600 series. Sysadmins will be happy to find a KVM over IP allowing them to have control over the machine as if they were in front of the service. To find out more: https://www.ordcom.net

It took time and a lot of work, but we have finally set up two optical links between our hosting center in Strasbourg and Telehouse2 in Paris. The first link will be dedicated to transit with our new partner Interoute and the second to exchanges (peering) with our fellow operators. Indeed, we have been suffering for too long from a major interconnection problem between Cogent (our first historical transit operator) and Orange. Since the offer of the operators present in the region is from another age, we had no other choice but to invest in this new optical network. Access to Telehouse2, where all the operators present in the territory are available, allows us to have direct access to the major exchange points that make up the French Internet. This major investment on our part now guarantees us sustainability and independence in addition to an unparalleled quality of service.

The SFR center, through which our fiber optics pass, will be increasing the power of its high-voltage transformer. There is therefore a risk of a power outage. The intervention will begin on March 29, 2010 at 9:00 GMT+2 and will end on March 31, 2010 GMT+2.

Our second hosting room is finally ready. Following the electrical problems in our first room, we had to review our approach to electrical safety, which delayed the launch of this new room by more than 15 days. The latter is now equipped with an online double-conversion industrial UPS. This is the best available. The power supply is produced by the UPS, which prevents any interference or micro-outages in the event of switching to battery power. As planned, we are triggering the first maintenance operations to migrate a large part of the racks from Room 1 to Room 2. You will be notified by email of the intervention dates (your service will be shut down for 5 minutes).

A new, much more powerful gateway has been added to the Pro offering. This should allow us to increase the quality of service for Pros devices, including a special QOS for players (UDP). The next change will take place for Persos devices, where we need to increase security.

The bad weather didn't help us. Although we have the inverters, the batteries were stuck for several days at the supplier's, which, moreover, closes during the holidays. We had to find a trick (in the form of a freight forwarder) so that they could still be delivered to us on the 30th. So we finally have an opening date for Room02, Wednesday the 30th. The OrdCom infrastructure will be stabilized in the first two weeks of 2010.

We have countered an attack that caused network disruptions in part of Persos. The incident occurred between 7:20 PM and 8:00 PM on Monday, the 21st.

A power outage hit us on Thursday 10th around 6:30 pm while we were making late deliveries of Persos, we are a victim of our success. The large online inverters ordered have not yet arrived. The entire Room 01 tripped two or three times due to the additional electrical load caused by the current inverters when the power returned. We are very aware that this is a hard blow that is severely testing the patience of our affected customers. The situation is now stabilized. We are urgently wiring Room 02 with 4x more electrical power. As soon as the new inverters arrive, we will migrate a large part of the machines in Room 01. We are still currently in a risky situation in this room (01) but we are doing everything to ensure that this cannot happen again. We operate in small hosting rooms (300 to 500 machines) and this is a tough lesson regarding the power and electrical safety of future hosting rooms. The entire team is working hard to speed things up.

Packet loss and quality of service issues between Orange and Cogent should begin to resolve this week. We're told Cogent's peering will increase on OpenTransit.

Since its creation, OrdCom has suffered too many problems related to electrical safety. We will have to review our copy on this side. The first inverters placed in the OrdCom infrastructure create more problems than they solve. We are therefore planning maintenance operations on the first OrdCom racks where we will be obliged to turn off your services for 5 minutes in order to replace the current inverters with a more serious solution. Electrical safety is one of the most expensive parts of a hosting infrastructure, so this will cost us a lot of money. We nevertheless hope to be able to maintain our position in terms of prices. We will keep you informed of the follow-up…

The power to our Room 1 went out at 2 a.m. this morning. Following this incident, the services were restarted. DNS issues remained this morning until 10 a.m.