Create a Gandi AI server

As of January 13th, 2014, it will no longer be possible to create servers with Gandi AI mode. We recommend that you use our Gandi Simple Hosting PaaS offer, if you are looking for web hosting that does not require Linux server administration experience.

Here is where we present information that will help you create a Gandi AI server.

We offer 3 different types of servers. This guide will explain the creation process of a Gandi VPS that uses Gandi AI, our automatic installation mode.

Before creating a server, it is necessary to have first purchased the necessary resources, because without these, your server will not have enough resources to run.

The operating system of your server will be installed on a 2.4GB disk, and the data will be on a 5GB data disk.

Creating a VPS from your account

As indicated in the introduction, it is necessary to have sufficient resources in your hosting account so as to be able to create your first server.

The creation order is made from your management interface, by clicking on the “Create a server” button.

The first step of the process asks you to choose the resources that you would like to attribute to your server.

Our solution is flexible, so you can change this later by adding or removing resources from your server.

You must also choose the datacenter location (Paris or Baltimore).

For the creation of your server, the interface will only offer you the number of resources that already exist in your hosting account.

The process continues by asking you to choose the hostname of your server. The hostname is the name that you give your server; it must contain no more than 63 characters and must not have any spaces or special characters.

You must also choose a password, which must contain at least 8 characters and may both contain upper- and lower-case letters (with the exception of accented characters), numbers and punctuation signs (spaces are not allowed).

This hostname is used for the internal server management at Gandi. It should not be confused with the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) of a server, which is declared in its /etc/hosts file. Once you have chosen your hostname, you will not be able to modify it later.

Gandi AI (prepackaged) mode

The next step in the order process of a VPS is to make technical decisions regarding its installation.

The Gandi AI prepackaged mode that we offer is a type of installation where we install the main packages that your server will need to perform as a conventional website server.

The packages that are installed via this mode are Apache2, PHP 5, Mysql 5, ProFTPd, and PHPmyadmin on the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS distribution.

The version of Gandi AI created before 2011 can be upgraded with the help of this tutorial

The creation process of your server allows you to configure the following services:

The operating system (help)
The HTTP server (help)
The database server (help)
The FTP server (help)
User accounts on the server (help)

You may find more information on the management of your packages on the page configuration of Gandi AI packages

The default configuration shows a virtualhost called www.example.net. If you do not configure your web server during the installation of your server, your default virtualhost will be the directory www.example.net. However, if you want to link your domain name to your web server, you will want to set up your virtual host so that it has the name of your domain, as opposed to keeping this default installation folder.

Once your configuration has been validated, the creation order for your VPS is sent to the Gandi agent, which will complete the configuration requests that you made within 20 minutes. You will therefore be able to begin managing your server and publishing your website(s) within minutes almost instantly.

Gandi AI installation with the manual installation of packages

You also have the possibility of installing your server by choosing the packages that you want to install on your own. You might prefer this installation mode if, for example, you want to create a development server or if you need to configure your modules according to a specific plan.

After choosing the hostname, you may choose to create your server by only choosing specific packages to install. The list of packages that are available are as follows:

To proceed with the creation of your server, you can simply choose the packages that you want to install, then submit your order. For example, to install the Apache web server and a couple of associated packages:

This section will explain the creation process for you. You can go to the list of packages to see the specific configuration options of each.

Once your configuration has been chosen, you can submit your order so that the Gandi agent can begin the installation of your server, which takes under 20 minutes. You can then start to use the services that you have configured.

You can currently create the following types of VPS:

Expert: Expert servers are, as their name indicates, intended to be used by experienced Linux server administrators. The distribution chosen will be installed, and the user will have root access. > To see how to install a Gandi expert VPS, go here.
Gandi AI: The AI (Auto Install) version provides you with a list of customizable packages that will be installed for you automatically. Though there will not be any errors in installing the packages, you will not have root access.
Gandi AI Prepackaged: If you want to go quickly, this version of Gandi AI only contains packages that are needed to set up your server for website hosting.
From a system image: If you have previously created a system image then you can create a server from it.