What is IaaS?

This page will explain the basics and organization of IaaS, and where to find the details in the interface so you can get started.

IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service. It's a cloud hosting service Gandi offers. This service allows you to create virtual servers (among other things) of nearly any size, and pay very little for them, by the hour.

The servers you create and manage can host web or business applications in a cloud-computing environment. Gandi currently has multiple data centers in Europe and North America, and you can select which data centers you want to use.

You pay for IaaS resources at Gandi with credits, that can be purchased on demand or in packs (at a discount). Please see the page on Gandi credits for more information.

A clear and powerful control interface

We have worked hard to make our web interface both simple and powerful, giving you a pleasant and intuitive user experience.

All the information you need to understand the resources, power and cost over time is provided in a tabbed and tabled layout for easy access.

1) Credits: You can immediate see your remaining credit and time to run the resources you have with it. Related actions, such as buying more credit, automatic credit purchase based on thresholds, etc. are provided in context. You can also see usage details and consumption history.

The tabs to the various important sections are across the top. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of each resource in each category:

2) Servers tab: This is a list of all the existing servers you have, and where you can manage them from. You also use this tab to create new servers.
3) Disks tab: This tab shows a configurable table, listing all your disk storage. This section also allows you to create new disks, and to manage snapshots on existing ones.
4) Interfaces tab: Network interfaces are listed here, with IPv4 and IPv6 address, and the throughput limits. This is also where you go about creating new interfaces.
5) Web Accelerators tab: Web accelerators are powerful tools that give you a cache system you can add to your servers, speeding up content delivery. They can also be used as HTTP failover and load balancers on more complex infrastructures.
6) Current Operations tab: This is the place to go when you have asked Gandi to start an operation, to track its progress or even cancel or restart it.

7) Control Panel: You will also find a table called Control Panel, listing your resource objects (your servers, unattached disks, web accelerators). Use this to get a quick view of the status of your resources and the consumption of each. You can customize this table according to your needs and tastes.

Last modified: 07/16/2013 at 18:23 by Lyubomir G. (Gandi)