An instance is defined as a container of resources sharing technologies with its physical host that are preinstalled for you on a Cloud Computing platform.

With Gandi's Simple Hosting service, there are be several types of instances, each containing a different set of programming languages, database systems, and so on that will allow you to host your web applications.

We offer 12 types of instances:

* 4 languages (PHP, Node.js, Python and Ruby) * each with one of 3 database types (MySQL, PostreSQL or MongoDB)

Check out all the Simple Hosting instance families for more information.

For each instance family, you have the choice of size, or power level. A “M” pack is twice as powerful as a “S” pack. Likewise, “L” packs are twice as powerful as “M” packs, etc. Each pack has an effective limit on connections and memory that has an affect on the total number of simultaneous processes that your website can handle. This corresponds to the number of people that can request a page at the same time, though this is actually more of a notion of speed than total unique visitors. For example, if your effective limit is 2, and if both visitors request the page at the same time, a 3rd visitor will have to wait until one of the pages is loaded before they can see the page (a page is usually loaded in a few 100ths of a second).

This limitation implies:

• a simultaneous number of database connections (if the instance has a database installed on it)
• a limit of 128MB of RAM per process
• a limited number of pageviews per month (from 300,000 to 5 million)

Note that these values are only given as an example, and they are the result of a strict number of simultaneous processes and the ratio between the number of visits, visitors, and subsequent pageviews.

The default disk size is 10GB, no matter what pack you choose. You have the possibility of increasing it up to 1TB of disk space per instance thanks to the optional disk space that you can subscribe to. Your disk is for storing your files as well as your databases.