In 2014, we launched our HVM platform based the KVM virtualization solution, which we later adopted as our new default platform.
Thanks to the “raw” and “grub” boot methods, our customers could now boot custom kernels and images, rather than being limited to the kernels and images already prepared by our team. We have also been able to support the official upstream kernels, rather than limiting ourselves to those hosted at Gandi.
When we implemented our new datacenter architecture on our new datacenter in Paris, FR-SD3, we took full stock of our options in terms of virtualization solutions.
One option we explored was implementing on our Xen platform the same functionalities and customer kernel options offered on our HVM platform. We found that this provided significant performance improvements and furthermore simplified maintenance procedures, which are also now invisible to most users in the vast majority of cases.
The conclusion drawn from this little experiment was clear, if surprising: we should be focusing on our Xen platform rather than continuing to build out our HVM platform.
To this end, we made the following decisions:
- All system images will now be available only on our Xen platform
- New datacenters will no longer support the HVM platform
- All HVM-specific images and kernels will now be marked as deprecated
- All customers using HVM images are invited to migrate to Xen
We will also be contacting our customers who use HVM servers directly by email in the coming days and weeks in order to give them instructions on how to migrate to Xen. The migration process is extremely simple and will be mandatory for anyone migrated off of FR-SD2.
All our online documentation has been updated to reflect this new direction, including explanations on the process of migrating from HVM to Xen as well as all the steps to follow to use the “grub” boot method on servers using kernels hosted by Gandi.
We suggest taking a look at the articles related to using “grub” and the list of officially-supported images.
Our hosting support team of course is available for any questions or for any assistance you may need during migration.
I sometimes wonder if you read your own help pages, since the Images page still says that Xen is legacy and HVM is the new future default!
Hi MS, thanks for the heads up. As we’re working on #gandiV5, we might have not updated the legacy website documentation. I’ll check with the team!
Hello again! Checked and we updated our page: https://wiki.gandi.net/en/iaas/references/images.
Please feel free to let us know if you find something else missing.
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