Linode

Linode (a portmanteau of the words Linux and node) was founded by Christopher Aker, launching in mid 2003.[3] Aker is a graduate of Full Sail University in Florida.

Linode transitioned from UML to Xen virtualization in March 2008, and then to KVM in mid-2015. It launched its data backup service in 2009.[1] NodeBalancer, a load-balancing service, launched in July 2011. Linode released Linode Managed, an incident response service designed for businesses, in 2013.[1]

Linode opened its first data centers in Fremont, California, and Dallas in 2003. It subsequently opened data centers in Atlanta in 2007; Newark, New Jersey, in 2008; London in 2009; Tokyo in 2011[1] and 2016;[4] Frankfurt[5] and Singapore[6] in 2015; and Toronto,[7] Mumbai,[8][9] and Sydney[10] in 2019.

In 2015, Christopher Aker purchased the historic Corn Exchange Bank building at North 3rd Street and Arch Street in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. After renovations, Linode moved its headquarters there in 2018. Aker said that the company was having trouble attracting workers from its previous suburban location in Galloway Township, New Jersey, and hoped a Philadelphia location would help draft talent.[11]

Its flagship products are cloud-hosting services with multiple packages at different price points.[12] As of November 2019, Linode offers five kinds of compute services geared towards specific needs of the customers like high memory requirements, dedicated CPU or GPU or general purpose usage. Linode Block Storage allows users to extend their server storage capacity with volumes on demand.[13] Linode Backup allows customers to backup their servers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.[12] Linode Manager and NodeBalancer both allow users to manage multiple server instances across a single system.[12]

In September 2013, Linode launched Longview, an analysis package for Linux.[14][15][16][17][18] Linode launched its S3-Compatible Object Storage service on late October 2019 to enable customers to store large unstructured data. This was a highly requested feature from the customers.[19] On November 11, 2019 at CNCF KubeCon, Linode announced the availability of its managed Kubernetes engine service.[20]

Linode offers multiple products and services for its clients.[1][12]

Linode is a recipient of the Stevie Award for Sales and Customer Service.[21] In 2019, Linode was awarded a Top Workplaces honor by The Philadelphia Inquirer.[22] Linode’s headquarters building received the 2019 Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.[23][24] The building, built in 1902, is a Philadelphia landmark, named on Philadelphia’s registrar of historic places, and was once an MTV Real World house.[25]

Linode operates 11 data centers around the world, connected by the company’s Next Generation Network and extensive peering arrangements.[26] IPv6 is fully enabled on all of Linode’s supported operating systems and free DDoS protection is included on all of the company’s virtual machines.[27]

As of Q2 2020, Linode Cloud is available in 11 regions leveraging 11 Data Centers.[28] A region is a specific geographical location where users can deploy cloud resources.

Comparison of services between cloud providers can be confusing. The following chart provides comparison of comparable services to Linode offerings.

The accounts of eight Linode customers that held Bitcoin electronic currency were compromised in March 2012.[29][30] Roughly 40,000 bitcoins were stolen.[29][30]

Hack The Planet (HTP) accessed Linode's web servers in 2013.[31][32][33] The group exploited a technical vulnerability in Adobe's ColdFusion application server.[31][32] Linode said that HTP could not decrypt any financially sensitive information and reset all account passwords.[31][33] Linode announced plans to introduce two-step authentication for its services in May 2013.[34]

Starting Christmas Day 2015 and continuing until January 10th, Linode was hit by large and frequent DDoS attacks, which were being caused by a "bad actor" purchasing large amounts of botnet capacity in an attempt to significantly damage Linode's business.[35] Linode was the victim of another severe DDoS attack over the 2016 Labor Day weekend.[36]

• Cloud computing

• Official website