Hi All,

I've only recently move to linode (4 days ago), and am overall very happy with the quality of the server and the customer service. However something that is of concern is that twice my sites were inaccessible for short periods of time (less than 10 mins each). Upon messaging customer service, I was told that the data center I'm on (London) was being targeted by a DDOS attack that they thwarted.

I'm would like to know other people's experiences. I realize there is no such thing as 100% reliable service, but are near daily periods of downtime the norm in linode ?

Not much you can do about DDOS attacks. Big ones will even flood Cloudflare, etc. I think stating that "near daily periods of downtime" is a bit dramatic, you've been here 4 whole days and had two short periods of downtime caused by something EXTERNAL to Linode which Linode apparently handled in a very short period of time. But feel free to find something in Linode's price range that has a better track record - choice, it's always a good thing.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

We have had Linodes in the London DC for a couple of years now and availability has been completely acceptable. (Looking at pingdom stats for the last three months the lowest availability figure in a single month is 99,96%, including downtime that was caused by various maintenance actions by ourselves).

We've had outages on two Linodes since yesterday, probably due to the DDOS you mentioned. Both lasted less than 2 minutes.

Not much you can do about a DDoS that attacks the data center.

If you have a DDoS that is attacking your domain then you've got a bit of an issue and may want to look into something like Cloudflare (they have a free plan).

If you're experiencing a DDoS against your IP then your best bet is to add a new Linode, clone your existing Linode's disk image to your new Linode, and start using the new Linode (and abandon the original).

If the purpose of that is to get a new IP, it would probably be easier to just ask support for a new IP address rather than doing all that.

If you're trying to evade the attack by switching to a new IP, you're very likely to end up in an unhappy place. Linode's staff aren't clueless, when they see that they have to deal with an attack on your IP, then suddenly they have to deal with an attack on your new Linode's IP, and then again on your new Linode's IP, they're going to tell you to stop. If you choose not to listen, they're going to put technical measures in place to require that you listen.

- Les