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Linode, LLC (/ˈlɪnoʊd/)[1] is an American cloud hosting provider that focuses on providing Linux-based virtual machines, cloud infrastructure, and managed services.
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| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Cloud computing, web services, Internet hosting services |
| Founded | 2003; 21 years ago (2003) |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
|
| Products | Cloud-hosting provider Virtual private servers |
| Revenue | $100 million |
Number of employees | 200+ |
| Parent | Akamai Technologies |
| ASN | |
| Website | www |
In 2003, at the time of its launch, Linode provided virtual private server (VPS) hosting. As of its last update, Linode serves customers from 196 countries and operates 11 data centers across the globe.
Linode was acquired by Akamai Technologies in February 2022 for $900 million.[2]
Linode (aportmanteau of the words Linux and node) was founded in 2003 by Christopher Aker. Aker is a graduate of Full Sail University in Florida.
Linode focuses on providing Linux-based virtual servers to hobbyists, developers, and small and medium-sized businesses. The company moved its headquarters to Galloway, New Jersey in 2008. Linode relocated to the historic Corn Exchange National Bank building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2018.
Linode opened its first data centers in Fremont, California and Dallas, Texas in 2003. It subsequently opened its regions in Atlanta in 2007, Newark in 2008, London in 2009, Tokyo[3] in 2011 and 2016, Frankfurt[4] and Singapore[5] in 2015, and Toronto,[6] Mumbai,[7][8] and Sydney[9] in 2019.
Linode transitioned its virtualization platform from UMLtoXen virtualization in March 2008 and then to KVM based virtualization in mid-2015. Over the years, Linode launched numerous supporting services and products in combination with its core Linux-based VPS product (typically referred to as "Linodes").
On February 15, 2022, Akamai Technologies announced its intent to acquire Linode for $900 million. Akamai's founder and CEO Tom Leighton stated that it sought to "combine Linode's developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai’s market-leading edge platform and security services".[10]
Linode's flagship products are used in a variety of cloud-hosting services. As of November 2019, Linode has five kinds of virtualization-based computing services geared towards specific customer requirements like high memory requirements, dedicated CPU resources, virtual machines with direct access to GPUs, or general purpose usage. Linode provides services in network-based storage and backup servers. [11][12]
In September 2013, Linode launched Longview, a system performance monitoring package for Linux that allows users to view performance metrics of their instances from the Linode Cloud Manager.[13] In late October 2019, Linode launched its S3-Compatible Object Storage service to enable customers to store large, unstructured data. On November 11, 2019, at CNCF KubeCon, Linode announced the availability of its managed Kubernetes engine service.[14][15]
Linode operates 11 data centers worldwide, interconnected by a backbone network. As of Q2 2020, Linode is available in 11 regions worldwide.[18] A region is a specific datacenter in a geographical location where users can deploy cloud resources. The company maintains internet exchange presence and peering arrangements with Internet service providers (ISPs) and other networks in each region.
| Region ID | Location | Launch date |
| 1 | Dallas, Texas, US | Q2, 2003 |
| 2 | Fremont, California, US | Q4, 2003 |
| 3 | Atlanta, Georgia, US | Q1, 2007 |
| 4 | Newark, New Jersey, US | Q2, 2008 |
| 5 | London, UK | Q4, 2009 |
| 6 | Tokyo, Japan | Q3, 2011 |
| 7 | Singapore, Singapore | Q2, 2015 |
| 8 | Frankfurt, Germany | Q3, 2015 |
| 9 | Toronto, Canada | Q2, 2019 |
| 10 | Mumbai, India | Q2, 2019 |
| 11 | Sydney, Australia | Q3, 2019 |
Linode is a recipient of the Stevie Award for Sales and Customer Service.[19] In 2019, Linode was awarded a Top Workplaces honor by The Philadelphia Inquirer.[20] Linode’s headquarters building received the 2019 Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.[21][22] 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.[23]
The accounts of eight Linode customers that held Bitcoin cryptocurrency were compromised in March 2012.[24] Roughly 40,000 bitcoins were stolen.[24]
Hack The Planet (HTP) accessed Linode's web servers in 2013.[25][26][27] The group exploited a technical vulnerability in Adobe's ColdFusion application server.[25][26] Linode said that HTP could not decrypt any financially sensitive information and reset all account passwords.[25][27] Linode announced plans to introduce two-factor authentication for its services in May 2013.[28]
Starting Christmas Day 2015 and continuing until January 10, 2016, 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.[29] Linode was the victim of another severe DDoS attack over the 2016 Labor Day weekend.[30]
Starting April 2023 and up to October 2023, Linode and Hetzner traffic for the largest Russian XMPP messaging service (jabber.ru) was intercepted through a Man-in-the-middle attack.[31]