We have had Debian 9 images available since shortly after it became available. But missed announcing it. So here it is, Debian 9 is code named “Stretch” and is available as a setup option on all our plans.

As with other newer images, there is only a 64 bit image for new setups or re-installs. Most customers are now ordering 64 bit distros.  And some distros only come in a 64 bit flavor now. Customers with an existing 32bit install also have the option to crossgrade to a 64bit install in place.

The Stretch install is compact but comes with MySQL and Apache out of the box, along with a bunch of other great tools preinstalled to help you get up and running faster. Most of the changes from Jessie are incremental, but there are a few highlights from the release notes:

• Gcc version jumps from 4.7 to 6.3
• PHP version 7.0 is now installed by default, bringing a ton of performance improvements, especially for cpu and memory usage
• Mariadb is now the default mysql variant

If you’re wishing to upgrade from older debian releases to Stretch, see our upgrade notes.

Note also that Debian 7 “Wheezy” is officially past end of support now, users still running this release or older should update as soon as possible. Please open a support ticket if you have any questions on how to go about that.