GoGrid Blog

It is pretty obvious that the interest is high with GoGrid. And to that end, you have plenty of questions. We have been listening and hope that this first set of answers will help you in choosing GoGrid as your next hosting solution.

General

Question: Do I have full root access to each machine I’m running?

Answer:
Yes. All Linux machines have “root” access. All Windows machines have “administrator” access.

Question: Do I have to add new machines manually?

Answer:
Yes. Currently all new machines must be added via the GoGrid web interface.

Question: Can I set up a rule to have my GoGrid server scale automatically with demand?

Answer:
Not currently. However this is a feature that is on the product roadmap.

Question: Am I charged when my GoGrid server is in a stopped state and if so, how much?

Answer:
Servers in a “stopped” or “shut down” state will still count against your server RAM hour allotment and will still incur charges. This is because a stopped server still occupies RAM on our grid as well as “reserves” the resources for your server should you need to restart it quickly. At this time the only way to stop being billed for a server is to “Delete” the server, and in this case your server will be deleted forever and any data will not be recoverable. We are working on developing a solution so that stopped servers do not incur charges since we understand this is not an optimal solution for some of our customers.

Server Images

Question: Will you support Windows Server 2008?

Answer:
Yes, we will support Windows Server 2008 in the July time-frame.

Question: Can I use my own server image?

Answer:
Not initially. However this functionality will be supported in the future. And, as you have root and administrator access to your servers, you can customize your instances as you see fit (with the exception of modifying the kernel on Linux instances).

Question: Will GoGrid offer a scalable environment to support Facebook applications?

Answer:
GoGrid currently offers scalable servers for Facebook and other applications. Simply create new servers and load balance as needed. There will be a Facebook-ready server template (Facebook accelerators) added shortly.

Question: If I do set up an environment and I add another server, I would like to be able to clone my existing server as a new server. Is this possible?

Answer:
While server cloning is not available in the beta launch, it will be available soon as this is a popular request. Other customers of GoGrid have had success using some OpenSource tools to clone their servers across multiple instances.

Question: I want Windows, but I have no interest in IIS or MS SQL. I suppose I could get either server type and just turn off the services I don’t need, and install what I want (PostgreSQL, Java, etc.).

Answer:
Yes, you have full Administrator access to your Windows server which means that you can enable or disable the services that you want, as well as install other Third Party applications.

Technical Specifications

Question: Can I have more than just 1GB of RAM per server?

Answer:
GoGrid servers can be added with 512MB, 1GB, or 2GB of RAM today. We plan on increasing the maximum deployable amount of RAM to 4GB and 8GB very shortly.

Question: What load balancer do you use?

Answer:
F5 Networks LTM (http://www.f5.com/products/big-ip/). Our load balancers are configured in active-standby clustered pairs to prevent outages caused by hardware failures. These load balancers are included with each GoGrid account free of charge.

Question. Can I modify the type of load balancing or the persistence of my F5 load balancer?

Answer:
Yes. We give you the option to choose one of the following two load balancing types: “round robin” or “least connection,” and also provide the following persistence options: “SSL sticky” or “source address.”

Question: How much CPU do I get with every server?

Answer:
GoGrid is built upon a Grid of servers (nodes), managed by a hardware virtualization layer (Xen-based hypervisor) which allows several guest operating systems (virtual servers) to be executed on the same computer hardware at the same time. Our nodes are custom built multi-processor, Intel-based computers. In order for GoGrid to guarantee a minimum CPU to a virtual server, we will always maintain a ratio of 1 Xeon core (equivalent to a P4 2.0 chip) to 4 GB of RAM across our entire grid.

The maximum CPU utilization per virtual server is equivalent to the amount of cores assigned to that virtual server, per the below table.

The Xen CPU scheduler allows us to control CPU priorities per virtual server so that adjacent virtual servers cannot “steal” your CPU resources. The table below illustrates the current breakdown in CPU allocations and burst-ability by server-RAM configuration:

Server RAM	Core Guaranteed (P4 2.0 GHz equivalent)	Core Burst
512 MB	1/8	1
1 GB	1/4	1
2 GB	1/2	1

Note: you will soon be able to add 4GB & 8GB virtual servers.

Question: Can my GoGrid server support more than 1 Xeon processor if I’m running Windows OS?

Answer:
Not at this time. When we implement the 4GB and 8GB server options, that server will be guaranteed 1 full core and 2 full cores on both Windows and Linux respectively.

Question: Is my RAM dedicated to my server?

Answer:
Yes. The Xen hypervisor guarantees that the RAM is allocated to only your server.

Question: How much Storage can I have?

Answer:
In GoGrid, server storage is tied to the amount of RAM in your server.

Server RAM	Storage
512 MB	30 GB
1 GB	60 GB
2 GB	125 GB

Question: Can I add additional Storage?

Answer:
You cannot add additional storage to a server at this time.

Question: Why am I seeing a load above 1.0 when I do ‘top’ on my Linux server? This is happening even when my server is completely idle.

Answer:
The Xen hypervisor will report the load baseline as the number of cores assigned to your GoGrid server. This means that if your system has 1 core assigned to it, ‘top’ will report a baseline load of 1.0. To ascertain your actual load, subtract the number of cores assigned to your server from the load reported by ‘top’, in order to get the actual load of your server.

Question: What happens if there is a failure of a physical server node?

Answer:
The GoGrid resource scheduler ensures that your GoGrid servers are spread across as many different physical nodes as possible. This is to minimize the impact of an unlikely hardware failure to as few GoGrid servers as possible. Please also note that GoGrid hardware nodes are enterprise-grade machines with dual-power supplies connected to two different UPS systems, and RAID protected storage volumes. All nodes are proactively monitored by the GoGrid Network Operations Center (NOC).

More FAQs are in the works. Keep your questions coming!

This note was sent to us by a new GoGrid user (Hareem Haque) and frankly it scared us. But then we read on further in the note:

“Honestly speaking. Your GoGrid is all false advertising. It does a whole lot more then what is stated on the site. I ran a CentOS 4.4 server yesterday for a brief but crucial period. The unit itself gave me no headaches. I simply installed all my apps. And off we were testing the app with our clients. Everything worked fine and flawlessly. Thanks to the load balancer we did some load tests. And I could not find anything bad about GoGrid. I am going to start moving my EC2 instance applications over to GoGrid. “

Hareem, who works in Telecommunications in Canada, currently has 4 Amazon Machine Images (AMI’s) running on Amazon’s EC2 (all clones) running as a clustered FTP server and is now in the process of replicating this environment on GoGrid. He set up a CentOS 4.4 server on GoGrid and installed vsftpd on it and ran some tests of 10 - 20MB Flash Video Files (.flv) , moving then to 2 - 100MB Window Media Video (.wmv) files and finally 1 - 1GB MPEG-4 (.mp4) file. He got a throughput of 10mbps with GoGrid and only 7mbps with EC2. With these solid benchmarks, he’s moving forward with more GoGrid servers now.

He also said he was extremely happy that there was no charge for the load-balancing and that it “came in handy.”

This is just one of many positive examples that are starting to come in or are appearing on the web. Do you have a success story or a unique use of GoGrid? If so, I want to know! So what are you waiting for? Get a GoGrid account now!

Everyone seems to be either talking about cloud computing, launching their product “within the cloud” or developing a “cloud” infrastructure. I would like to take a step back and really think about why the word “cloud” is being used in the first place.

First, a quick side note: as I tried to track down the origins of the term “cloud computing” I did come across a very insightful post by Paul Wallis that does a fantastic job stepping through the evolution from “supercomputing” through “the cluster” into “the grid” and eventually up into the “clouds.” The concept of having “data clouds speaking to supercomputer clouds” is becoming a reality, according to Wallis, however, I echo his concern that in order for this magical marriage to take place, there needs to be a new level of Quality of Service connecting the two, among other things.

Even with the foundation being laid by some heavy players, cloud computing is still in its infancy. But this is not the subject of this article. I still circle back to the marketing “genus” that coined the term “cloud” to describe this new computing paradigm. For that, I move away from the technical and more to the linguistic.

The term “cloud” can be used in many forms of speech:

• Noun - The clouds of smoke filled the room
• Verb - The smoke clouded the room
• Adjective - The cloudy smoke filled the room
• Adverb - The smoke cloudily filled the room

So, cloud is a good word choice from a grammatical perspective since it can be used with a variety of ways. But is it a good term to use to describe a product or technology? I’m not so sure. As an exercise, I started writing down words that came to mind when I thought about “cloud”. In no particular order:

Any patterns here? From my read, most of the terms seem to have negative connotations. I get visions of letting a balloon loose into the air and watching it disappear into the clouds. (Bursting bubble anyone?) To take things a bit further:

• Companies have used terms like “vaporware” to describe software or code in advance of its release which then fails to materialize.
• “Pie in the sky” is a phrase used to describe a promise heaven but continuing to suffer on earth.
• To “have your head in the clouds” comes from the Latin proverb “Caput inter nubila condit,” a line from Virgil’s Aneid which, loosely defined, means to have unrealistic, impractical ideas.
• Fragile, weightless, intangible, nebulous, unclear, impossible to measure - all these connote something that is vacuous and non-solid.

So I ask you this, does this make you comfortable putting your mission-critical data or applications within a cloud? Earlier terms like cluster, super, utility and grid computing, in my mind, make much more “tangible” sense. While I’m sure this term is here to stay and there is not much that I can do to change that, I do question the terms legitimacy within technology and the development of solid business practices. Would you rather work in the cloud or work on a server? Even though the term “virtualization” tends to imply something that is not real, it is closer to the ground and significantly more absolute than something “in the clouds.”

Computing in the cloud, or dare I say, on “cloud nine”…I’m just waiting for reality to hit and the rain to begin.

[Cloud images used by permission.]

For those of you who have already signed up for a Trial or Paid GoGrid account, WELCOME! For those who have not, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? As many of you have already started using GoGrid for a variety of purposes, I felt that it might make some sense to provide some more information and clarification about your new service.

As always, please feel free to contact us should we need to clarify anything, to simply suggest some new or improved feature or to just RAVE about GoGrid in general.

For starters, I definitely recommend reading through the FAQ section of the GoGrid site as there are some answers to your questions there. You can get information on:

• How to access and update your account
• Change your billing information
• Learn about the fundamentals of administering your account and servers
• …And much more!

However, if you are like me, frequently you pass over all of the “Welcome” emails that you receive when you sign up for things. So, for those of you who have GoGrid accounts, here is a refresher; for those of you who do not, here is what you are missing.

What is the fastest way to get up and running?

While we don’t always recommend diving in head first, you are welcome to do so. It is actually extremely easy! Here are 5 fast steps to set up a simple account consisting of :

• 1 Load Balancer
• 2 Web/Application Servers
• 1 Database Server

All within 10 minutes! Ready? Hold on to your hats!

1. Review your External IP addresses in the Network Widget. This way you know what IP addresses you have allocated to your account and which ones you can use.

2. Create 2 Web/Application Servers using the green ADD button
   
   

   Be sure to use the Public IP addresses for this so that you can connect to these servers once they are active.

   
   
   Do this again with a different IP address for the second Web/Application Server.

3. Create a Database Server using the same process as in #2
   
   
   
   Fill in the server information:

   

4. Create a Load Balancer.

   

   
   Be sure you have the IP addresses of the two Web/Application servers that you want to balance (e.g., the ones you just set up).

   

5. Access your servers. Use either RDC (Remote Desktop Connection - for Windows) or SSH (Secure Shell - for Linux). Once you have access, set up FTP or install the applications you desire to get yourself going. That’s it!

If you have questions about this, that is completely understandable. Just comment on this article or contact GoGrid Support. What are listed below are some helpful tips on understanding the GoGrid environment.

How many IP addresses do you get?

With your new GoGrid account, you are immediately provisioned 16 static IP addresses as well as both private and public VLAN support. Should you need more than 16 IP external addresses, you need to fill out a “Justification Form” which is handily included within the GoGrid UI.

If you would like to set up a Private Network, you have a block of 256 IP addresses that can be used. Using a Private Network is recommended for ensuring that certain servers, like a Database, are not accessible to the Public Network or only by pre-defined Application or Web Servers.

Also included within the Network Widget are Gateway and Net Mask of the subnets which are used to configure your public and private NICs (Network Interfaces). This widget will soon also include information about which IPs are in use and which are available.

Viewing Server Information

Currently the RAM amount is not displayed within the GoGrid interface after a server is created. We understand that this could be confusing, so we will be adding this data field to the display in an upcoming release shortly. In the meantime, we recommend that you simply put the RAM configuration that you chose in the name field (e.g., “My Win2003 Server - 1 GB RAM”). The External IP address is displayed under the Server Name:

The colored dot in the top right corner illustrates the server state. Green means the the server is currently on. Yellow means that the server is changing states (from start to stop or visa versa). Red indicates that the server is in a stopped state. When a server is created, it will come up in a Stopped (Red) state. You will need to start it in order to access it.

When a server is newly created within GoGrid, a unique Administrator or Root password is created automatically and stored within the GoGrid web interface. To access the password list, simply right click on a server and choose “passwords” from the menu (or single-click on a server and select “passwords” from the left-hand menu).

When the passwords menu item is selected, the Passwords section of the Support tab is automatically opened, listing all of your servers and the Administrator/Root users and associated passwords. Your passwords are never transmitted insecurely via email, but rather contained within this secured sections of the site (all of https://my.gogrid.com is secured with 128-bit encryption via SSL). This section of the site can be used as a notepad to store other users and their passwords by simply clicking on the “Add a Password” menu item on the left. If you modify a password on an actual server, it is recommended that you update the password on this list since it is NOT updated automatically. Also, changing a password here does NOT update the password on your server.

Network Interfaces for your Servers

Each Application/Web or Database Server that you create within GoGrid comes with 3 network interfaces (NICs). Two NICs are automatically physically attached to the public-facing network and the third NIC is connected to a private switch fabric. These two networks are completely separate and supported by different switching and routing infrastructures.

It is very important that all GoGrid users understand the configuration and setup of these three NICs. For simplicity, the table below outlines how they are configured, named and their use;

So that you can access your GoGrid server when it is first added, the Public_1 NIC is configured with DHCP and the MAC address of that NIC is automatically associated with the IP that you chose when you initially configured your server. That means that if you try to “renew” your IP address on that NIC, you will always get the same IP address; it is bound to the MAC address. Note that if you disable or shut down the Public_1 NIC, you run the risk of not being able to access your GoGrid server.

You do also have the option of binding or assigning other IP addresses (public or private) to the Public_2 or Private interfaces at your convenience should you want to create a private network, for example.

Creating and Editing Load Balancers

Load Balancers can easily be created on-the-fly and are extremely easy to configure. Once created, the virtual IP address of the Load Balancer is displayed next to the icon. Currently, the GoGrid web interface limits the possible actions for Load Balancer to Create and Delete only, which means that if you need to make changes (add/remove IP addresses) you will need to delete the existing Load Balancer and create a new one with the correct or updated information.

Any additional questions?

Please feel free to post a comment to this article with any questions or comments that you may have. We understand that while extremely easy to use, GoGrid takes some getting used to. With each new software iteration, new or enhanced functionality will be added so if you add a feature request, most likely it is already on our road map. Any new or improved features will be highlighted within this blog.

Does the picture below look blurry to you?

It shouldn’t any more. You now have the ability to kick the tires, pop the hood and take GoGrid for a test ride. Just head on over to your local GoGrid dealership (that would be us) and sign up for a Trial Account.

I have been writing about GoGrid for a few months now, both on this blog and on others. After almost two years of development, we are launching GoGrid to the general public. While you probably shouldn’t, at this point, host your mission critical servers on GoGrid yet (e.g., NORAD should probably hold off on hosting any Launch Command servers for a while), you SHOULD feel free to set up test environments, Quality Assurance servers, rollover backup servers, and demo servers on GoGrid. That is the nature of beta software, good enough for prime time, great enough to understand how the technology can help your business thrive and grow, helping you plan for the future.

There are several plans that you can choose from when signing up:

• Pay As You Go - Pay only for what you use
• Business Grid - Good for businesses looking to offload a few servers for a good cost-savings
• Advanced Grid - Better for larger computational networks and Internet development platforms
• Enterprise Grid - Best for enterprises hoping to quickly scale or set up failover environments

There are also several server images you can choose from at the launch (with many more being added soon):

• Web/Application Servers
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 with Apache 2.2 + PHP5 (32-bit)
  • CentOS 4.4 with MySQL 5.0 (32-bit)
  • Windows 2003 with IIS 6.0 (32-bit)
• Database Servers
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 with MySQL 5.0 (32-bit)
  • CentOS 4.4 with MySQL 5.0 (32-bit)
  • Windows 2003 with MS SQL 2005 Workgroup (32-bit)
  • Windows 2003 with MS SQL 2005 Standard (32-bit)

You can also set up an F5 BigIP Load Balancer (Round Robin or Sticky balancing) to ensure that your servers’ traffic is evenly distributed.

If you reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, we will be doing a 5 minute demo of GoGrid at a local meetup (SF New Tech). If you can attend, we will be there to answer questions you may have. If you can’t wait, sign up for your own GoGrid account now. All you need is a credit card and about 5 minutes to deploy your first on-demand GoGrid server.

We always encourage feedback, comments and suggestions. GoGrid will continue to evolve, with a plethora of new features and functionality already in the works. If anyone asks, tell them you heard about GoGrid from the GoGrid blog.

Dump your old hardware and GoGrid today!

A “world premier” event has been scheduled for Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at the SF New Tech meetup. The first public demo of GoGrid will be taking place at the Mighty. Come join ServePath in the first public demo of our revolutionary new hosting product, namely GoGrid!

Come to SF New Tech on March 12th and see what is behind the login screen!

This Meetup is at the Mighty (located at 119 Utah @ 15th Street in San Francisco). Date & Time: Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 @ 6:30pm.

Watch Paul Lancaster (Business Development Manager) and Paul Lappas (VP of Engineering) showcase how a new Windows or Linux application/web server or database server can be created and deployed within minutes. Also learn how to quickly load-balance servers, all within a slick browser-based UI.

While GoGrid will only be publicly demo-ed for 5 minutes (the limits imposed by the SF New Tech rules and guidelines), ServePath employees will be on-hand to answer questions before, during and after the demo. We encourage you to attend the event and come prepared with your questions.

Hope to see you there!