WordPress is the most popular blogging content management system software in use today with over 4 million downloads in its existence. It can be seen on hundreds of thousands of websites, most notably on Ebay.com, CNN.com, People.com and the NewYorkTimes.com. Millions of readers view WordPress -based websites every day and get near real-time RSS feeds from their favorite authors. Blogging is a great way to promote your company (hence your visit here), review your current obsessions or talk about your hobbies in a community-oriented fashion.

That being said, this article will show you how to do a quick WordPress installation in less than 10 minutes on GoGrid. You will be up and running, ready to post content about what you ate for lunch or the newest tech gadget you saw on the streets, all with the clean aesthetics and easy, feature-rich navigation of a WordPress website.

To start, simply deploy a GoGrid server through the http://my.gogrid.com customer portal. In this example, we’ll use a CentOS 4.5-based LAMP stack since it has all the software packages needed for a WordPress installation already installed.

1. Click on the “+” button once you’ve logged in, then select “Web/App Server”. Enter a friendly name for your server, such as “WordPress” or the domain name you’ll use once your server is configured. Enter a quick description of the server and select an IP address (our new IP suggest function will suggest one automatically for you).
2. Next, select the operating system to run your WordPress installation on. WordPress can run on either Windows or Linux machines, but in this example we’ll use a Linux-based CentOS 4.5 server image.
3. Select the amount of RAM dedicated to your server. Depending on the amount of traffic you’re expecting, you may want to allocate a good amount of RAM to your server. I’m choosing to go with a 2GB server.
4. Select the server image you want to deploy. In this case, I’ll be using a LAMP stack. (For Windows servers, you may want to select a Windows 2003-based operating systems with IIS and MSSQL Express installed on the server image.)
5. Click on “Save” and your server will be deployed within a matter of minutes.
6. Once your server’s light turns green, click on the new WordPress server and then select the “Passwords” button at the left. This will take you to the login information for your server.

Now that a server has been deployed, you can go ahead and connect to it remotely via SSH. If you work on a Windows machine, you can download the PuTTY client to connect to a Linux Server. If you’re on a Mac or a Linux machine, you can open your terminal and SSH directly to the IP address of the new GoGrid server.

1. SSH to the new server and log in using the username and password credentials located on the “Passwords” page in the GoGrid portal. In my examples, I will use the IP address 208.113.93.243. Replace this IP address throughout this document with the IP of the server you just deployed: (more…)

The dust is still settling from Structure08 put on by GigaOM but the general vibe is that it was a solid event. With well over 600 people in attendance, Structure08 lived up to its promise of delivering timely information to businesses on how they could plan their future computing infrastructure needs.

Here’s a quick round up of GoGrid at Structure08.

GoGrid in Webware

Rafe Needleman, editor for Webware.com,  spoke at length with GoGrid CEO, John Keagy, and within hours posted the results of his interview this article titled “Tiny (comparatively) GoGrid takes on Amazon Web Services“. Rafe actually summarized GoGrid as compared to Amazon’s EC2 into something that could even be written multiple time in a single Twitter message (within the 140 character limit): “The GoGrid pitch: We’re cheaper. And easier.”

Rafe writes: (more…)

This insightful post on the RightScale blog recently got me thinking. The term “Cloud Computing” is much too vague. People want and need “slots” or “segments” where they can group things. This is how the mind operates through categorization and ordering. So, to possibly help with this, I would like to propose a “Cloud Pyramid” to help differentiate the various Cloud offerings out there.

There are other ways to display this hierarchy, however I elected to show it as a pyramid. For example, if one were to weight the graphic by the number of providers within each segment, the pyramid would be upside-down. The point here though is to show how these cloud segments build upon and are somewhat dependent upon each other. While they are directly related, they don’t require interdependence (e.g., a Cloud Application does not necessarily have to be built upon a Cloud Platform or Cloud Infrastructure). I would propose, however, that Cloud trends indicate that they will become more entwined over time.

Cloud Application

Within this part of the pyramid, users are truly restricted to only what the application is and can do. Some of the notable companies here are the public email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Quicken Online, etc.). Almost any Software as a Service (SaaS) provider can be lumped into this group. Most retail consumers use the services within this Cloud. You get pre-defined functionality and you cannot much further than that. Applications are designed for ease of use and GTD (getting things done). SalesForce, a huge Cloud Application/SaaS provider that has led the way for hosted software, falls into this category as well, however, their force.com product does not. Even online banking offerings could be lumped into this group.

Characteristics:

(more…)

Today, InfoWorld’s Tech Writer, Bill Snyder, brought GoGrid solidly into the race with Amazon’s EC2 with his article titled “Red Hat the latest proof that cloud computing is serious business.” Snyder, who has been following technology and the business of technology for 25 years, discusses GoGrid’s “point-and-click infrastructure” and its ease of use in this article.

While Bill mentions that cloud computing may not be ready for large-scale business or the enterprise, he does point out that it is a force to be reckoned with and that the services of GoGrid and Amazon’s EC now “will give a lot of users a chance to take cloud computing for a low-risk, real-world test drive.” I personally predict that the adoption of cloud computing and cloud infrastructure by the enterprise will be a slow uptake at first, most likely rolling out into skunkwork divisions, short-term projects or IT evaluation scenarios, but that within a few years, business not seriously considering “the cloud” will be behind in their technical and competitive advantages.

Snyder highlights a real-world GoGrid success (that I covered here) about how ScribbleLive was able to handle multiple million page view requests in a short amount of time during the Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference. He emphasized the importance of easy and quick scalability coupled with cost-effectiveness provided by GoGrid:

“ScribbleLive, a two-person operation, quickly scaled up using GoGrid, and was able to keep running with little or no loss of throughput. The price: $15 for a day of server time, plus bandwidth charges. Hmm. Maybe the folks at Mozilla, who tried to set a world’s record for downloads of the new Firefox browser but wound up crashing their site, could have done something similar.”

Simplicity is another key factor that Snyder outlines in his review, stating:

“In theory, at least, setting up servers on GoGrid seems almost too easy. Once a client signs up for the service, an IT staffer can point a browser to GoGrid’s site and choose a configuration from a variety of pull down menus. GoGrid supports Windows Server 2003, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

(more…)

Note: The matrix below will be updated shortly in a new post to reflect changes in both EC2 and GoGrid features. (11.11.08)

As GoGrid continues its record breaking sign-ups, we get asked repeatedly how we compare against Amazon’s EC2. While not exactly an apples to apples comparison, there are enough similarities to warrant a few matrices to illustrate the differences.

Feature Comparison Matrix

Clouds are sexy right now. In this article, I tracked how “Cloud Computing” is becoming a hot, up and coming Google Search term. But why is it that there are so many new user communities that are conglomerating around “the cloud” versus other more traditional hosting concepts. I would say because of the social environment where this technology is emerging.

Asking the Question

Where does one learn about technology trends? How does one test it out or know if it is a match for your offering?

 Loading ...

Traditional Hosting in the 90’s

The early 90’s were marked with the presence of AOL being the primary way that users got on the World Wide Web (now just called the Internet because people are using far more than just HTTP for content delivery). AOL brought a new sense of community and an easy way to “get online.” As AOL tried to continue its monolithic domination of online access, other companies started popping up offering alternatives to advertising-heavy AOL within metropolitan markets. Companies like Netcom, CompuServe and AT&T became notable AOL dial-up competitors.

(more…)

I spent some time analyzing search trends of different computing keywords to try to put everything in perspective. Google trends is a nice too that gives insight into broad search patterns.

We all know that the term “Cloud Computing” is relatively new to the Technology buzz. But just how new is it? For starters, I ran a quick comparison of “Cloud Computing,” “Grid Computing” and “Utility Computing”.

The term Grid Computing has been around for a while (even before Google Trends tracking shows it). But as you can see from the graphic above, it is trending downwards. Utility Computing has pretty much remained below the radar in comparison. But, the newcomer Cloud Computing, which made its full entrance into this trend analysis around 2007 is rapidly gaining momentum. 2008 seems to be a pivotal time where it surpassed Grid Computing (and continues to grow).

Cloud computing is relatively new as a server hosting term. People are starting to loosely associate it with traditional hosted server solutions. So to put this all in perspective as well as add some other “hot” keywords in to the mix, I trended the following:

• Cloud computing
• Grid computing
• Dedicated server
• Colocation
• Virtualization

(more…)

Today the Internet was abuzz with the latest Steve Jobs’ Keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference, so much so that Twitter was brought to its knees and other blogging sites were overwhelmed with repeated traffic requests. I watch the action on a variety of sources (pictures and text from Engadget and Audio being streamed through uStream). It was a bit painful having to manual refresh or have audio drop during the keynote speech, but the announcements were eventually heard world-wide.

This post is not about the iPhone though but rather about a new GoGrid customer who was recently written up on TechCrunch, ScribbleLive. ScribbleLive is an Ajax-based, Live Blogging platform that enables authors to cover live events in a real-time manner. Billed as a “media rich conference call” ScribbleLive provides audiences an immersive experience on browsers and mobile devices alike, pushing text, links, pictures and videos instantly without the need to constantly reload the browser page.

What makes this story noteworthy is that ScribbleLive is a true, bootstrapped startup. The company, founded by Jonathan Keebler and Michael De Monte, was put together for about $1500. They are only 2 employees but have set up an infrastructure of a well-established company, with GoGrid powering their Application and Database servers and Akamai providing the CDN (content delivery network).

During the WWDC event, they ran their own “System Status” LiveBlog to keep users up to date on the systems powering other users live-blogging. Some highlights:

• The day before the event they were getting 181,000+ page views
• Throughput before, during and after the event ranged between 1.3 to 4.6 Mbits/sec
• Front-end servers maintained 2% CPU utilization
• Database server peaked at 7% CPU utilization
• 1.5 hours before the event, 1+ unique visitors/sec were accessing the site

(more…)

Yesterday we rolled out a new feature for GoGrid that should make the creation of Servers and Load Balancers even easier and faster. We call it “IP Suggest” and it is extremely easy to use. As you are creating a new Server or Load Balancer and you come to the IP Address field, just start typing in the beginning digits of your IP addresses. The network “widget” shows you a list of all of your Public IP addresses, used or unused.

For the Application/Web/Database servers, only the UNUSED IP addresses are presented within the IP address field.

The Load Balancer acts a bit differently. For the Virtual IP field, only the UNUSED IP addresses are displayed, however on the Real IPs field (these would be the IP addresses of the application/web/database server where you want the Load Balancer to direct traffic), ALL IP addresses are displayed.

(more…)

NetworkWorld today ran a review of GoGrid in their Web Applications Alert newsletter. Mark Gibbs, consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger, provides a candid analysis of GoGrid’s current offering in the review titled “Cloud Computing for the Middle Market.” However, it’s his sub-title provides the best summary: “With GoGrid you can provision a server in less than five minutes,” a fact that he experienced first hand.

For several months now, I have been touting the strengths of GoGrid through articles, blog responses, social networks and other media channels. Gibbs echoes many of GoGrid’s strengths (and a few weaknesses even) in his careful analysis. Some highlights:

“A new entrant in this market is GoGrid, currently in its Public Beta phase. I’ve tested the service and what GoGrid claims is true – you can provision a server in less than five minutes. A few minutes more and you can have more servers as well as load balancers and databases.”

Later Gibbs continues:

“GoGrid is very easy to expand and contract as needed and there’s a choice of operating systems to use (Windows as well as several Linux distros with different services configurations). Add to that 24/7 support and GoGrid is a very interesting platform for a variety of markets.”

It is Gibbs’ conclusion that contains the most resounding comment: (more…)