GoGrid Blog

There is plenty of excitement among the GoGrid Development team. They were just recognized by the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team as a showcase example of GWT. GWT is an open-source Java development framework that is the driving force behind GoGrid’s quick, responsive and interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The Google Web Toolkit was critical to the success of GoGrid’s front-end interface. It helped our developers code, debug and test while also providing a “thick client feel but with the performance of a thin client,” said lead GoGrid software engineer, Justin Kitagawa. “We were heavily influenced by Google Maps, the new Yahoo! Mail client and several other state-of-the-art AJAX applications,” says Kitagawa.

The video below illustrates how the GWT enables the GoGrid interface to quickly redraw regions, scale icons, and provide “flashy” effects, among other things. More information can be found here.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

To experience the GoGrid interface first-hand, simply sign up for a GoGrid account. Let us know what you think!

Today, IDG World Expo announced the finalists for the 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards. These awards will be presented at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo next week in San Francisco. The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards recognizes product and services innovations. GoGrid is a Finalist for Best Virtualization Solution. (I would think that next year’s Awards would include a Best Cloud Computing Solution, but alas, this year’s did not. We probably would have won that one hands down!)

ServePath, the parent company of GoGrid, won the 2007 LinuxWorld Product Excellence award for Best Grid Computing Solution, and given the tremendous press and public uptake of GoGrid, is well on the way toward winning other awards in the future.

A full list of companies and product nominated for the various 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence awards can be found here.

GoGrid is an exhibitor at 2008 LinuxWorld and can be found at Booth #900 which is located directly inside one of the entrances of the Expo. The Conference runs from August 4th through August 7th 2008 (Exhibit Hall is open August 5th-7th from 10am to 5pm) in Moscone Center North.

If you would like a complimentary Exhibit Hall Pass, please contact me with your mailing information.

Today I came across a very interesting post, written by Mukul Kumar, which poses an intriguing topic of Cloud availability. Spawned most likely because of some “lack” of availability on Amazon’s S3 recently, Kumar discusses how companies might want to look towards creating redundancy across Cloud providers (such as GoGrid) in order to increase the availability of a company’s online presence.

All too frequently, companies look to a single solution for their hosting options, whether it be within the Cloud or using more traditional hosting methods. These single solutions can easily translate into single sources of failure, “don’t put your eggs in one basket” being the phrase the comes to mind.

Kumar illustrates some ways to make a company’s Cloud reliance a bit more redundant by using some traditional methods of choosing various providers.

Using a fairly straight-forward rsync (an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer) methodology, Kumar shows how servers can be configured as hot-standbys using different Cloud providers, allowing for redundancy to take place.

For those looking to create “bullet proof” installations of their hosted presence, I definitely recommend giving Kumar’s post a good read.

If you’re running software applications or services in your GoGrid cloud, then there’s a good chance that you need a way for your customers to communicate with one another. Forums and bulletin boards are great tools for companies to allow their customers to help each other out with your products. Using these tools also alleviates some of the load on your support teams, saving you labor expenses and time. One of the best bulletin boards is the open-source phpBB software. This is a simple-to-install, feature-rich, PHP-based web application that takes only minutes to configure on a GoGrid server.

The latest version of phpBB (version 3.0) does have some specific server requirements, namely: Windows or Linux, an SQL database system (e.g., mySQL 3.23 or above, MS SQL Server 2000 or above, or PostgreSQL 7.x or above) and PHP 4.3.3 or above. GoGrid has you covered with those requirements so you don’t have to monkey around with doing any changes (with the exception of Windows, you will have to install PHP for that).

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 phpBB 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 “phpBB” 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). If you already have a GoGrid server instance that runs your website and you want to install phpBB in a sub-directory or sub-domain, skip down to the second half of this article.
2. Next, select the operating system to run your phpBB installation on. phpBB 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 phpBB 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 208.113.93.242. Replace this IP address throughout this document with the IP of the server you just deployed:

   ssh 208.113.93.242

   Enter your username and password to log in.

2. Navigate to the folder where you want the phpBB installation to live. In a Linux server, this is usually in /var/www/html. If you want to install this as a subdirectory of your website, create the directory and change directories to that folder (/var/www/html/your.subdirectory).

   cd /var/www/html

3. Now you need to download the phpBB package from phbb.com (note: this is for the 3.0.2 version of phpBB. There may be subsequent versions so you should check and change the path below as appropriate):

   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/phpbb/phpBB-3.0.2.zip?download

4. Once the package has finished installing, you’ll need to unzip it:

   unzip phpBB-3.0.2.zip

5. A new directory called “phpBB3″ should appear when you enter the command ls to show the contents of your current directory. Now we’ll need to create the MySQL database associated with phpBB. Enter the MySQL prompt and create a new database and user for the phpBB installation. Note that you should create more securely named username, password and databases than I have below. These are just examples:

   mysql -u phpbb3admin -p
   Enter password:
   Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
   Your MySQL connection id is 21
   Server version: 5.0.58 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE phpbb3;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON phpbb3.* TO "phpbb3admin"@"localhost"
 -> IDENTIFIED BY "abcd1234";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> EXIT
Bye

6. Now, the rest is quite simple. Open a web browser and navigate to the directory where you installed phpBB. In this example, the directory is in the root web directory, so all I have to do is navigate to my IP address (or host name if DNS records have been properly set up), and presto! The install page should appear. If it does not appear, append the URL with /install/index.php.
7. Read through all the docs on the initial page. This provides information about the GNU public license, provides links to the install guide and gives details on how to get support from phpBB.
8. Next, click on the “Install” tab at the top of the page. This will provide a web-interface to pass parameters to the configuration files:
   
9. Follow the on-screen instructions that will guide you through the installation. Since this server has all the requirements necessary for a LAMP environment, there should be no issues with the requirements page at all.
10. Follow the on screen instructions to the “Database Settings” page. The “Database server hostname or DNS” field will be localhost. Fill in the “Database Name” and “Database Username” fields according to the database name and database user you created in step 5. Don’t worry about the “Database Server Port” field unless you have manually changed the port that MySQL runs on. In my case, I would enter phpbb3 in the “Database name” field and phpbb3admin in the “Database User” field. Enter the “Database Password”; in my case, this is abcd1234. You should receive the “successful connection” message. Now you can click on the “Proceed to next step” button.
11. This is where you set your phpBB admin user details. Choose any name and password combination that you like. It is always best to use a random password generator; just make sure you write it down! Enter your email address as well. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button and you should receive the “test passed” message. Click the button again.
12. This page will write your configurations to the config.php file. You may receive an error message saying that config.php is not writeable. If this happens, change permissions on the file and refresh the page, but be sure to restore security to it after the install is complete:

    chmod 777 config.php

13. You should be prompted with a message that says the configuration file was written. You can then click the “Proceed to next step” button again to move on. You should be at the “Advanced Settings” page. Fill in all of the information in the “Email Settings” section if you want to be able to send and receive emails through the phpBB software. You can also choose to use an external server to handle your email from this page. Next is the “Server URL Settings” section. If you are running this installation locally and haven’t changed any default settings in Apache, leave this information as is. If you are running an SSL cert, you will need to follow the on screen instruction in the first three fields of this section. If you have already set up DNS records and have www address, you can note this in the “Domain Name” field. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button when finished.
14. You should receive a message that says that the database tables have been written successfully. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button again. This may take several minutes as the installation finishes according to all your configurations.
15. Move or rename the install directory on the server so that it is not accessible by the outside world. This command will move it up into the /www directory if the phpBB install was done in the root web directory:

    mv install/ ..

That’s it! You should be brought to the admin control panel where you can configure your new bulletin board to your liking. Download, modify and design your own skins, add extensions from http://phpbb.com and setup users and permissions.

phpBB is an excellent community tool that developers, customers and support agents can all use to communicate with one another. It allows businesses to save support and developer labor, provide an elevated level of customer service and get feedback from their users all in one centralized and easy-to-use place! Set up moderators and administrators to keep your forums organized and reply to your users as you see fit.

Be sure to check the GoGrid blog regularly for more How-To’s. GoGrid Cloud Servers truly give you “control in the cloud” and can help you quick build and scale community services like phpBB or WordPress.

15-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky spent some time with me at GigaOM’s Structure ‘08. Below is an interview that I did with Daniel where we discussed GoGrid and Cloud Computing.

Daniel is the founder and CEO of TeensinTech.com, an organization working to create “a community for teenagers who want to start podcasting, blogging, video-casting and producting all types of new media.” See an interview with Daniel here.

Peter Wayner, contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center, today posted a side-by-side comparison of 4 Cloud Computing providers: Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, GoGrid and AppNexus, titled “Cloud versus cloud: A guided tour of Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid.” What was fairly obvious was that there isn’t a clear “winner” simply because Cloud Computing is so new and standards are still being written. What was clear, is that Wayner believes that GoGrid is “easy to use” and differentiates itself through the offering of both Windows and Linux cloud server images.

Wayner writes:

“GoGrid also has a wider variety of OS images ready to go. There is the usual collection of CentOS/Fedora and common LAMP stacks. If you need Windows, you can have Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0, and Microsoft SQL Server is available at extra cost. There are also images with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and the Facebook application server. These make it a bit easier to start up. “

Wayner also recorded a video of his analysis of GoGrid. Below he shows how a GoGrid cloud server can be easily and quickly deployed as well as some of the management features within the GoGrid control panel:

Wayner writes: “while GoGrid offers many of the same services as Amazon’s EC2, the Web-based control panel is much easier to use than the EC2 command line.” However, to round out the offering, it is important to mention that the GoGrid API is now available for use by all GoGrid users. GoGrid now truly offers full “Control in the Cloud.” The extensibility that the API gives moves GoGrid quickly to the top of the Cloud Computing provider list.

Yesterday we officially launched the new GoGrid API and I wanted to pass on a few notable mentions that recently appeared in the blogosphere. This release was a fairly significant event for us as well as for users of Cloud Computing because for the first time, users now have a choice of using either a slick and intuitive web-based interface or an Application Programming Interface (API), depending on their needs.

NetworkWorld

Technology writer, Mark Gibbs, who has been closely following GoGrid’s progress over the past few months writes:

“The GoGrid API is remarkable because of its depth – through a REST-style interface it provides access to everything that the GoGrid platform can do including configuring components, starting and stopping services, and retrieving status information as well as real time usage and billing data. “

He continues by discussing some possible options for hooking the GoGrid API into a Microsoft Visio COM object or C# to use Visio to diagram and control the service architecture. He extends this idea to incorporate the use of Business Objects’ Xcelsius to potentially create comprehensive GoGrid dashboards.

Additionally, he calls out to other services providers with a global wake-up call:

“GoGrid’s API is the kind of positioning that all service providers should adopt – complete openness on the front end so that customers can use the default user interface or where they have specific service goals they can interface to the service with alternative and extended user interfaces.”

C|Net News

Dan Rosenberg, who discusses the dynamics of growing a startup company on c|net’s Negative Approach blog, comments on how GoGrid has moved from what was “previously called Utility Computing to more of a full-on Cloud approach.”

He, like Gibbs, see the importance of pushing the envelop with Cloud Computing, stating:

“It’s pretty interesting to see the smaller, bleeding edge vendors figure this stuff out before the BigCo’s. This should put some pressure on those who still seem to be missing the Cloud blimp.”

TechCrunchIT

TechCrunchIT, who exclusively covered GoGrid reaching the 1000 paying customer mark, also reported on the release outlining the more technical aspects of the API. Cameron Christoffers writes:

“The API allows user’s to programmatically control their GoGrid environment. This allows users to, for example, auto-scale the GoGrid instance in a timely and efficient manner…GoGrid delivers similar on-demand, pay-by-the-hour server hosting as Amazon’s EC2, but uniquely offers a web-based GUI, Windows Cloud servers, free load balancing, and free support deals.”

Calling All Press and Bloggers

If there are any press or bloggers who are interested in reviewing GoGrid and/or the new GoGrid API, please fill out the Contact form and I will guide you through the process.

If you were watching closely, the GoGrid API was released at the end of last week. Today however, we are making it official! With the release of the API, GoGrid users can now programmatically control their cloud infrastructure on GoGrid. What is truly unique about this offering is that we are the first Cloud Computing provider to provide both a web-based control panel/GUI (Graphical User Interface) and an API (Application Programming Interface), coupled with Windows and Linux cloud servers, free load balancing and support, free static IPs and more.

API’s are critical to many Developers and System Administrators who are looking to have even more rigorous control over their environments. The GoGrid API provides the ability to:

• create interactive GoGrid management applications
• allow Resellers to skin their own GoGrid portals
• script and link various GoGrid commands for automation
• connect GoGrid functions to other management tools or environments
• query and retrieve real-time information on billing, usage and GoGrid devices and objects

When we created the API, we wanted to be sure that it not only lived up to our phrase “Control in the Cloud” but also that it was easy to use, well documented and feature-rich. Others in the Cloud Computing space (like Amazon’s EC2) elected to release an API first and then hope that others would build more friendly interfaces around that API. We decided to produce the web GUI first (so that everyone from novices to tech-savvy users could use GoGrid immediately) and then round off our offering with the API (more skewed towards Programmers and Developers).

For those technically inclined, here are some details on what you can expect from the GoGrid API:

• REST-like Query interface that allows the sending of HTTP GET or POST requests to the GoGrid API REST server
• API Keys are easily generated within the GoGrid web GUI
• Unlimited number of API Keys can be generated per account
• API Keys can be individually enabled or disabled at any time through the web GUI
• API Keys can be assigned the same role-based access controls (RBACs) as GoGrid GUI users
• Changes made via the GoGrid API are reflected in GoGrid’s GUI in real-time
• API output formats: JSON (Java Script Object Notation), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and CSV (Comma Separated Value)
• Supports API calls from Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby as well as shell scripting language like bash

There are several methods available:

• General commands
  • List – lists all requested objects
  • Get – retrieves all information on selected single object
  • Add – add a device or object
  • Delete – delete a device or object
  • Power – start/stop/restart servers
• Items supported and available methods:
  • Load balancer (list, get, add, delete) – commands related to Load Balancers
  • Server (list, get, add, delete, power) – commands related to Servers
  • Image (list) – lists available server images available
  • IP (list) – lists all assigned, unassigned, public and/or private IPs
  • Password (list, get) – lists all passwords for system/server
  • Billing (get) – display billing summary data for account
  • Utility (list) – lists all valid options for a particular lookup

Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) are available. The matrix below illustrates the support:

I could probably go on and on about the plethora of features contained within the API. Best bet though is to sign-up for a GoGrid account and try it yourself. More information on the API can be found on the GoGrid website.

Phil Wainewright, writer for ZDNet, posed the question “How much is a unit of cloud computing?” in his Software as a Service article. He brings up an interesting point. There are many Cloud Computing providers that offer differing types of billing models and mentions Dan Farber’s 3 year old comment: “…an industry standard definition of CPU per hour usage doesn’t exist. There is no equivalent to kilowatt hours or the price of a barrel of oil for CPU usage.”

His article continues to discuss how standards have not emerged, which is expected due to the “newness” of the Cloud Computing industry. There are several Cloud Computing providers that seem to have adopted this billing model…and users are still confused.

We took a different approach with GoGrid and instead of calculating pricing based on a complex algorithm or formula derived from CPU cycles (which are cryptic enough), we base it on RAM utilization. GoGrid billing is based on a 1 GB RAM Hour. That makes things simple. If you have a 1GB RAM cloud server deployed on GoGrid for 1 hour, it costs $0.19. There are, of course, volume pricing plans available which drive down the per unit cost, but this is a very tangible amount that people can easily calculate. A calculator is all that you need.

GoGrid even provides a pricing widget within the web GUI that allows you to estimate your costs based on your deployed servers (e.g., servers in a started or stopped state).

GoGrid provides an alternative to other Cloud Computing providers not only in the rich feature set offered but also in the billing process. It’s easy, you just need a credit card to deploy and load balance your network infrastructure in the Cloud…and you can do it in minutes.

TechCrunchIT, the latest property of TechCrunch, released a story about GoGrid reaching its 1000th paying customer since the service entered public beta in  mid-March. TechCrunchIT “obsessively” profiles products and companies in the Enterprise Technology space, aiming to “promote an understanding of emerging and existing Enterprise technologies.”

TechCrunchIT was able to set up a quick infrastructure on GoGrid, complete with 2 Web Servers, 1 Database Server and Load Balance the entire thing in under 30 minutes from server and load balancer creation to serving web pages from a blog. The server instances only “took a few minutes” to create and were fully configured within another 10-15 minutes.

TechCrunchIT makes a particular point around the ease-of-use of GoGrid’s web interface compared to other Cloud offerings that do not offer anything similar:

“The control panel and feedback interface has a definite advantage.”

There is some discussion around the RAM GB hour, comparisons to EC2 and CPU horsepower. Users with questions around any of these topics should review the following:

• General GoGrid Pricing
• Volume Discount Pricing Plans
• GoGrid versus Amazon’s EC2
• General FAQs (regarding CPU)

Best thing that you can do is to just experience GoGrid first hand through the free $50 trial offer currently available which allows you to fully test GoGrid for a few days for free!