I’m pleased to announce that we have a new StartUp SF (version 2.2) coming on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009. This event is just around the corner (I’m just so “good” about planning in advance) so be sure that you register now and share this event with your friends and co-workers.

For your learning pleasure, we have none other than David Weekly, founder of PBWorks (“online collaboration that just works” – formerly PBWiki) and Founding Director of Hacker Dojo (a community center for hackers & thinkers to meet, discuss, learn and create).

David’s presentation is titled “Give Your Ideas Ex-Lax“. Just the title alone is intriguing! He describes the theme as “you should find an uncomfortably quick way to launch your idea and iterate on it instead of building grand designs.”

Ticket are now on-sale! Scroll down for info and GoGrid blog readers get a special discount.

Date: Wednesday, December 2nd
Time: 6-9pm
Location: Microsoft, 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103
Cost: $10 (online) or $20 (at the door)

As with every StartUp SF, our goal is to help startups begin, grow and become successful. The format is simple, for an hour, you network with technology peers, entrepreneurs, VCs, and other like-minded professionals, then you hear short “elevator pitches” from a few select Demo Companies. After the pitches, a Guest Speaker gives you first-hand experience on the Do’s and Don’ts of kick-starting your startup. Once the speaker has finished, there is a Question & Answer session and then more time for networking. We provide food, drink and engaging conversation.

About David Weekly

David Weekly started PBwiki (now PBWorks) back in 2003. His background is in engineering with a BS in Computer Science from Stanford where he was a President Scholar and a finalist in the ACM International Programming Competition. He is also the Founding Director of Hacker Dojo which is a non-profit community center designed to provide programmers in the San Francisco Bay Area a place to collaborate and innovate. Hacker Dojo continues to gain success and traction.

David is particularly appropriate for being a speaker for StartUp SF, as is outlined in this ValleyWag article titled “Everybody’s stalking: Accidental entrepreneur David Weekly sets a new record for startup failure“. From development to launch to being “TechCrunched” to receiving a Cease & Desist, just 12 days!

How to Order Tickets

Tickets are now on sale. They are $10 online and $20 at the door.

However, because you either read the GoGrid blog or subscribe to the RSS feed, I’m offering 10 tickets at 50% off by using the code “GGblog1202“. When you register, simply enter that code!

You can also register online on Eventbrite here.

More info can be found on the StartUp SF Event page.

Bring yourself and your technology friends to meet likeminded, future-looking folks who may become your next colleague, customer, vendor or competitor.

Last week, I published the November 2009 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter on the GoGrid blog. In it, I highlighted the important changes that were included in the recent deployment of GoGrid, including our new GoGrid CDN, the GoGrid Exchange, new RAM Hour & Bandwidth plans, new Windows Server base images and some other items.

To follow up with that newsletter, which was sent to GoGrid customers by Mario Olivarez (VP of Products), I thought that it would be useful for those interested in GoGrid to learn a bit more. So, I spent a few minutes interviewing Mario about these recent changes and what they mean to our customers.

This video is also available on the GoGrid Facebook page as well as our GoGrid YouTube Channel.

If you have any questions about what you heard or saw on the video or GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos coming your way.

Just in time for the Microsoft PDC 2009, GoGrid is excited to showcase an integrated solution for Windows Azure™ developers, using the GoGrid Cloud for seamlessly building and deploying applications for Windows Azure. Our solution interoperates with the existing GoGrid infrastructure and includes preconfigured development environments which allows developers to build applications and publish them to Windows Azure.

GoGrid’s VP of Engineering, Paul Lappas, narrates the video below demonstrating the interoperability between GoGrid Cloud Infrastructure and the Windows Azure Platform:

GoGrid provides infrastructure services in the cloud allowing customers to rapidly deploy load-balanced and hybrid servers without purchasing costly hardware.

With the release of the Windows Azure™ platform, GoGrid wanted to extend its services and enable its customers to develop, test, deploy, and back up Windows Azure applications efficiently and cost-effectively.

The Windows Azure Application Lifecycle Management Service interoperates with the existing GoGrid infrastructure. With this pairing, Windows Developers enjoy a variety of advantages. For example:

Features

• Enables developers to rapidly build applications and publish them to Windows Azure
• Includes preconfigured development environments
• Rapidly provision unlimited test servers for powerful load testing with a cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model
• The service works with Sync Services for Microsoft® SQL Azure, enabling customers to keep a real-time backup of their Windows Azure database while using the GoGrid infrastructure as additional backup for disaster recovery

Look for this exciting service offering between GoGrid and Windows Azure coming in the first quarter of 2010! If you have questions or comments about this GoGrid and Windows Azure solution, please fill out the contact form on the Azure page of the GoGrid site.

A few days ago, the GoGrid newsletter was delivered to our customers. As with the past newsletters, we want to be sure that all interested parties, whether you are a customer or not, are informed of our important updates. We have a wide variety of items that are covered in this November 2009 newsletter so be sure to read on. If you want to get these updates and others regularly, I encourage you to subscribe to the GoGrid RSS feed, follow us on Twitter (@GoGrid) and become a fan of us on the GoGrid Facebook Fanpage.

Below is the entire GoGrid Newsletter (November 2009):

Hello Michael, We have some exciting developments to talk about in this edition of the GoGrid Newsletter.  Here are the specific topics: GoGrid CDN (Content Delivery Network) powered by EdgeCast GoGrid Exchange New RAM Hour and Bandwidth price plans New Windows Server base images Windows Server 2003 32-bit, 4 GB RAM support Automatic Red Hat Network (RHN) entitlement StartUp SF GoGrid CDN Powered by EdgeCast GoGrid now offers content delivery in the cloud.  Customers can accelerate the delivery of web content using our global infrastructure.  The service includes pay-as-you-go pricing, no contracts or minimum usage commitments, and a global footprint with 16 Points of Presence (PoPs) on 4 continents. Here is the standard pricing: Transfer (includes delivery across North American, European, Asian and Australian PoPs): $0.25/GB for large file transfer, including progressive and software downloads, live and on demand Flash Media Streaming (FMS) and Windows Media Streaming (WMS) $0.30/GB for small file transfer, including Web site acceleration, ad delivery, images, CSS, Java Script, and HTML) Storage $0.60/GB Inbound/outbound transfer included API requests included (PUTS, GETS, LIST, and COPY) To get started please contact your GoGrid account team or submit a case via the GoGrid portal .  Additional product information is located here: http://wiki.gogrid.com/wiki/index.php/GoGrid_CDN. We are also holding a Webinar for GoGrid CDN. Registration information is below. Space is limited so be sure to reserve your seat now. GoGrid CDN Webinar Reserve your seat: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/594788105 Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST GoGrid Exchange The GoGrid Exchange allows our partners to share or sell a PartnerGSI to the GoGrid community.  A PartnerGSI is a GSI (GoGrid Server Image) with the partner’s software preinstalled and preconfigured. Many of our partners specialize in internet security, server backup, monitoring, and application scaling services, and via the GoGrid Exchange we are able to provide Server Images with the partner software, ready for your use. A PartnerGSI can be deployed to a virtual server by using the Image Selection widget in the GoGrid portal. There are four partners going live in mid-November: Gigaspaces – Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for Java and .NET. Bitnami – Run your favorite apps in the cloud…Alfresco, Joomla!, Drupal, Redmine, and more. Sourcefire – Snort-based intrusion prevention. Mailsite – Email and calendar server software for small businesses. New partners will be rolled out bi-weekly. If you are interested in becoming a GoGrid partner or want to learn more about the GoGrid Exchange please contact: Business Development Manager, Paul Lancaster: plancaster AT GoGrid.com Product Marketing Manager, Kole Hicks: kole AT GoGrid.com A list of all partners participating in the GoGrid Exchange is located on the  GoGrid Community Page. New RAM Hour and Bandwidth Price Plans If you are currently on a pre-paid price plan or if you plan to use GoGrid consistently, you should review our new pricing.  The new pre-paid plans now include more RAM Hours and Transfer at a lower cost. In addition, we are introducing larger RAM Hour and Transfer plans for our heavy usage customers. The new plans can be viewed on the Pre-Paid Cloud Hosting Plans page. Upgrading to a new plan is simple: Login to the GoGrid Portal Click “My Account” Click “Billing” Select a plan and confirm In addition, we now offer annual pre-paid plans, which cut 33% off your annual hosting costs.  For more information, please contact the GoGrid Billing Team or your GoGrid Account Manager.  New Windows Server Base Images Our Windows Server base images have been updated.  Base images are standard operating systems with no pre-installed applications.  The new/updated base images are: Windows Server 2008 SP 2 – R2 32-bit image Windows Server 2008 SP 2 – R2 64 bit image Windows Server 2003 SP 2 – R1 32 bit image Windows Server 2003 SP 2 – R1 64 bit image Windows Server 2003 32 bit, 4 GB RAM support Windows Server 2003 32 bit base images now support 4 GB RAM.  Note though that Windows 2003 32 bit images with pre-installed applications do not yet support the larger RAM allotments.  If you have questions about 4 GB RAM support on Windows Server 2003 32-bit images please submit a case via the GoGrid portal or call our support team. StartUp SF StartUp SF, a GoGrid sponsored event, is a regular technology meetup in San Francisco designed to help young businesses become more successful. Each meetup has a format crafted to stimulate, engage and network in a social learning environment and features a guest speaker who talks about expert subject matter and how it relates to helping startups. Also, successful companies showcase their products and services in an interactive manner with product demos occurring throughout the event. The next StartUp SF is: Wednesday, December 2nd For more information please visit www.startupsf.com . Our Evangelist Michael Sheehan, who organizes the event, can answer any questions you may have. Please contact him at Michael AT GoGrid.com Become a Fan of GoGrid on the Facebook Fan page! If you have pictures of your hundreds of GoGrid servers or photos from an event where you saw GoGrid in action or met with some of our employees, we encourage you to post them to the Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/GoGrid As always, you can find more information about GoGrid at: GoGrid Product Site – http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid Blog – http://blog.gogrid.com GoGrid Wiki – http://wiki.gogrid.com GoGrid Forums – http://forums.gogrid.com If you have any questions please feel free to contact me directly. Mario AT GoGrid.com Thank you, Mario

This email was sent out by our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez.

Last week, we released a new version of GoGrid which includes new RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans, included larger volume discounts. Further details of this released covered in this post are:

• New RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans
• New Linux & Windows Base Images
• Behind-the-scenes Performance Improvements

Read on for more details.

New RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans

With this release, we are also making some changes (for the better) on our pricing plans. Coupled with this, we have now made it even easier to upgrade (or downgrade) your plans from within the GoGrid portal.

These new plans are listed below:

Server RAM Hours

* Annual pre-payment are still billed overage at the standard rate on a monthly basis.

Transfer

To access this new section of the portal, simply go to the My Account tab and select the Billing Tab.

Within that page, you now have the ability to view all of the pricing options available for changing:

Within that section, you will see you current RAM and Data Transfer Plans, which include the monthly charge and details of that plan.

To change either plan, simply click on the green Select button next to the plan that you want. After that, you will be walked through a series of screens to finalize your selection:

As you can see above, there are two options available when you upgrade to a Pre-Paid plan, paying Monthly or paying Yearly. Do note that doing a Yearly plan will save you about 33% over a monthly plan.

Once you agree to the new Terms of Service and click the Confirm button, your upgrade will be sent to our team. Note that orders are reviewed and processed quickly, however, it is not an immediate process and could take 1 business day to complete.

The process for Data Transfer Plan upgrades (or downgrades) are the same as with the RAM Upgrade/Downgrade process. If you have questions about which plan or combination of plans works best for you, please contact a GoGrid Sales Representative.

New Windows and Linux Base Images

With this release we have also added support for the following new base images:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (32 & 64-bit images)
• CentOS 5.3 Linux (32 & 64-bit images)
• Windows 2003 SP2-R2 (32 & 64-bit images)
• Windows 2008 SP2 (32 & 64-bit images)

Another change that you may see as you view the currently available images is the fact that there are fewer overall images. We have made the decision to focus our image support on root operating systems, and less on “stacks” that are essentially add-ons to the base system. So, you will see that various images that had stacks have been End of Lifed (EOL).

But, since you have full administrative and root access to any image that you deploy within GoGrid, you can install these stacks or any applications or code that you see fit. We believe that by focusing on root operating systems, we can provide a richer base infrastructure and leave the customizations to you. However, as our Partner program continues to grow, you will see many more images appear with a variety of great functions and features.

Other Improvements

We have made other “under the hood” improvements to GoGrid in general. Most important of these, multiple server deployment speeds have dramatically increased, allowing you to quickly scale out multiple servers in sequence.

If you have any questions about this release or other GoGrid features, please contact a member of our Sales organization or leave a comment on this post.