We are excited to announce the availability of the GoGrid iPhone application, a new way to quickly and easily control your GoGrid Cloud infrastructure on the go. Current GoGrid customers can now enjoy robust and complete control of their GoGrid environment using this new iOS application, designed to work on the iPhone and network-connected iPod Touches. The application can be downloaded from iTunes now.

The GoGrid iPhone application leverages GoGrid’s OpenSource API for full control of the essential GoGrid functionality and mirrors the capabilities currently available within GoGrid’s award-winning web portal. Management abilities include:

• View/Add/Delete/Restart GoGrid Cloud Servers
• View/Add/Edit/Delete F5 Load Balancers
• View Status of Objects and IP Addresses
• View Server User and Passwords
• View and Filter GoGrid Job History
• View Current Billing Information
• Multiple Datacenter Support
• Multiple Account Support
• Access additional information about GoGrid

First, some things to know about the GoGrid iPhone application:

• It is FREE to download
• You MUST have an active GoGrid account in order to use it
• It requires a network connection
• You MUST have an API key and secret configured within your GoGrid account (I recommend using a “Super User” role for this)
• You can configure multiple API keys (e.g., accounts) within the application
• It support API version 1.5 (we are working on an update to include the recently announced RAM scaling features and VM reclassification & description editing)
• It provides most all of the functionality available within the API (and you can even edit load balancers!)

So let’s dive into the application functionality.

Your Initial Setup

When you first launch the GoGrid application, you are asked to create an optional 4-digit pass code. This is recommended as it provides an additional layer of protection of your various GoGrid environments.

Once you create your pass code, you will be prompted to enter in a GoGrid account. In order to do this, you MUST have an API key and secret already set up within your GoGrid account. To do this, simply log into the GoGrid web portal (http://my.gogrid.com) and go to the API tab and create a new API key. After that, go back to the iPhone application and fill out the following screens to create your account.

Fill out the following fields:

• Account Name – this does not update anything on your GoGrid account and is merely a local name within the GoGrid iPhone application
• API key – get this from the GoGrid Web Portal
• API secret – get this from the GoGrid Web Portal

Once the API key and secret are validated (and note, you must have a network connection for this and other actions you do within the application), you will see it listed in the Accounts section. You can Edit as well as Add other accounts as needed now or in the future.

Select the Account you want to manage and click the Log In button. The “doors” will close and within a few seconds open again and you will have access to your GoGrid account.

Now on to the Management screens.

The Various Management Screens

There are a series of management screens available for you to control your GoGrid architecture. The screens are:

• My Cloud
  • Cloud Servers
  • Load Balancers
  • IP addresses
• Job History
• Account
• Settings & More

When you click on the “My Cloud” icon at the bottom bar, you can view your Cloud Servers, Load Balancers and IP Addresses. In the Cloud Servers screen, you can scroll through all of the GoGrid Cloud Servers you have currently deployed in our data centers:

If you flip the screen to the left, you see all of your Load Balancers:

Flipping one more time shows you all of the IP Addresses in your data centers that are either in use or available.

The Job History tab shows all of the events that has taken place within your GoGrid account. Items like creating or deleting objects or restarts will be displayed here.

The Account tab provides a snapshot of your current Billing Summary and your RAM and Bandwidth usage. You can also get the User Names and Passwords for your active servers further down this screen.

The Settings & More tab includes a variety of other non-cloud-management items.

So let’s dive into some of the functionality available within this application.

Cloud Servers

The GoGrid iPhone application provides you with the ability to:

• View all of your Cloud Servers including details of each server
• Create new Cloud Servers in various data centers
• Restart your server
• View Password information about your server
• Delete your server

The graphic below shows a listing of all active servers within your GoGrid account. You can scroll up and down to view the entire list.

Clicking on a specific server brings up all of the details of that server. Within this view, you can also Delete, Restart or view the User Names/Passwords associated with this server.

To create a new Cloud Server, simply click on the Add button at the top of the screen. Next, select the Data Center you want your new server to be located at:

Clicking the Next button will bring up a list of available Cloud Server images within that datacenter. Depending on the datacenter, you will see a list of available GoGrid base server images, Partner Server Images (PGSIs) or your own Personal Server Images (MyGSIs).

Note, you can also Filter the list of images by clicking on the Filter button.

Now, click on the Server Image that you desire. Details (including any associated additional cost) is presented:

Click Next to continue. The next screen contains the Server Details. Here you enter the Name of the server, a brief Description and then select the IP address and RAM allocation for your server.

Clicking on the IP address field bring up a selector of available IP addresses in your GoGrid Account for that data center:

Similarly, you select the amount of RAM you would like your server to have from the available options presented.

Once you have filled out the Server Details form, click Finish create your Cloud Server. The new server request will be then queued for deployment (and you can see the request under the Job History tab discussed later).

Load Balancers

Similar to the management of Cloud Servers, you can also manage the Load Balancers within your GoGrid environment. You have the ability to:

Flipping from the Cloud Server section of My Cloud to the Load Balancer section presents you with a listing of your active Load Balancers. Here, like with the Cloud Server section, you can scroll up or down to see all of your Load Balancers:

Clicking on a Load Balancer brings up the details of that specific Load Balancer.

Clicking on the Delete button at the bottom will delete the Load Balancer. Clicking on the IP List will show all of the IP addresses that are bound to that Load Balancer (e.g., the IP addresses of other servers in your GoGrid network):

To Create a new load balancer, be sure that you are NOT in the detail view of a Load Balancer. You need to be in the general listing of Load Balancers and you will see the Add button at the top. Click Add to start the process. First you select the data center where you want your Load Balancer to reside:

Then you fill out the Details of that load balancer including the Name, brief Description, Virtual IP address of the LB, the port that you want the traffic at, the Connection Type and then the Persistence.

Choose the Type of Load Balancing you want (Least Connect or Round Robin):

And then the Persistence (None, Source Address or SSL Sticky):

Click the Next button to enter in the Real IP addresses of the servers you want the traffic to go to. First click on the Real IPs box to bring up a list of IP addresses to choose from. These could be IP addresses that are either available (e.g., not tied to server) or in use (used by a server). Then click on the Port field and enter the port number for that IP address. Finally click the Add (+) button to add that IP address and Port to the Load Balancer.

You can add multiple IP addresses and ports to the load balancer. When you are completed, click the Finish button and your load balancer will be queued for creation.

In the Job History tab, you can see the Load Balancer’s creation status.

If you want to edit a load balancer, simply click on the load balancer you want to edit. When you see the details, you will see the Edit button at the top of the screen:

The process to Edit the load balancer is much like that of creating a new load balancer so please follow those steps.

IP Addresses

The IP Addresses section of the My Cloud lists out all of the IP addresses that are either In Use or Available for you to use within your GoGrid infrastructure. As with the Load Balancers and Cloud Servers section, you can scroll up and down through the listing.

Clicking on a specific IP Address provides you with additional details.

You can also Filter your IP addresses by Data Center and whether they are In Use or Available.

Job History

To the right of the My Cloud tab is the Job History tab. This contains a running history of all actions (and states – represented by the color dots – green, yellow and red) that have taken place on objects (e.g., Load Balancers, Cloud Servers, Cloud Storage, Account, etc.) within your GoGrid Cloud.

Clicking on a specific Job or Event will bring up details about that event:

And clicking on the Show Timeline will give you the details of that particular event.

You can also Filter events by Type, Date and Status.

Filtering will produce a subset of results.

Account

The Account tab gives you insight into the Usage on your account as well as provides the details of Users Names & Passwords that are also shown in your GoGrid portal. For example, you create a new server using the GoGrid iPhone Application, the User Name and Password for that server will appear within this section (as it is done automatically when servers are created).

Shown above is the Billing Summary which is the same as the billing widget that currently resides within the GoGrid web portal. In it you can see:

• Your Billing Cycle
• Amount of RAM currently allocated in your Plan (if you are on a Volume Discount plan)
• The amount of RAM currently in use
• The amount of GB hours used to date in your billing cycle
• Your Transfer allotment based on your Plan (if on a Volume Discount plan)
• The GBs of data transfer used to date in your billing cycle

Under the Password section, you can click through to passwords by server name. Viewing the details of the server shows the IP address, User Name and Password. These fields can be copied by simply clicking on them. This is useful if you need to send someone the server credentials via SMS or email.

Settings & More

This is sort of the catch-all section of the application with a lot of items that do not directly interface with your GoGrid account.

Here you can:

• Change the Password of your GoGrid iPhone application
• Add, Edit or Delete GoGrid accounts managed on your iPhone application
• Submit a questions or issue related to the GoGrid iPhone application
• Contact GoGrid Support on questions related to your GoGrid account (NOT the iPhone application)
• Read About GoGrid (but you already know a lot about us if you are using this application)
• View mobile versions of our Twitter and Facebook accounts
• View the mobile version of the GoGrid blog
• View our current Service Level Agreement (SLA) – note, the iPhone Application is NOT covered by our SLA currently
• View information about the application developer (flaka.soft)

So, What Do You Think?

A lot of hours were spent on the design and development of the GoGrid iPhone application. It was our desire to create a simple yet powerful solution for GoGrid users to control their infrastructure running on GoGrid. Being able to command your GoGrid infrastructure on the go from wherever you are gives IT professionals, sysadmins and developers an added level of convenience and security.

This was an important personal project of mine as well, so much so that at the beginning of the year, I flat out told our CEO that if we did not have an iPhone application by the end of 2010, I would quit! (I guess I will be sticking around for a while now!) Being able to provide management tools to GoGrid users (e.g., award-winning Web Portal, API and now iPhone application) makes their lives easier and being able to fully control their GoGrid cloud on the go, where ever they are, is truly compelling and paramount to a successful cloud service.

If you are a GoGrid user, be sure to download the GoGrid iPhone application from iTunes NOW! Let us know what you think and if you like it, be sure to give us some ratings and write a review in iTunes!

• Bio
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Michael Sheehan

Technology Evangelist at GoGrid

Michael Sheehan is the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid & "Social Media Strategist" as well. He handles digital media marketing, online audience development, PR, media relations, content creation and editing as well as a variety of other tasks. He is also an avid social media pundit and technology blogger.

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Tags: API, App, Apple, Application, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud infrastructure, Cloud Management, GoGrid, iPhone, iPod Touch, Release
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 at 11:24 am and is filed under API, Cloud Computing, Cloud Server, Cloudcenter, Datacenter, FAQs, Features, General, GoGrid, How To, iPhone, News, Release. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.