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Our software “elves” have been hard at work preparing the latest and greatest feature and service updates to the GoGrid cloud. We are excited about our December 2010 release as it is packed with enhancements and new and updated features to truly make GoGrid your choice for deploying Cloud Infrastructure or setting up a Hybrid Hosting environment.
Some of the noteworthy features and changes include:
- GoGrid Dedicated Servers in our East Coast Data Center
- Limited Time Promotion on East Coast Dedicated Servers and West Coast GoGrid Firewall
- GoGrid Image Sharing
- GoGrid Fortinet Firewall Ordering
- Increase Windows Sandbox Server Size
- Other Changes including Windows Patch Updates
Read on for more details on each of the items above.
GoGrid Dedicated Servers on East Coast
GoGrid has been leading the industry when it comes to Hybrid Hosting as is evident with other providers rolling out similar features. However, we are 2 years ahead of most of our competitors in providing integrated cloud and dedicated infrastructures within GoGrid. To complement this, we have rolled out GoGrid Dedicated Servers in our East Coast facility (US-East-1). GoGrid Dedicated Servers (GGDS) in our West Coast data center (US-West-1) have been incredibly successful for our customers.
GoGrid Dedicated Servers are provisioned via the GoGrid web portal and can be fully publicly and/or privately networked with our F5 load balancers, Firewalls, and Cloud Storage. There are a variety of use cases you might want to consider that are optimal for using Dedicated Servers or a hybrid of Dedicated and Cloud Servers including:
- Disaster Recovery – now you can set up a DR environment on either the East or West Coast.
- Fail Over – similar to DR environment, mirroring or providing a portion of your infrastructure on either coast can help you recover from costly outages. You can also set up a secondary presence to handle routine maintenance periods.
- Unique Application Sets – there may be some applications that have requirements for particular hardware or operating systems not available within the GoGrid Cloud Server list. In many cases, Dedicated Servers can meet these requirements.
The steps to provision a GoGrid Dedicated Server are the same in all of our data centers.
When you first launch the Add screen, you can select either US-West-1 or US-East-1. Selecting US-East-1 will show you the following:
You can see that “Dedicated Server” is now an option. Selecting that will start you down the easy process of provisioning a Dedicated Server.
Fill out the form and choose a Configuration option and Pricing plan.
Accept the Terms of Service for the Dedicated Server:
Once the server request has been created, it will be available within 2 business days as per GoGrid’s Service Level Agreement (SLA). You can track the progress by viewing the icon within the Grid and List views. Yellow means that it is being provisioned. When it is Green, your server is ready to use. The server below (GGDS East #1) is in the “Processing” state:
You can also view the status via the Jobs tab.
Once the Dedicated Server is ready, the Job will show as “Succeeded”:
GoGrid Dedicated Servers are also displayed within the List View.
| We will be having a Live Training session on Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 11:00 am PST. During the training session, a GoGrid Technical Account Manager can walk you through our new features as well as answer any questions you may have. Please register for this training! |
Promotion on GoGrid Dedicated Servers or GoGrid Hardware Firewall
Beginning on 12/15/2010, GoGrid will be making minor price increases on Standard Dedicated Servers and Advanced Dedicated servers. The new pricing is reflected below:
- Standard Dedicated Servers: $300/month or $3,000/year if prepaid annually
- Advanced Dedicated Servers: $400/month or $4,000/year if prepaid annually
NOTE: If you purchase a GoGrid Dedicated Server prior to 12/15/2010, you will be GRANDFATHERED into the current pricing plan. What that means is if you purchase a Dedicated Server before 12/15/10, your price will remain at the old rates as long as you have the server deployed. The price for Ultra Dedicated Servers is not changing.
| Limited Time Promotion! We are offering a limited time $100/month credit towards either a GoGrid Dedicated Server in the US-East-1 data center, or a GoGrid Hardware Firewall in the US-West-1 data center. Details: - This promotion is valid between 12/15/2010 and 12/31/2010. - An annual commitment is required (Pay-As-You-Go plan is not eligible). - You must contact your GoGrid Account Manager to start your savings. - ONLY GoGrid Dedicated Servers in the US-East-1 data center are eligible. - GoGrid Hardware Firewalls are eligible only in the US-West-1 data center. |
GoGrid Image Sharing
Have you created a server image that you are proud of? Or perhaps you want to share a Diaspora server to help spread the Open Source alternative to Facebook? With this release, we have launched a new GoGrid Image Sharing feature that allows for true collaboration between GoGrid users across the globe. The process is extremely easy. You start with a MyGSI (GoGrid Personal Server Image) and then simply click on the Sharing icon to make it available to all GoGrid users. Let’s walk through this briefly.
First, start with a private server image (MyGSI). Details on how to create a MyGSI can be found here.
Once you create your MyGSI, it will appear under the Images tab:
Note the Sharing state is set to “Private” by default and the icon next to it shows a single user.
To make the image “Public“, simply click on the Server Image line. It will launch the editing screen (where you can change the Name and Description of your server, as well as the minimum RAM required to use your image):
When you choose to make your image “Public” be sure to choose a clear, descriptive name to make it easier for users to find. Also, be sure to set the minimum amount of RAM for that server image to be at a level that it would perform well for other GoGrid users who deploy it.
Simply change the Sharing status from “Private” to “Public” and click the Submit button. Your server image will then be available to all GoGrid users.
Should you ever need to make changes to your server image, be sure to mark the image as “Private” and then go through the Image change process of using that Server Image to create another Image Sandbox, making your appropriate edits and then creating a new MyGSI.
Once the image is publically shared, it will appear within the GoGrid Cloud Server Image Selector (note the Owner column):
Creating a new server based on this Shared Server Image is the same process as creating any other Cloud Server within GoGrid. The only exception is that when you select a shared image, you will be presented with a screen that says GoGrid does not provide support for this image.
Once you agree to the terms, you can create your server.
| We will be having a Live Training session on Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 11:00 am PST. During the training session, a GoGrid Technical Account Manager can walk you through our new features as well as answer any questions you may have. Please register for this training! |
GoGrid Fortinet Firewall Ordering
With this release, you can now easily order a GoGrid Fortinet hardware firewall. To provision a hardware firewall via the GoGrid Customer Portal you simply need to click on the Fortinet Firewall link in the portal. It appears under the Quick Links section:
As well as within the List view when the Network section is active:
Once you click on that link, you will be presented with the Fortinet Firewall Order Form:
Fill out all of the required and appropriate information and your GoGrid Hardware Firewall will be available within 2 business days. You will be notified via email when your Firewall is available to use. Please note, the Fortinet Firewall option currently is only available in our US-West-1 data center.
The GoGrid Hardware Firewall is $200/month and this price includes one type of VPN connection. Additional VPNs are available at $50/month or $500/year with a pre-paid plan.
| Limited Time Promotion! We are offering a limited time $100/month credit towards either a GoGrid Dedicated Server in the US-East-1 data center, or a GoGrid Hardware Firewall in the US-West-1 data center. Details: - This promotion is valid between 12/15/2010 and 12/31/2010. - An annual commitment is required (Pay-As-You-Go plan is not eligible). - You must contact your GoGrid Account Manager to start your savings. - ONLY GoGrid Dedicated Servers in US-East-1 data center are eligible. - GoGrid Hardware Firewalls are eligible only in the US-West-1 data center. |
Increase Windows Sandbox Size
Users of Windows Servers and the GoGrid MyGSI feature will rejoice with this enhancement. Due to popular request, we are increasing the GoGrid Sandbox Image size from 20 GB to 30 GB. The sandbox disk size for Linux distros will remain at 20 GB.
This increase in size will allow you to have more space for software and OS updates as well as your code and data.
Other Changes including Windows Patch Updates
This release also includes some other changes of note. For starters, we have renamed the “Upgrade” icon to “Scale”. This is part of the RAM Scaling feature that we released previously. To scale your servers vertically (meaning increasing or decreasing the amount of RAM allocated to your server), simply click on the server you want to scale and click the Scale icon:
For more details, please read our blog post on this feature.
We have also updated our base GoGrid Server Images for Windows to include the latest software updates and security patches as of November 30, 2010. The following servers have been updated:
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition R2 w/MSSQL 2008 Workgroup
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition R2 w/MSSQL 2008 Standard
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition R2 w/None
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 w/None
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition R2 w/MSSQL 2005 Standard
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition R2 w/MSSQL 2005 Workgroup
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition w/None
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition w/MSSQL 2008 Express / PHP5 / IIS 7.0 + FastCGI
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 Edition w/None
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 Edition w/MSSQL 2008 Standard
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 Edition w/MSSQL 2008 Workgroup
Several bug fixes have also been applied and the GoGrid API has been updated to version 1.7. Please see our Wiki for documentation on the new API items.
More to Come!
I’m sure that you’ll agree this is quite a list of enhancements and new features. There’s plenty more coming in 2011! I encourage you to attend our Webinars or request a 1-on-1 consultation with one of our GoGrid Cloud Specialists to learn more about how GoGrid makes Complex Infrastructure Easy!
Michael Sheehan
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