GoGrid has long been supporter of open standards and the open source movement. We recently promoted how many open source solution providers are leveraging GoGrid as a platform to disseminate their open source solutions and technology in the cloud. Long before that at the beginning of 2009, we made our public API available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. This meant that under this licensing, developers could “share, distribute, display and perform the work” as well as “make derivative works” based on our API.

Now we are taking it one step further because we realize in order for Cloud Computing to be adopted across the business IT landscape, there needs to be more standards put in place as well as a commonality across the board when it comes to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The Deltacloud initiative is grabbing this issue by the horns by working to combine interoperability with an open sourced API. And, they are the only major cloud framework that isn’t leveraging a single company’s proprietary code, API or intellectual property.

Deltacloud, an Apache Software Foundation incubator project that provides an open set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable computing interoperability across private and public clouds, recently announced support for GoGrid and we are pleased to participate in this important initiative. There are quite a few advantages of this effort, specifically:

• The API can be offered by a cloud provider or individual user running their own server
• Multiple client libraries can be written in a variety of computer languages (many are already available)
• The core API logic resides on the API server, allowing consistent behavior across all client libraries
• New cloud providers can be added to the API without needing to change the clients

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This week, GoGrid was not only an exhibitor and Silver Sponsor of the Cloud Connect Event 2010 in Santa Clara, CA, but also our Lead Senior Software Engineer, Justin Kitagawa, was part of a panel titled “Writing Code for Many Clouds“.

The panel was moderated by Shlomo Swidler (Founder, Orchestratus) and the members included:

• Shashi Mysore, Product Specialist, Eucalyptus Systems
• Adrian Cole, Founder, jClouds
• George Reese, CTO, enStratus
• Michael Mayo, Rackspace
• Mitch Garnaat, President, CloudRight
• Justin Kitagawa, Lead Senior Software Engineer, GoGrid
• Sam Ramji, Vice President of Strategy, Sonoa Systems

Each panel member was allowed a few minutes to discuss how their service can be controlled programmatically via an API or other method. This is an important discussion point because many companies and developers are looking to build applications that span clouds. However prior to doing this, these developers must fully understand how a cloud is architected and can be utilized. Obviously, when building a cloud as a vendor, there are challenges and hurdles that must be overcome in the process. Each of the panelists discussed their design decisions and then answered questions presented to them by the moderator as well as by audience members.

As an attendee of this panel, I thought it important to present GoGrid’s thoughts on our own API and how we came to make the decisions behind its development. Below is a video of Justin’s presentation which covers: (more…)

A couple of weeks ago we released a new version of GoGrid which included a variety of exciting enhancements and features. Most notable are:

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit F5 Load Balancers via the API
• New Login Page
• Self Service Support Links

More details about these features can be found on the following GoGrid blog post. For a quick overview of the new features in the form of a screencast, please watch the video below. I quickly cover many of the items listed above including:

• Walking through the new login page
• Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
• Overview of the new GoGrid List View
• Dedicated Servers showing in the Jobs Tab
• Showing of Self-Service Links in the portal
• Editing Load Balancers using the GoGrid API

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Today, the team at GoGrid is pleased to announce several new enhancements and features to our Cloud Infrastructure Hosting service. With us, it is all about trying to make our Cloud offering as powerful as possible. To that end, we have released our latest version of GoGrid, available now! Some highlights include (each of which I will go into further details later on in this post):

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit f5 Load Balancers
• New Login Page
• Self-Service Support Links
• Other Items

We hope that you share our excitement about this release! Now, let’s get into the details. Also be sure to see our video that talks about many of the items listed here (Available on GoGrid YouTube channel and the GoGrid Facebook Fan Page as well.)

GoGrid Dedicated Servers

Let’s face it, we have been doing dedicated hosting for over 8 years so we do know a little bit about it. Last year, we introduced a first-to-market service that we internally called “Hybrid Hosting” which allowed users to connect GoGrid cloud infrastructure with a separate dedicated infrastructure, all within a private network. This proved to be incredibly successful, and something that many of our customers had desired. So, we decided to take it to the next level by offering Dedicated Servers within the GoGrid infrastructure.

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Sometimes it is important to reflect back on activities and achievements of the past year in order to focus on the road ahead. 2009 was a year full of “firsts” and exciting announcements for GoGrid and I thought that I would quickly summarize and highlight a some blog posts of interest.

I have personally enjoyed documenting our achievements, analyzing trends, reviewing opportunities, showcasing new clients and partners as well as musing about Cloud Computing in general. Much of the writing on the GoGrid blog during 2009 was my own, however, the people who have helped provide me inspiration are countless, ranging from those within GoGrid to others creating the cloud community at large.

The journey through 2009 has definitely been an exciting one. Looking back on 2009 should make all users, creators and consumers of the cloud very proud. We have done a tremendous amount in 2009! So without further ado, below are a few selected posts of interest from the GoGrid blog for each month during 2009.

January 2009

• “Cloudcenters Are Datacenters In The Sky” – in this post, Randy Bias outlines his vision of what the “cloudcenter” meme truly is and how it is unique
• “Building A House In The Cloud – Cloudcenters Vs. Infrastructure Web Services” – in this post, I tried to simplify some of the differences between our new term of “cloudcenter” and “infrastructure web services” using a comparison to building a house.
• “GoGrid Releases API Specification To The Cloud Computing Community Under Creative Commons License” – GoGrid released our Application Programming Interface (API) under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 License which allows users to share, distribute, display and make derivative works based on our API
• “New Windows Server 2003 & 2008 Images Added To GoGrid” – we continued to build out our Windows Server 2003 and 2008 image offering as the first to market with Windows Server 2008 in the Cloud
• All January posts are here

February 2009 (more…)

It’s important to us to clarify GoGrid’s position with regard to cloud computing standards and the Open Cloud Manifesto (OCM). There has been a fair bit of controversy in the ‘blogosphere’ recently over the OCM, which is to be released on Monday.

In particular, myself and Steve Gillmor (of TechCrunch IT fame among others), had a somewhat heated, but friendly exchange over his scathing assessment of the situation. Steve invited me to a “News Gang” podcast of the Gillmor Gang on Friday, which was posted here. During that live podcast he asked us to clarify GoGrid’s position.

This post is really about making sure everyone is on the same page and understands how GoGrid views the OCM and cloud computing standards in general.

Background
It’s unnecessary to recap everything in detail. I think James Urquhart handled this fairly succinctly. Geva Perry also has a nice summary including a link to the draft document. In a nut:

1. Some folks tried to lay down some guiding principles for “open” cloud computing in the Open Cloud Manifesto
2. Some folks reacted badly feeling that the process wasn’t actually “open”
3. Bruhaha ensued

Who cares?

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By now, many in the Cloud Computing space have heard about (or even read) the University of California Electrical Engineering & Computer Science’s (EECS) study on Cloud Computing titled: “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing.” Published on February 10th, 2009, the EECS’s paper provides a seemingly academic study of the Cloud Computing movement, attempts to explain what Cloud Computing is all about, and identifies potential opportunities as well as challenges present within the market.

The 20+ page study is authored by Michael Armbrust, Armando Fox, Rean Griffith, Anthony D. Joseph, Randy H. Katz, Andrew Konwinski, Gunho Lee, David A. Patterson, Ariel Rabkin, Ion Stoica and Matei Zaharia who all work in RAD Lab. (Interestingly, several of the companies mentioned within the study are also Founding Sponsors and/or affiliate members: Sun, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, etc.).

There has already been plenty of discussion and analysis of this study (by James Urquhart, Krishna Sankar and has even appeared on Slashdot.org). Needless to say, I felt compelled to get my two cents in, especially from the perspective of a Cloud Computing Infrastructure vendor.

From an academic standpoint, this document definitely has some legs. It is complete with carefully thought out scenarios, examples and even formulae, as well as graphs and tables. Some of the points that are brought up even got me scratching my head (e.g., using flash memory to help by “adding another relatively fast layer to the classic memory hierarchy”). Even the case analysis of a DDoS attack from a cost perspective of those initiating an attack to those warding off an attack on a Cloud was interesting to ponder. I commend these group of authors on undertaking such a grand task of not only writing by committee but also overlaying a very business school vs. mathematics and computer sciences approach to the writing and analysis.

Unfortunately, however, as I read through the document, I started scrawling madly in the margins with commentary that is somewhat contrary to what was written within the study.

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Last week, we quietly released some new larger GoGrid Cloud server instances. Today we are making that announcement a bit louder. What does this mean to you? Well, your GoGrid cloudcenter just got a bit broader and more powerful. For a year now, we have been offering 0.5, 1 and 2 Gigabyte RAM options in both Windows and Linux, now we have 4 and 8 GB RAM instances available. These larger instances, available on all 64-bit operating systems, allow for new types of higher-end environments to be spun up using all of the characteristics of Cloud Computing.

The lower size RAM instances (0.5, 1 & 2 GB) are perfect for a web front-end, where either Apache or IIS are running. For extremely high-performance and high I/O instances, we have been offering Cloud Connect as a way to create a dedicated hybrid infrastructure where Cloud Web Servers running on GoGrid can be linked via private dedicated network connections to dedicated and managed servers within the ServePath network.

With the new 4 and 8 GB RAM options, you can now set up a infrastructure with a robust set of high-performance application servers within the Cloud. These types of high RAM instances are perfect for users who want to take advantage of the increased RAM, CPU cores and persistent storage, especially when used in conjunction with specific applications (e.g., Microsoft SQL server or other Enterprise applications) that require more larger amounts of resources like RAM or CPU.

The 4 GB RAM server images can be deployed via the GoGrid web portal and API. The 8 GB RAM server images currently may only be deployed via the GoGrid API. I recommend reading the API section of the GoGrid wiki in order to fully understand how to deploy 8 GB RAM instances.

The 4 and 8 GB RAM images, available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, CentOS 5.1, and Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 64-bit operating systems bring a new level of performance to the GoGrid line. 4 GB Cloud Servers have 3 CPU Cores and 8 GB have 6 CPU Cores, ensuring dedicated CPU allocations and high performance.

All GoGrid Cloud Servers come with persistent storage. The new larger RAM allocations announced today, are delivered with increased persistent storage: 4 GB Cloud Servers have 240 GB of hard drive space and 8 GB have 480 GB of storage allocated at boot time. Additional storage can be added using GoGrid’s dynamically scalable Cloud Storage offering which includes a 10 GB free allotment to start with. Each 1 GB thereafter costs $0.15/GB/month.

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Last week, Randy Bias, VP of Technology Strategy and I participated in a podcast on Cloud Computing called “Overcast: Conversations on Cloud Computing“, hosted by James Urquhart and Geva Perry. The Overcast podcast series discusses various aspects of the Cloud Computing Industry and related technologies. Previous guests included Lew Tucker (Sun Microsystems), Greg Ness (Infoblox) and John Willis (a leading cloud computing blogger), among others. The podcast, “Overcast Show#6: Feb 5, 2009 – with Randy Bias and Michael Sheehan, GoGrid” is a little less than an hour in length and covers many of the following topics:

• Distinction and clarifications around the terms “Cloudcenter” and “Infrastructure Web Services” as they existing within the Cloud Infrastructure layer. (More reading on cloudcenters can be found here and here.)
• Understanding GoGrid’s approach to standards and interoperability, especially as they relate to datacenter and infrastructure standards
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers such as Google App Engine and how Cloud Infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) and GoGrid fits in
• Discussion around how we recently put our GoGrid API under a Creative Commons license as well as our efforts to involve other cloud providers and vendors, such as Flexiscale, RightScale and Eucalyptus, in building open standards from the ground up (more info here)
• How GoGrid is working with Puppet and Chef technologies to automate system administration and configuration management
• Using GoGrid’s Cloud Connect offering to “cloudburst” and create hybrid infrastructure topologies using the dynamic scalability of Cloud Web Servers and the robust, high I/O throughput of dedicated backend servers
• …and much more…

We encourage you to listen to this podcast to gain some insight on our thought leadership, concepts and ideas around Cloud Computing, GoGrid and the hosting industry in general. This (and all) podcasts are available in a variety of formats:

• Download Overcast Podcast #6 as an MP3 File
• Subscribe to Overcast in iTunes (Note: this link will attempt to launch iTunes.)
• Play from this site (click on the graphic below)

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Today GoGrid did something big, significantly smaller than the 2009 Obama Inauguration of course, but significant enough within the Cloud Computing community to warrant some attention. Today we released our GoGrid cloudcenter Application Programming Interface (API) specification under a Creative Commons license. This is particularly important to developers, system integrators, IT professionals and other companies as it allows them to openly copy, modify, distribute and republish our Cloud Computing API.

The Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license, under which the GoGrid cloudcenter API now falls, allows for the ability to:

• Share, distribute, display and perform the work
• Make derivative works

The GoGrid cloudcenter API re-use must, however, fall under the following Share Alike licensing conditions:

• There must be full attribution to GoGrid, author and licensor
• There is no implied endorsement by GoGrid of any works derived from the API usage or rework
• After any transformation, alteration or building upon this work, any distribution must be under the same, a similar or a compatible license
• You must make it clear to others about the terms of this license. The best way to do this is by linking to the GoGrid Wiki API page (link below)
• Any of the conditions mentioned previously can be waived with permission from GoGrid

Details on the GoGrid cloudcenter OpenSpec API license can be found within the GoGrid site and is specific to the API only. All content provided on the Wiki in the API “namespace” is covered by this Share Alike license, specifically under this URL: http://wiki.gogrid.com/wiki/index.php/API. Note however, this license applies only to content provided within the namespace plus any pages constrained by the URL plus a colon (“:”). For example:

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