Similar to its predecessor, this webinar covered many aspects of the GoGrid 3.0 release. Presenters were Jeff Samuels, Michael Sheehan and Kole Hicks of GoGrid. The topics we discussed included:

• Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy
• Landscape & GoGrid 3.0: What is the Cloud, GoGrid 3.0 new features
• Partner Ecosystem: Solutions from the GoGrid Exchange
• GoGrid’s Unique Value Proposition: Direction of the GoGrid Cloud

If you were unable to attend this webinar, the full recording is available below as well as on our Vimeo channel:

GoGrid 3.0 Webinar: Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud from GoGrid on Vimeo.

The presentation deck is also embedded below and is similarly available on our SlideShare channel:

We realize that it is very difficult to cover all of the features and services available to GoGrid customers. This webinar obviously only touches upon a few key items. We encourage you to explore the newly redesigned GoGrid website and be sure to contact a Sales Representative should you have any additional questions.

If there are other topics you would like to see covered in future webinars (or blog posts), please leave a comment and let me know.

This webinar was recorded on June 28, 2010, the day of the official release of GoGrid 3.0. Presenters were Mario Olivarez & Justin Kitagawa of GoGrid and Ryan Holland of TrendMicro. The topics included:

• Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – GoGrid’s unique value proposition
• GoGrid 3.0: The latest version of the GoGrid platform – East Coast demo
• GoGrid Security: New services from Cisco, Fortinet, TrendMicro & Sentrigo
• PCI Compliance: PCI compliance in the GoGrid Cloud – Demo with TrendMicro
• Questions & Answers

I realize that not all GoGrid customers were able to attend this webinar, so I have provided the full recording below (it is also available on our Vimeo channel):

GoGrid 3.0 Webinar: Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release & New Datacenter from GoGrid on Vimeo.

Also, for those interested in seeing just the presentation slide deck, that too is available for viewing below (as well as online in our SlideShare channel):

If you have any questions about the content that was covered within this webinar, please leave a comment on this post and I will be sure that it is answered. Also be sure to check the “Webinar” category on the GoGrid blog for past webinars that have been delivered.

Are there any topics you would like covered in future webinars? Please let me know.

Below is the full content of the newsletter:

Hello,

It’s been a busy start to the first half of the year for us at GoGrid. We’re excited to fill you in on all of our important news and how we’ve been working to make your GoGrid cloud even better. From opening a new East Coast data center to our release of GoGrid version 3.0, you’ll find this newsletter full of information on how you can enhance and expand your GoGrid cloud.

Specific topics include:

• New East Coast Data Center
• GoGrid 3.0
• GoGrid’s Leadership Team
• CloudHarmony Benchmarks
• New GoGrid Website
• Partner News
• Events and Other News

NEW EAST COAST DATA CENTER

We’re thrilled to announce our new East Coast (US-East-1) data center in Ashburn, VA. Our expansion to the East Coast has been in development for several months and is available now. All of our GoGrid data center locations are SAS70 Type II certified and Cisco Powered Networks.

Data Center Locations:

• West Coast (US-West-1): San Francisco, CA
• East Coast (US-East-1): Ashburn, VA

Virtual servers with GoGrid base images are available for immediate deployment at the US-East-1 data center; additional features will be launched in subsequent releases. You can use the GoGrid portal or API to provision virtual servers in real time, and in either of our locations; US-West-1 or US-East-1.

GOGRID 3.0

You’ll notice that throughout the newsletter we’ll be talking about making complex infrastructure easy and that’s really the goal of GoGrid version 3.0. In addition to continually enhancing our product offering, we’ve also been listening to you – our customers – and developing features that make creating a complex IT infrastructure in the GoGrid cloud easy.

Some of the new features and system enhancements you’ll recognize from previous newsletters, however, the culmination of all the hardware architecture and feature development make up GoGrid version 3.0. While each of our releases contain many features and improvements, the timeline below represents those that can help you make an immediate impact on how you leverage your GoGrid cloud.

GoGrid 3.0 Timeline: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy

• June 2010 New East Coast Data Center – GoGrid partners with Equinix, Inc (Nasdaq: EQIX) in the expansion to a new data center in Ashburn, VA. The initial rollout enables you to provision cloud servers in real-time and in either location Us-East-1 or US-West-1.
• May 2010 GoGrid Node Hardware and increased CPU allocations – All GoGrid data centers are updated and outfitted with the latest Intel Nehalem chipset architecture which allows for 25-50% more CPU for virtual servers. Cloud Servers also now have greater CPU allocations. See the blog posting.
• April 2010 Hardware Firewalls – Firewall services are introduced allowing you to manage security for your GoGrid VLAN from a single device.
• February 2010 Virtual & Physical Servers – The ability to create a hybrid IT infrastructure with virtual and physical servers within the same environment becomes available.
• November 2009 GoGrid Exchange – GoGrid introduces the GoGrid Exchange with new Partner Server Images (PGSIs). PGSIs provide a variety of software solutions deployed as software server images for common business challenges including: Software & Applications, Development & Testing, Disaster Recovery & Backup, Cloud Management, and Security, Monitoring & Reporting.
• November 2009 Content Delivery Network – GoGrid CDN is rolled out, allowing you to accelerate the delivery of all your web content using our global infrastructure.

GOGRID’S LEADERSHIP TEAM

Not only have we been enhancing our product offering, but, we’ve also been expanding our GoGrid leadership team. With a keen eye to selecting industry pioneers with proven track records, we’d like to introduce you to the newest members of our leadership team and formally introduce you to all of our GoGrid executives.

New Members of the Executive Team

• Jeff Samuels, CMO
• Mark Worsey, CIO and EVP of Technology

Executive Team

• John Keagy, Founder and CEO
• Brett Newsom, CFO
• Jeff Samuels, CMO
• Mark Worsey, CIO and EVP of Technology
• Jack Duffy, EVP of Sales and Business Development
• Paul Lappas, VP of Engineering
• Mario Olivarez, VP of Product Management
• Bobby Brown, VP of Operations and Support

Learn more about each of our executives on the GoGrid website.

CLOUDHARMONY BENCHMARKS

CloudHarmony just announced the results of the first industry wide test of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. In the recently published Input/Output (I/O) Cloud Performance report, GoGrid Cloud Servers dramatically outperform most other cloud vendors in the marketplace.

GoGrid Benchmark Results:

• GoGrid’s 4 GB RAM cloud server benchmark performed best with input/output performance (IOP) of 161.14. This was over 50% faster than Amazon’s equivalent cloud server which had an IOP of 104.36
• Our 4 GB RAM cloud server was almost twice as fast as RackSpace’s equivalent cloud server which had an IOP of 86.75

Read the GoGrid blog for more details on the methodology and results.

NEW GOGRID WEBSITE

Our GoGrid website has been completely overhauled. Easily navigate to find product information, pricing plans and case studies to help enhance your GoGrid cloud. Explore the new site www.gogrid.com.

PARTNER NEWS

Did you know that a partner image (PGSI) can be provisioned in minutes, drastically reducing the time it takes to get new applications up and running in the cloud? As a GoGrid user, you have full access to any public PGSI within the GoGrid catalog of images. Detailed partner information, as well as descriptions of the available PGSIs can be found on the GoGrid Exchange.

The following images are NEW to the GoGrid Exchange.

• SNORT IDS/IPS – Snort® is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system (IDS/IPS) developed by Sourcefire. There is an additional charge of $29/month per instance of this deployed. It gets the user access to updated rules via Sourcefire.
• MediaWiki – MediaWiki is a wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis. MediaWiki was designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day.
• JasperServer – JasperServer Community Edition, the open source report server, built by the developers of JasperReports, the leading open source reporting library. It provides a web and web services based environment for reporting and dashboards.
• Spree – The most powerful and flexible E-Commerce platform for the Ruby Enterprise. Spree.
• Coppermine – Coppermine is a multi-purpose, full-featured web picture gallery script written in PHP using GD or ImageMagick as image library with a MySQL backend.
• Rubystack – Ruby on Rails is a full-stack MVC framework for database-backed web applications that is optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration.
• LAPPstack – Includes ready-to-run versions of Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP and phpPgAdmin and required dependencies. LAPPstack
• Librato Silverline – Silverline allows you to process your workload on a smaller number of servers without any impact on the Quality of Service provided by your primary applications.
• Sentrigo Hedgehog – Hedgehog Cloud-Based Database Compliance and Security Suite.

OTHER NEWS AND EVENTS

• Structure 2010 hosted by GigaOm – GoGrid was a sponsor at the annual Structure conference hosted by GigaOm on June 23 and 24.GigaOm/Structure
• GoGrid Named One of The “Hottest Companies in San Francisco” by Lead411Read more on our blog
• GoGrid named “Best Cloud Computing Provider” for May and June 2010 by HostReview.com Read more.
• ASCII Awards GoGrid “Best Channel Incentives.” Find our more on our blog.

As always you can find more information about GoGrid at:

• GoGrid Product Site – www.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Blog – blog.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Wiki – wiki.gogrid.com
• GoGrid Forums – forums.gogrid.com

If you have any questions please contact me directly at Maria[at]gogrid.com.

Thank you,
Maria Gallegos

I told you we were busy! Please don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@GoGrid) as well as become a fan of us on Facebook. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. We hope you enjoy all of the great news coming from our San Francisco headquarters.

This post will not be about the nitty-gritty details of the release as there will be several other posts that touch on all of the activities going on at GoGrid. To provide some guidance though, here’s what I’m going to briefly cover:

• New GoGrid Product Site
• Webinar for New GoGrid Customers
• High-level Overview of GoGrid 3.0 Features
• Copy of Press Release on GoGrid 3.0

There are many ways to get more information about this release and what it can do for you as someone shopping for Cloud Infrastructure or already using the GoGrid Cloud. One of the best ways is to talk to a GoGrid Sales Representative as they have great ways to choose the right GoGrid infrastructure solution for you. You can call them at: 1.877.946.4743 (US & Canada) or 1.415.869.7444 (Worldwide). Or we typically have 24×5 Live Sales Chat & Contact forms available here.

New GoGrid Site

Before I dive into the items that make up this important feature and service release, I also want to point out that we have completely updated the GoGrid Product site.

We have revamped the look and feel and drastically updated the content and organization. The primary sections of the site are:

• Cloud Hosting – http://www.gogrid.com/cloud-hosting/
• Support – http://www.gogrid.com/support/
• Partners – http://www.gogrid.com/partners/
• About Us – http://www.gogrid.com/about/
• Sign Up - http://www.gogrid.com/signUp/

You will notice that many of the top navigation menus now have content within them.

For example, within the Cloud Hosting section, you will find the following subsections:

• What is GoGrid?
• NEW Case Studies
• Infrastructure Components
• Pricing
• Included Features
• Add-on Features

The Support Section contains Support and other Online Resources to make your GoGrid experience and education thereof even better.

The Partner section discusses the various Partner Programs available as well as shows the numerous GoGrid Exchange solutions that you can use to make your infrastructure within the GoGrid cloud even more robust.

The About section actually pulls in the latest GoGrid Blog posts as well as gives more details about the Company as a whole, upcoming Events/Webinars, Press Coverage and Press Releases and Careers at GoGrid (YES, we are HIRING!).

Lastly, you can Sign Up for GoGrid quickly and easily. All that you need is a Credit Card.

Be sure to take a quick look around the new product site. We are definitely pleased with how it turned out!

Upcoming GoGrid Webinar

Whether you are new to Cloud Computing, the GoGrid Cloud or an existing GoGrid user, we understand that with every release, you have questions. Well we have answers for you! To that end, we have set up a webinar for new GoGrid users.

If you are NEW to GoGrid, I recommend that you register and attend the “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy: Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud“:

• Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
• Time: 11:00 am PDT
• Summary:
  • Learn about the enhanced offerings included in the GoGrid 3.0 release and how they can help your business.
  • Understand how GoGrid’s robust partner ecosystem can help you leverage the GoGrid cloud.
  • Discover how GoGrid customers are expanding their cloud environment with our partners and the GoGrid Exchange.
• Details & Registration: http://go.gogrid.com/event_29_june_2010

We definitely hope that you can attend the webinar. If you miss it, don’t worry as we will be posted it and others later. And we do plan on having more webinars in the future.

High-Level Overview of GoGrid 3.0 Features

As I mentioned in my “Sneak Peak” post there are several important items that make up this release, specifically:

• New East Coast Datacenter
• New GoGrid Node hardware
• New CPU and Hard Drive allocations
• Cloud-like Physical Server deployments
• GoGrid Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• More Actionable & Usable List view of GoGrid virtual & physical appliances and networks
• New Pre-Paid and volume-licensing pricing plans
• Robust Partner Ecosystem with the GoGrid Exchange & Partner Server Images (PGSIs)
• Physical & Virtual Hardware Firewalls
• Updated GoGrid API
• Edit Load Balancer API support
• Custom Server Images (MyGSIs)
• Dynamically Scalable Cloud Storage

Critical components of the GoGrid 3.0 launch include:

• New East Coast Datacenter – GoGrid has partnered with Equinix, Inc (Nasdaq: EQIX) in the expansion to a new datacenter in Ashburn, VA which allows for GoGrid to have multiple points of presence in the continental United States. The initial rollout will allow for the provisioning of cloud servers within the new datacenter and with new appliances being rolled out shortly thereafter.

• New GoGrid Node hardware – the new GoGrid East Coast datacenter has been outfitted with the latest Intel Nehalem chipset architecture which allows for 25-50% more CPU for select virtual servers. Cloud Servers now have equal CPU-to-RAM ratios which means better performance across the board.

• Virtual & Physical Server deployments – GoGrid sets the standard for “hybrid hosting” by allowing customers to deploy Cloud Servers and Dedicated Servers within the same infrastructure. The ability to mix and match virtual and physical appliances within the same environment enables never before seen flexibility that maintain cloud characteristics.

• Growing Partner Ecosystem – GoGrid continues to expand its rich and robust Partner ecosystem called the GoGrid Exchange with new and updated Partner Server Images (PGSIs). PGSIs provide a variety of software solutions deployed as software server images for common business challenges including: Software & Applications, Development & Testing, Disaster Recovery & Backup, Cloud Management, and Security, Monitoring & Reporting.

Press Release on GoGrid 3.0

Lastly, below is the GoGrid Press Release that came out today:

GoGrid Unveils Next Generation of Cloud Infrastructure Hosting Service

Market and Customer Demand Drives GoGrid 3.0

San Francisco, CA – June 29, 2010 – GoGrid, a leading Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Hosting Provider, today announced the release of GoGrid Version 3.0. GoGrid 3.0 is designed to extend the company’s leadership position as the most flexible, secure, easy-to-use, and feature-rich Cloud Infrastructure Hosting Solution available. The release includes a number of security and management features designed to enable GoGrid customers to create innovative and compelling infrastructure solutions for their business needs.

GoGrid has been on the leading edge of the cloud market helping company’s like Gomez utilize the  power of cloud computing to transform our infrastructure,” said Colin Mason, Reality Load Product Manager of Gomez, the Web Performance Division of Compuware (NASDAQ: CPWR). “GoGrid delivers outstanding performance and flexibility as Cloud Infrastructure provider. With GoGrid 3.0′s features and new datacenter, we can further integrate the cloud into our business processes.”

GoGrid’s suite of features and services provide the Cloud Computing marketplace with a unique blend of compelling infrastructure solutions. The launch of 3.0 is an important step in realizing GoGrid’s vision of making complex infrastructures easier.

There are many features of GoGrid version 3.0 that will put more flexibility, control, and customizable computing power in the hands of customers. Some of these include:
•    a new East Coast datacenter
•    new CPU and hard drive allocations
•    industry-leading  pre-paid and volume licensing pricing plans and,
•    physical and virtual hardware firewalls for enhanced security.

For a full list of new features please visit http://www.gogrid.com/software-update

GoGrid has continually brought to market pioneering services that help businesses of all sizes seize the tremendous opportunity of cloud hosting.” said GoGrid CEO & Co-Founder, John Keagy. “Our latest release is a significant step forward in our efforts to make complex infrastructure extremely easy in the GoGrid Cloud. From the new East Coast Datacenter to our unique hybrid hosting solution, GoGrid 3.0 epitomizes GoGrid’s mission to handle the infrastructure for clients, so they can focus on their business.”

GoGrid will be hosting a webinar for new comers to Cloud Computing and the GoGrid Cloud on June 29th at 11:00am PDT. To sign up for the webinar, please visit: http://go.gogrid.com/event_29_june_2010.

About GoGrid
GoGrid makes complex infrastructure easy. GoGrid’s Cloud and Hybrid infrastructure hosting enables sysadmins, developers, and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control free f5 load balanced cloud infrastructures and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access/administrative server control. GoGrid physical and virtual server instances maintain industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn proprietary standards. Deploying GoGrid infrastructure using a Standard or Partner Server Image takes minutes via a web control panel or GoGrid’s API. GoGrid gives users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud.

For more information:
Product site: http://www.GoGrid.com

Pretty exciting stuff! If you have any questions about this new GoGrid release, please be sure to leave a comment on this post or contact one of our Sales Representatives.

And lastly, we want to introduce you to our new Unique Value Proposition: “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy™”.

Well, I wanted to give everyone a small update on this upcoming release, especially those GoGrid users who have logged in and seen some slightly changed interfaces.

Note: below the “Highlights of Changes” section is information on two upcoming WEBINARS for future and current GoGrid users. I encourage you to register for one of those.

First, if you want to read a bit more about some of the features included in GoGrid v3.0, take a look at the GoGrid Software Update page. Most importantly, this update lays the groundwork for the opening of our new East Coast datacenter (US-East-1) in Ashburn, VA. To accommodate this expansion, we’ve made some now-visible changes to the following:

• Billing Widget – easier to read & gives you Memory Usage at a glance
• List View Panel – the network widget has been removed and is now enhanced within the List View, making it much easier to view your public and private IP address across datacenters
• Workflow Changes – see below for details on this change

Highlights of Changes

We’ve added a new “datacenter aware” selector prior to choosing the GoGrid object you wish to deploy. If you’ve logged into the GoGrid Portal since the update last night, you will see some differences when you go to ADD an object:

Unless you are part of the Alpha testing group, objects within the US-East-1 datacenter are grayed-out. If you select the US-East-1 datacenter, you should expect to see the following (until the launch of the new datacenter which is scheduled for June 28, 2010):

Another notable change is the Network Widget which use to appear in the left sidebar has now been removed. In its place is a link that will take you to the new Network section of the List View.

When you click on the link “Your Network Settings“, you’ll immediately be taken to the List View and the Network section therein. Within the Network section, you can view Public and Private IP addresses assigned to your GoGrid account, their Status (Assigned/Unassigned) and the datacenter they are associated with.

Note: All GoGrid users can currently use the Network section as of this update.

Also, we have simplified the Billing Summary widget to give you a snapshot of your Memory and Transfer allotment and usage (including a direct link to view your current invoices):

Learn More About GoGrid v3.0 at Upcoming Webinars

Whenever there is an update, current and future customers always have questions. So, we have put together a series of webinars to help explain these and other significant improvements coming to the GoGrid cloud.

If you are a CURRENT GoGrid customer, you can catch up on the latest and greatest improvements to your GoGrid cloud by attending the “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy: Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release and Our New East Coast Data Center“:

• Date: Monday, June 28, 2010
• Time: 11:00 am PDT
• Summary:
  • Learn about our new features and system enhancements included in GoGrid 3.0 and how they can help your business.
  • Understand how to expand the complexity of your cloud with GoGrid’s new east coast data center (US-East-1).
  • See a demonstration of how easy it is to deploy a cloud (virtual) server in GoGrid’s US-East-1 data center.
  • Discover how other companies are using GoGrid to build complex and unique architectures in the GoGrid cloud.
• Details & Registration: http://go.gogrid.com/customer_28_june_2010

If you are NEW to GoGrid, I recommend that you register and attend the “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy: Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud“:

• Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
• Time: 11:00 am PDT
• Summary:
  • Learn about the enhanced offerings included in the GoGrid 3.0 release and how they can help your business.
  • Understand how GoGrid’s robust partner ecosystem can help you leverage the GoGrid cloud.
  • Discover how GoGrid customers are expanding their cloud environment with our partners and the GoGrid Exchange.
• Details & Registration: http://go.gogrid.com/event_29_june_2010

If you have any questions prior to the webinars or that you would like answered in the webinars, please leave a comment on this post! We hope you fully take advantage of the new features and services coming to GoGrid in the next few weeks.

But understanding the nitty-gritty details of how the F5′s work within GoGrid is not something that most people understand. For the most part, customers are concerned that it simply works and works well, which it does. Yesterday, Lori MacVittie, the Technical Marketing Manager at F5, posted a technical article that does a great job explaining how the magic behind the scenes works with the F5 load balancers and GoGrid.

The article is available on F5′s DevCentral as well as below:

Cloud Load Balancing Fu for Developers Helps Avoid Scaling Gotchas

If you don’t know how scaling services work in a cloud environment you may not like the results

One of the benefits of cloud computing, and in particular IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is that the infrastructure is, well, a service. It’s abstracted, and that means you don’t need to know a lot about the nitty-gritty details of how it works. Right?

Well, mostly right.

While there’s no reason you should need to know how to specifically configure, say, an F5 BIG-IP load balancing solution when deploying an application with GoGrid, you probably should understand the implications of using the provider’s API to scale using that load balancing solution. If you don’t you may run into a “gotcha” that either leaves you scratching your head or reaching for your credit card. And don’t think you can sit back and be worry free, oh Amazon Web Services customer, because these “gotchas” aren’t peculiar to GoGrid. Turns out AWS ELB comes with its own set of oddities and, ultimately, may lead many to come to the same conclusion cloud proponents have come to: cloud is really meant to scale stateless applications.

Many of the “problems” developers are running into could be avoided by a combination of more control over the load balancing environment and a basic foundation in load balancing. Not just how load balancing works, most understand that already, but how load balancers work. The problems that are beginning to show themselves aren’t because of how traffic is distributed across application instances or even understanding of persistence (you call it affinity or sticky sessions) but in the way that load balancers are configured and interact with the nodes (servers) that make up the pools of resources (application instances) it is managing.

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LOAD BALANCING FU – LESSON #1

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Our first lesson revolves around nodes and the way in which load balancers interact with them. This one impacts the way in which you orchestrate processes, automate tasks, and interact with cloud framework APIs that in turn interact with load balancing solutions. It also has the potential to influence your choice of provider or core application design decisions, such as how state is handled and persisted.

In general, a load balancing virtual server interacts with a pool (farm) of nodes (applications). Because of the way in which networks are architected today, i.e. they’re IP-based for interoperability, a node is identified by an IP address. When the virtual server receives a request it chooses the appropriate pool comprising one or more nodes based on the associated algorithm. Cloud computing providers today appear to be offering primarily one of two industry standard algorithms: round robin and least connections. There are many more algorithms, standard and not, but these two seem to be the most popular.

When a load balancing solution detects a problem with a node (it’s monitoring the node by sending ICMP pings or opening a TCP connection or doing an HTTP GET, depending on the provider and implementation) it marks it as “down”. Nodes can also be marked as “down” purposefully, in the event you want to perform some maintenance or find a problem with the application running and need to address it.

The gotcha comes in here, because when you’re scaling down or purposefully taking down a “node”, there may be users that have been directed to that node and are still actively interacting with it; there’s still connections to the node. While load balancers will stop directing new requests to a “down” node, how they handle existing (open) connections is configurable. When a node is marked as “down” the Load balancer has some options how to interact with existing connections ranging from allowing existing connections (users) to complete their interactions with the application to outright rejection of all incoming requests. The decision on this configuration option by the provider impacts the way in which you should architect your application if you’re really going to be taking advantage of elastic scalability, because while the options do not impact scaling up they do impact scaling down.

For example, after Amazon introduced its ELB (Elastic Load Balancing) service, users began to see what they considered odd and unacceptable behavior that was merely the result of the way in which load balancing works.

”Funky” AWS ELB behavior confusing customers

We have a production site that is now sending traffic to someone else’s site. We terminated a couple of instances earlier today and this may have started this phenomenon, but this is very, very disconcerting. Repetitive refreshes brings up this site just as regularly as our servers. Can someone from amazon please help us out here? This is totally unacceptable behavior.

and a little while later in the thread:

I’m pretty surprised that terminating an instance doesn’t remove it from a load balancer.

The behavior (which Amazon indicates in the same thread has been resolved) is based on the understanding that taking a node “down” is not the same as “deleting” it. By terminating an instance in a load balanced environment the load balancer sees that it is “down” and marks it as such. Taking down the instance does not automatically delete it because there are many reasons you might want to take a node “down” and bring it back “up” later, such as upgrades, patches, etc… If you don’t bring it back up, however, the load balancer needs to be explicitly directed to delete the node lest you end up with odd behavior as described above (which shouldn’t happen in a truly isolated network environment, which says something about the way in which Amazon was internally designed from a network layer perspective). The ability of a load balancer to detect nodes as “down” and later as “up” is by design; it is in part what makes them dynamic and allows transparent (non-disruptive) scalability. Nodes can be added, deleted, taken down, and brought up without impacting the clients and their interaction with the application. The steps to scale down, then, require that first you take down the node (deregister in Amazon speak) and when all connections have been terminated (through normal means) then you delete it from the load balancer. This takes some coordination.

GoGrid’s load balancing implementation will not cause the scenario experienced by Amazon customers for two reasons: first, it makes extensive use of VLANs to isolate customers and thus no load balancing service for customer #1 will be able to communicate with a server used by customer #2 and second, GoGrid has orchestrated scalability services in such a way that load balancers are added and deleted en masse. Individual nodes are never added or removed but rather the entire load balancer object is modified. This effectively means the deletion of a node (by reconfiguring the load balancing object) is immediate and all existing connections are terminated. This is similar to the load balancer being configured to “reselect” a node when the original node is “down”.  This is something of which you need to be aware when deploying applications as it will eventually impact either the way your application behaves (from a user perspective) or your ability to scale elastically.

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SCALING SERVICES IMPACT DEVELOPER DECISIONS

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If you’re going to be using the scalability services of a cloud provider you, as a developer, need to know how the load balancing service is going to act when scaling down. You need to know specifically whether it bleeds (quiesces) connections when a node is taken “down” or whether a node being “down” results in rejects or reselection. This impacts (or should impact) the way in which you design your applications or the choice of provider. Also important to the decision is what you consider the proper behavior for your application. It may be the case that it’s acceptable for users to “lose” their session. It may not be. The core logical behavior and user expectations should in part drive your architectural decisions when designing a scalable application, even if that scalability is provided by a third-party as is the case with public cloud computing.

There are (at a minimum) two questions you should ask a provider regarding its scalability services to help determine the apropos course of action.

Possible reactions to the answers to these questions:

• Rewrite the application to share state (shared-session database architecture)
• Rewrite the application to be stateless
• Do nothing and accept rejection/user loss of session as an acceptable risk
• Choose a provider whose load balancing behavior aligns with your expectations
• Implement a virtual private cloud instead, taking advantage of existing infrastructure to load balance applications “in the cloud” by extending your data center to include cloud-based resources.

In all cases, when you’re scaling down you don’t really want to just terminate the instance; you want to mark the node as down and allow the connections to bleed off before terminating it and deleting it from the load balancing solution. That’s the way it should work. By simply terminating the instance the node is marked as down and may continue to incur charges because health checks are using bandwidth to determine the status of the node. In the optimal case the load balancing service would offer a “conditional” delete function in its API that marked the node as “down” and, when all connections were completed, would automatically remove the node from the load balancing service. This is not the case today, for many reasons, but is where we hope to see such services go in the future.

If you have questions beyond what Lori has written about above, we do offer free 24×7 support at GoGrid as well as on the GoGrid Wiki (specific to the F5 Load Balancer).

For those of you who do not receive the Newsletter and are interested in the latest and greatest news coming from us at GoGrid, what follows is the contents of the May 2010 GoGrid Newsletter:

Hello,

Spring is upon us and the change of the season presents us with new beginnings. In this edition of the newsletter, we’ll discuss information and opportunities that can help your business with new growth.

Specific topics include:

1. New CPU Allotments for Virtual Servers
2. GoGrid Expansion
3. CDN News
4. Cloudkick Promotion
5. GoGrid and Microsoft Promotion
6. Events and Other News

New CPU Allotments for Virtual Servers

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On March 9, GoGrid nodes (the physical machines that host virtual servers) were upgraded with Intel’s powerful Nehalem processors, resulting in an increase in CPU allotments for most Windows and Linux virtual server options. See an earlier blog post about the Nehalem processors.

Virtual servers now have equal CPU-to-RAM ratios and virtual servers with 2, 4, and 8 GB RAM now have between 25-50% more CPU.

CPU Allocation (cores)	RAM (GB)	Disk Size (GB)
.5	.5	30
1	1	60
2	2	120
4	4	240
8	8	480

New node capacity is still being built and we expect to have enough new nodes to handle 100% of new virtual server adds in 4-6 weeks. Until then, most virtual servers will be added to new nodes, but depending on demand, some virtual servers may be deployed on non-Nehalem nodes and therefore will receive the older CPU allotments.

Below are some CPU Allotment FAQs:

Q: Will I pay more for the new CPU allotments?
A: No, the new CPU allotments are free of charge.
Q: Will my existing virtual server get the new CPU allotments?
A: No. If you deployed a Linux virtual server before March 9 or a Windows virtual server before March 25 it will have the old CPU allotments.
Q: Can I upgrade my existing virtual server so that it has the new CPU allotment?
A: No. You will have to delete your existing virtual server and deploy a new virtual server to get the new CPU allotment (subject to node availability).
Q: How do I know if my virtual server has the new CPU allotment?
A: Linux virtual servers deployed after March 9 and Windows virtual servers deployed after March 25 should have the new CPU allotment. You can check your virtual server’s CPU allotment by using the following commands:

Windows

• Start -> run
• Type “cmd”
• In command window, type “systeminfo|more”
• The “Processor” row will display the processor count of your virtual server

Linux

• cat /proc/cpuinfo

If you have questions, please contact your dedicated GoGrid account team or GoGrid technical support.

GoGrid Expansion

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We are excited to announce the expansion of GoGrid services to the East Coast (US-East-1) in less than 8 weeks. In late June, users will be able to provision virtual servers in our West (US-West-1) or East Coast (US-East-1) data center locations using the GoGrid portal or API.

The first release of the US-East-1 data center will include virtual server provisioning. We expect to have full feature functionality by the end of 2010, which will include F5 load balancing, Cloud Storage, MyGSI, and PartnerGSI.

Key Highlights:

• US-East-1 data center expansion in late June.
• Virtual server provisioning in the first release, with full feature functionality coming later in the year.
• Additional information will be sent out in early June.

Please feel free to contact me, maria[at]gogrid.com, or your service team account manager with any questions about our new US-East-1 data center.

CDN News

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Coming May 2010
We’ve expanded our global content delivery services with the addition of our Parisian point-of-presence (PoP). Your end users will receive their desired content from the fastest PoP on our network no matter where in the world they’re located. For more information visit GoGrid CDN.

New CDN Analytics Tool
Edge Performance Analytics, GoGrid’s new premium reporting suite, offers improved reporting performance to help you optimize your content and identify impending issues. Plus, you can now easily monitor your reports by scheduling email alerts daily, weekly or monthly.

Here are the details:

Premium Reporting Suite Pricing

• $99.99/month
• $99.99 setup fee

Reporting Features

• HTTP trending statistics
• Detailed insight on the performance of edge servers
• Ability to generate specialized reports

For more information about Edge Performance Analytics or to get started, log in to the GoGrid portal and create a GoGrid CDN Provision case.

Cloudkick Promotion

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If you haven’t checked out Cloudkick for GoGrid then you’re missing out on a powerful and cool set of tools for managing your GoGrid server infrastructure.

Here are a few Cloudkick features:

• Fault detection with elastic monitoring – know when your servers are down and have monitors added automatically as new servers come online.
• Dynamic graphs – interactive, zoomable, savable graphs, make it easy to visualize what’s happening with your infrastructure.
• Server diagnostic – instantly see which processes are using the most CPU and memory on your machines.
• Manage virtual & physical servers in one dashboard – you can also manage servers from multiple data centers in the same unified dashboard, right next to your GoGrid account.

Cloudkick is offering the first 100 GoGrid customers who sign up a 20% discount off their monthly charges.

To get started, simply:

1. Sign up at: https://www.cloudkick.com/providers/gogrid/signup
2. Enter promo code: go20

Read more about Cloudkick on our blog.

GoGrid and Microsoft Promotion

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Receive a $500 Credit: Experience the Elasticity of GoGrid Virtual and Physical Servers
GoGrid and Microsoft have teamed up to offer GoGrid customers a $500 credit towards any GoGrid physical server you deploy running Windows Server 2008 or MSSQL Server 2008.

When you started with GoGrid, your infrastructure was a snapshot of your current business. As business grows, so do infrastructure requirements. With GoGrid, not only do you have the ability to scale and harness the elasticity of the cloud, but you can also meet your growing infrastructure needs with GoGrid Hybrid Hosting.

GoGrid Hybrid Hosting gives you flexibility to:

• Build flexible, secure, high performance, and scalable server networks.
• Choose from Virtual Servers, Physical Servers or any combination.
• All servers share the same VLAN.

Check out some example configurations or read about some GoGrid customers driving business forward with a GoGrid Hybrid solution. Check out our blog post for more discussion on the promotion.

Receive your $500 credit, contact a sales representative and get started.

Events and Other News

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Web 2.0 Expo
GoGrid will be an exhibitor at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, CA.

Under the Radar
GoGrid was a sponsor at the annual Under the Radar conference in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Read more about it on our blog.

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 at Maria[at]gogrid.com.

Thank you,
Maria Gallegos

Pretty exciting stuff right? More information will be forthcoming regarding the rollout of our East Coast presence so be sure to subscribe to our blog feed and Twitter stream to get the latest information and updates. A be sure to “like” us on our GoGrid Fan Page on Facebook!

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

• “Robert Scoble & FastCompany.TV Visit & Interview GoGrid” – we had some fun with Robert when he came to visit the GoGrid offices. Of course, this was a few weeks prior to him moving to a competitor of ours.
• “New Larger RAM Instances Now Available On GoGrid” – as the GoGrid infrastructure began to grow, we realized that customers wants larger instances with more persistent storage and RAM allocations.
• ““10 Obstacles To Cloud Computing” By UC Berkeley & How GoGrid Hurdles Them” – UC Berkeley came out with a comprehensive study on Cloud Computing. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was written so I posted my rebuttal.
• “Press Release: Appistry EAF Community Edition Available On GoGrid” – one of our first technology partners, Appistry, makes their product available on GoGrid.
• All February posts are here

March 2009

• “GoGrid Whitepaper: “Scaling Your Internet Business”” – Randy Bias produced a great whitepaper that discusses how web applications scale, scalability with the cloud, thinking through a choosing a scaling strategy and options available.
• “Navigating The Layers Of The Cloud Computing Pyramid” – a deeper analysis of the Cloud Pyramid, a term I coined in 2008.
• “Understanding GoGrid And Cloud Standards” – Randy Bias provides an analysis of the Cloud and standards therein, especially as related to the Open Cloud Manifesto (OCM).
• “Message From GoGrid Founders Regarding Denial Of Service Attack” – GoGrid survived heavy a DDoS attack which was targeted at a variety of hosting and internet service providers.
• All March posts are here

April 2009

• “New Feature: Job History – A Log File For GoGrid” – we continued to roll out new features and enhancements to GoGrid, including the Job History.
• “How To Set Up High Availability Web Applications In The Cloud Using GoGrid” – this was an interesting project that we undertook to showcase how to set up a redundant and resilient web application infrastructure using GoGrid.
• “Planning For The New GoGrid Feature – MyGSIs” – MyGSIs (personal server images) were just around the corner and I wanted to ensure that current GoGrid users were up-to-speed on the functionality therein.
• “Press Release: “ServePath Named ‘Cool Vendor’ By Leading Analyst Firm”” – GoGrid’s parent company, ServePath, was named “Cool Vendor” by Gartner.
• All April post are here

May 2009

• “McKinsey’s McCrazy! Flying Through The Clouds With Eyes 1/2 Closed” – McKinsey published a report “Clearing the air on cloud computing” which caused quite a stir within the cloud community. I was one of those “stirred up” readers and published my rebuttal to it.
• “Press Release: GoGrid And AppZero Partner To Ease Movement Of Windows Server Applications To The Cloud – another GoGrid technology partner, AppZero, was added to our growing list of Partners.
• “Network World Puts GoGrid In “10 Cloud Computing Companies To Watch” List” – recognition of GoGrid continued to grow within the technical press arena with Network World chiming in on GoGrid being one to watch
• “Video: GoGrid Cloud Computing Demo” – I started doing some screencasts of GoGrid in action and this was the first showcasing our award-winning GUI.
• All May posts are here

June 2009

• “Press Release: Cloud Computing Provider GoGrid Enables Highly Scalable Web Applications Using Zeus Technology” – Zeus Technology was added as a GoGrid technology partner, bringing an application traffic management solution to the GoGrid cloud.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update V1.9” – since not all parties who were interested in GoGrid receive the GoGrid Customer Update, we started publishing it to the blog.
• “Last Chance – GoGrid Free Trial Credit Ends July 2nd!” – GoGrid was one of the only Cloud providers to offer a “free trial”. As our service matured, we decided to remove the $50 credit that all users were receiving.
• All June posts are here

July 2009

• “New Version Of GoGrid Released: Server Image Selection, RAM, API And Architecture Changes” – we revamped the Server Image Selection widget to allow for better usability.
• “Press Release: GoGrid Placed In Visionaries “Magic Quadrant”” – GoGrid was placed in the “Magic Quadrant” by Gartner, something that was very exciting for us!
• “Press Release: SOASTA Announces Cloud-Based Performance Certification Program For Websites And Applications” – GoGrid announces support for the CloudTest On-Demand service.
• All July posts are here

August 2009

• “Introducing GoGrid Version 2.0” – this was a huge accomplishment for us as we released GoGrid 2.0 to the general public which included: MyGSIs (personal server images), improved deployment times and other features & enhancements.
• “Press Release: GoGrid And Stratonomic To Enable Disaster Recovery In The Cloud” – GoGrid and Stratonomic partner to provide Disaster Recovery solutions using the GoGrid cloud.
• “GoGrid Officially Out Of Beta!” – after 1.5 years of running under a public beta (fully supported however under our SLA), we officially removed the beta tag from the GoGrid core infrastructure offering.
• “GoGrid Says: We’ll Load Your Data Into The Cloud” – we added a service to allow people to physically ship their hard drives to us for data loading to GoGrid Cloud Storage.
• All August posts are here

September 2009

• “3 GoGrid Executives Discuss Their Thoughts On VMWorld 2009, The Cloud & GoGrid” – after our recent participation in VMWorld 2009, I spent some time interviewing some of the GoGrid executives on their thoughts of the show.
• “GoGrid Updates MyGSI Features: Edit, Delete & Restore & Other Changes” – we continued to improve on the new MyGSI features and functions as well as some other infrastructure enhancements.
• “Video: Edit, Delete & Restore GoGrid’s MyGSIs & Billing Widget Explained” – another screencast showcasing some new GoGrid features related to MyGSIs.
• “Announcing Microsoft WebsiteSpark Fortified With GoGrid, ServePath & Hybrid Hosting” – GoGrid becomes a WebsiteSpark Hosting Partner.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update – October 2009” – our newsletter to GoGrid customers discussed the recent enhancements to the service.
• All September posts are here

October 2009

• “Press Release: GoGrid & GigaSpaces Join Forces To Create An Enterprise-Grade PaaS Offering For Java And .NET” – GoGrid and GigaSpaces partner to enable GigaSpaces XAP in the GoGrid Cloud.
• “The Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile Sidekick Fiasco Is NOT A Failure Of Cloud Computing!” – when Danger/T-Mobile had issues with their data service, people immediately started calling it a failure of the cloud. I wrote about how I disagreed with this statement.
• “Intel’s Latest Generation Microarchitecture, Codenamed “Nehalem” To Power GoGrid Cloud” – GoGrid pursues the use of Intel’s new Nehalem chipsets within the GoGrid cloud.
• All October posts are here

November 2009

• “CNN Copies GoGrid’s “Cloud Computing Explained” Video?” – CNN produced a “Cloud Computing Explained” video which was eerily similar to the one we produced (which has over 120,000 views)
• “Interviews At Sys-Con Cloud Computing Expo ‘09: F5 Networks And GoGrid” – while we were exhibiting at the Sys-Con Cloud Computing Expo, I spent some time with our partner F5 talking about the cloud.
• “Scale Your Web Presence Globally Via GoGrid Content Delivery Network (CDN)” – GoGrid announced a worldwide Content Delivery Network for GoGrid customers.
• “GoGrid Announces New Pricing & More Volume Discount Plans” – as GoGrid continued to mature, we decided to provide greater discounts and more RAM/Bandwidth allocation within each plan.
• “Newsletter: GoGrid Customer Update – November 2009” – our November newsletter was delivered to customers and we provided the update on the blog.
• “Rapidly Develop, Test & Deploy Windows Azure Applications Using The GoGrid Cloud” – GoGrid and Azure are showcased in a video demonstrating how the two can be used to work with Azure application development and testing.
• All November posts are here

December 2009

• “GoGrid Exchange: BitNami Open Source Web Applications Images Available” – GoGrid launches Partner GSIs with BitNami providing Open Source web Application images within the GoGrid cloud.
• “GoGrid Exchange: GigaSpaces XAP On GoGrid Enterprise Cloud Now Available” – GigaSpaces XAP becomes available within the GoGrid Exchange.
• All December posts are here

Whew! If you made it all the way to the end of this post, I congratulate you! If you have read all of the linked articles, you deserve an award or are truly a GoGrid Fan (by the way, be sure to become a fan of GoGrid on our Facebook page).

I hope that 2009 was as outstanding for you as it was for us!

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.

What is unique about the GoGrid CDN (powered by EdgeCast Networks) is that it is a pay-as-you-go service with no contracts or usage requirements. Also, the CDN boasts 16 Points-of-Presence (PoPs) on 4 continents. There is no need to set up specific zones as your coverage is truly global. More details can be found on the GoGrid CDN page.

Webinar

GoGrid will be conducting a webinar about the new CDN to answer any questions you may have. Details are:

DATE: December 3rd, 2009
TIME: 1:00pm to 2:00pm PST (4:00pm to 5:00pm EST)
REGISTRATION: Registration signup form

We encourage you to bring any and all questions to this informative webinar.

Press Release

GoGrid issued the following Press Release on November 9, 2009:

Cloud Provider GoGrid, and EdgeCast Networks Release Zero-Commitment, On-Demand Cloud Infrastructure with CDN Capabilities

EdgeCast’s content delivery network (CDN) pairing with GoGrid’s cloud infrastructure hosting service offers many best-of-class features for infrastructure hosting and content streaming.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – NOVEMBER 9, 2009 -  GoGrid, a leading Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting provider, and EdgeCast Networks, the superior, cost-effective rich media content delivery network (CDN), have announced a technology partnership which includes the release of a CDN coupled with Cloud Infrastructure Hosting. This on-demand service allows customers to scale their web presence and accelerate the delivery of web-content using a global content delivery infrastructure.

With the GoGrid CDN, powered by EdgeCast, users enjoy the qualities inherent to the Cloud, along with the advantages of a distributed global network. The new integrated service offers pay-as-you-go pricing, no contracts and no minimum usage requirements.

A CDN ensures that content is immediately available around the world, especially during periods of high demand. When used in conjunction with GoGrid cloud hosting, infrastructure can be scaled immediately to meet demand.

“EdgeCast now gives GoGrid customers a best-in-class solution for on-demand CDN services,” said John Keagy, CEO and co-founder of GoGrid. “From start-up to enterprise, all GoGrid customers can now easily expand existing architecture and deploy additional content delivery services without any huge capital expenses or long-term commitments. It is a real win-win!”

Using a utility pricing model, the GoGrid CDN ensures that customers’ content is quickly and easily distributed throughout the network consisting of 16 points of presence (POPs) on 4 continents. The GoGrid CDN features include:

• Website acceleration – faster page load times for your website
• Large object download service – for software, videos, games, music, podcasts and movies – the best way to provide delivery of downloads
• On-demand video streaming – Flash and Windows
• Live video streaming – Flash and Windows
• Security – all of the important security features needed for online business including SSL delivery and Token-based Authentication
• Cname support – disguise the GoGrid CDN URL with a customized URL
• Advanced reporting – the most comprehensive reporting and analytics suite in the industry – over 60 reports to help improve and optimize website performance – view bandwidth consumption, breakdowns of downloads by media type, geography, file type and popularity
• Real-time reporting – view usage statistics on a real-time dashboard

Additionally, with the GoGrid CDN powered by EdgeCast, customers enjoy the most flexible service offering available in the Cloud Computing marketplace with control panels, “instant-on” service, best-in-class reporting and a full service Global CDN product.

“Many of our customers experience sudden surges in demand for their content, and without the ability to scale quickly, that can be crippling,” said James Segil, president of EdgeCast Networks.  “Our relationship with GoGrid gives customers the peace of mind of knowing that, on a moment’s notice, the sky is the limit for their digital assets – whether they need processing power, edge storage, or lightning-fast delivery to any city in the world.”

GoGrid Cloud Infrastructure Hosting with CDN services are available immediately as a beta offering. Customers can learn more by visiting the GoGrid site.

About EdgeCast Networks, Inc. – http://www.edgecast.com

EdgeCast offers a superior, cost-effective global content delivery service that gives customers and partners competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media.  EdgeCast’s world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while freeing them from capital investments and operational hassles.  To learn more, visit www.edgecast.com.

About GoGrid – http://www.gogrid.com

GoGrid is a leading Cloud Infrastructure Hosting provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™”. GoGrid enables sysadmins, developers, IT professionals and SaaS vendors to create, deploy, and control free f5 load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access and administrative server control which includes personal server images (known as MyGSIs). GoGrid server instances maintain the industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to proprietary standards. Bringing up servers and server networks takes minutes via a unique, award winning web control panel or GoGrid’s API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, SQL Server, and ASP.NET, as well as multiple Linux server operating systems like RHEL and CentOS. GoGrid gives users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” To learn more, visit www.gogrid.com.

A similar release was issued by EdgeCast which is available here.