With the March 2010 GoGrid newsletter, we welcome and introduce a new name to our communications, that of Maria Gallegos who has joined us as a Product Marketing Coordinator for GoGrid. Maria comes from a marketing background (from financial services to non-profits) and will be producing the GoGrid newsletter as well as managing other customer experience programs. One of her first tasks has been the March 2010 Customer Update Newsletter.

For those who are not current GoGrid users, we provide the full newsletter on our blog, just so that you can see what you are missing out on! If any of the items that are mentioned here interest you, or if you want to get started on GoGrid right away (remember, we provide a full range of hosted infrastructure solutions ranging from Cloud Servers to Dedicated Servers to Cloud Storage, all within a Load Balanced network), I encourage you to speak with a GoGrid Sales Representative. They can provide you with answers to many of your infrastructure hosting questions. Just tell them that I sent you!

Here is the full March 2010 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter:

Hello,

As 2010 continues to progress, so does GoGrid. From system enhancements to new partners, you’ll find this edition of the newsletter full of information to better help you manage your cloud hosting infrastructure. Specific topics include: (more…)

On Wednesday February 24, 2010, GoGrid hosted a webinar for new and existing GoGrid users designed to discuss the recent February 2010 Feature updates to GoGrid. There is a blog post that details all of the new features included in the release as well as a screencast which walks through these features and important changes. The webinar covered the following information:

• What is our view of Cloud Computing
• What is GoGrid
• New feature: GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• What is Hybrid Infrastructure
• A GoGrid Portal Demo
• Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
• The new GoGrid List View
• Walk-through of other Interface Enhancements & Links
• Question & Answer Session

The entire Webinar is below and is broken into two parts:

• Part One – Overview presentation, discussion of Cloud & GoGrid, demonstration of the GoGrid Portal & GoGrid Dedicated Server Deployments (30 minutes in length)
• Part Two – Question & Answer session from the audience and Additional Information (19 minutes in length)

Also included later on in this post is the stand-alone presentation (without audio, demo walk-through or question and answers).

GoGrid Feature Webinar – Part 1

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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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As mentioned within the GoGrid Customer Update Video for February 2010, we have put together a webinar where we will cover a variety of subjects related to the new features and functionality found in this new GoGrid Release. If you are new to GoGrid or simply would like to hear about the new features that were included in the February 2010 Release, we encourage you to register now. The event details are as follows:

• DATE: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
• TIME: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST
• REGISTRATION: Please visit – https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/725449257
• HOSTS: Rob Larson (Product Marketing Manager – GoGrid) & Michael Sheehan (Technology Evangelist – GoGrid)

Be sure to bring any and all questions you may have to this webinar and we will do our best to answer them. If you have questions ahead of time, feel free to leave a comment on this article.

The topics to be covered are:

General (more…)

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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As you probably know by now, GoGrid released a series of new enhancements to our Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting service. You can read more about what was included in this latest release in this blog post. Some of the highlighted new features and improvements include:

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

We also sent out a newsletter highlighting some of the changes in the January/February 2010 timeframe.

As with previous releases, I wanted to spend some time with our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez, and discuss some of these items and what they mean to GoGrid customers. (YouTube direct link.)

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

As always, if you have any questions about any of the items you heard in this video or about GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos.

In an effort to be as proactive as possible, GoGrid has officially notified select customers of the removal (End of Life – EoL) of two specific GoGrid images. The users that were notified are ones that are actively using the images. On 2/9/10, GoGrid will be removing the following images from the GoGrid image repository:

• CentOS – CentOS 5.1 (64-bit) w/ Apache 2.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux – RHEL 5.1 (64-bit) w/ Apache 2.2

I’m sure that some of you will have questions about this. In anticipation of this, I have compiled some quick Q&A’s:

Question: What does the removal of these images mean?

Answer: Simply that after the removal date, they will no longer appear within the GoGrid Image Selection widget.

Question: I have server(s) deployed that use these images? Will they continue to function?

Answer: Yes, there is no change to how your server(s) will function if they are using one of these EoL-ed images. Just be sure that you keep everything current within those servers.

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Yesterday GoGrid and EdgeCast Networks jointly announced the availability of the GoGrid CDN (Content Delivery Network). With the GoGrid CDN (currently in beta), GoGrid customers can scale their web presence as well as accelerate the delivery of web content using the GoGrid CDN global infrastructure.

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:

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GoGrid, and parent company ServePath, are excited to announce participation in Microsoft’s new WebsiteSpark Program, specifically targeted towards Web Professionals. Using WebsiteSpark, Web Pros can drive new business opportunities through connections with partners and customers around the world.

Before jumping into the details and Q&A, if you already know that you want to participate in this program with either GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting partner, please visit our signup pages on the GoGrid site or ServePath site.

But what does all of this mean? Trust me, I have read through all of the 19 pages of Frequently Asked Questions and Program documentation and it is a bit overwhelming. So, this blog post is really an effort to try to cull out the critical points of importance for you. However, if there are any questions that you do have after reading this, I encourage you to talk to some WebsiteSpark folks or sales reps at GoGrid or ServePath. At a high-level, this is an incredibly helpful program targeted towards Web Professionals.

Probably the best way to approach this is through a series of questions and answers.

What is WebsiteSpark?

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Yesterday we announced new GoGrid functionality which allows you to edit, delete and restore personal server images known as MyGSIs. Since a picture is typically worth a 1,000 words, I compiled a quick screencast that walks you through this new functionality as well as through the changes we made to the Billing Widget.

If you have any questions about this functionality or other things “GoGrid”, please leave a comment on this post. As always, I’m reachable via Twitter (@hightechdad) and email (Michael AT GoGrid DOT com).

Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@GoGrid) as well as become a fan of GoGrid on Facebook.