If you want to assign a private IP to a server in US-West-1, you would select it from the list in the screenshot – just pick one that you have not already assigned somewhere else. Take note of the subnet as you will need it later.

To assign a private IP, you can update the interface directly. Enter the following at the prompt or use your favorite Linux editor.

nano /etc/network/interfaces

Within the file enter the following (the IP is just an example, use one of your own. Don’t enter the text in the brackets):

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 10.100.10.3 [a private IP address in the West ]
netmask 255.255.255.0

Save the file.

This step assigns a private IP from your West block to a single Ubuntu / Debian server. You will need to activate the new IP so restart your network interface.

ifdown eth1

and then enter:

ifup eth1

The command entered in the previous step will only keep the route while your session is active. In order to have the route stay through reboots, you will need to update configuration files on your server. Please see the wiki for instructions on how to set persistence and for configuring CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Windows

1. Open a command prompt by clicking on Start > Run
2. Type “cmd” and click OK.
3. Enter the command

   route add -p 10.200.10.0 [East private IP block] mask 255.255.255.0 [West Gateway IP]

   1. where [West Gateway IP] is +1from your first IP address in your Private Network block available in the GoGrid user interface. If your Windows Server is in the WEST then you will want to use the Gateway IP for the US-West-1 private network. So in the screenshot above, 10.109.32.1 is the gateway NOT 10.109.32.0. You will want to connect to the East private IP block, so the number after p is the first available number in your East Private IP block.
   2. For example, you would enter something like:

      route add -p 10.200.10.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.109.32.1

      The p flag ensures that the route is persistent across reboots.

If you want to test ping, you will need to assign a private IP to the server that you want to ping and also define a static route back to the IP blocks in the other datacenter. In this example, since you have setup a Windows machine with a route from West to East, you will need to setup a static route on an East server that you want to ping back to the West.

For example, you can execute the route command if you don’t want to persist the route for Windows:

route add 10.109.32.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 10.200.10.1

And for Linux machines:

route add -net 10.109.32.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 10.200.10.1

This command sets a static route to your West private IP block through your East gateway.

ping 10.200.10.5

If you can successfully ping that configured US-East-1 private IP from your Windows server in US-West-1 then this has been configured correctly.

There are 3 product options to select :

• 10 Mbps for $99/month
• 100 Mbps for $699/month
• 1 Gbps for $4999 (requires a 1 year commit)

You also have the option of pre-paying for a year of the product in advance at a discount. Note that you will need to contact a GoGrid account representative if you are interested in the 1 Gbps option – this level requires a 1 year commitment. Your account representative can work with you on the required documents and will also need to verify capacity. You can also ask your representative for other available capacities.

Once you have received the welcome letter, then you are good to go!

CloudLink is a data center interconnect product. It sits on a redundant 10 Gbp pipe that will only contain GoGrid traffic. This means fewer hops and less interference since only GoGrid customers will be on the line. Unlike a public line traversing the internet, you will not need to compete with a large amount of unrelated traffic.

Customers can use their private interface on one data center to connect to the private interface of their servers in our other data centers. For example, customers can send traffic from servers in US-West-1 to servers in US-East-1. Since this is using the private network, this also means no bandwidth costs. CloudLink is designed to be easy, so we allow unlimited traffic through the pipe – you will only be limited by the bandwidth rate that you select.

CloudLink is an enabling technology. Customers will most likely find multiple uses cases for this product – two that are a natural fit are disaster recovery and data replication.

Disaster Recovery

Customers who run production systems out of US-West-1 will now have the option of transferring their data and files to US-East-1 via CloudLink. In the event of a failure in the West Data Center, all their data and files will exist on US-East-1, safely stored and isolated from issues in the West. Customers can configure this to be an automated failover solution (leveraging technology like Global Load Balancing) so that traffic fails over to their up-to-date backup server in the East or as a simple store of data so that there will be a complete recovery of files when the West data center is brought back up.

Data Replication

This can be conducted in two flavors, big data replication using products like Cassandra or Hadoop or relational database replication using products like MySQL or Postgres. A scenario that I can envision customers using this solution would be an app company that has customers on the West and East coast. For latency reasons, it would be preferable for customers to be routed to either US-West-1 or US-East-1 servers depending on their location. As customers interact with the app, the local databases store their information. Unless the data is replicated between the two local databases, they can quickly get out of sync.

Customers can leverage CloudLink to ensure that data is replicated on the fly, ensuring the information in one database is quickly and securely replicated in the other. Since the data travels only over the private network, bad actors outside the network will have no way to access this traffic.

Users of this customer’s service will now have updated information whether they are routed to either the East or West coast data centers.

See how one of our customer’s, Martini Media used CloudLink to enhance their Big Data solution.

CloudLink is an important strategic technology that broadens the capabilities of the GoGrid cloud, bridging the gap between data centers. Click here to learn more about CloudLink. Shortly, we will be posting an article that discusses how to configure CloudLink once you are ordered it. Sign-up on the portal or contact your GoGrid Sales Representative to start using it today!