GoGrid Blog

ServePath’s Cloud Computing service, GoGrid was nominated this year for the LinuxWorld Expo 2008 Product Excellence Award of Best Virtualization Solution. Unfortunately, we did not win the award even though we were a finalist in the category. 

We did, however win the LinuxWorld 2008 BEST OF SHOW which is an incredible honor for us! Last year, at LinuxWorld 2007, ServePath won Best Grid Solution Product Excellence award. Winning the Best of Show this year was the icing on the cake for us.

GoGrid Wins LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show

All of the award winners can be seen in the official press release on the winners of the Expo. Congratulations to all who were nominated as well as won.

Justin Kitagawa, Paul Lappas & Jeff Carr

John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of ServePath (GoGrid’s parent company) said “We are super excited to win the LinuxWorld 2008 Best of Show.  GoGrid Cloud Computing is making such broad impact on the field of computing that I’m glad we’re being recognized as more than just a novel approach in a single discipline such as hardware, storage or networking.”

There is plenty of excitement among the GoGrid Development team. They were just recognized by the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team as a showcase example of GWT. GWT is an open-source Java development framework that is the driving force behind GoGrid’s quick, responsive and interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The Google Web Toolkit was critical to the success of GoGrid’s front-end interface. It helped our developers code, debug and test while also providing a “thick client feel but with the performance of a thin client,” said lead GoGrid software engineer, Justin Kitagawa. “We were heavily influenced by Google Maps, the new Yahoo! Mail client and several other state-of-the-art AJAX applications,” says Kitagawa.

The video below illustrates how the GWT enables the GoGrid interface to quickly redraw regions, scale icons, and provide “flashy” effects, among other things. More information can be found here.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

To experience the GoGrid interface first-hand, simply sign up for a GoGrid account. Let us know what you think!

Today, IDG World Expo announced the finalists for the 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards. These awards will be presented at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo next week in San Francisco. The LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards recognizes product and services innovations. GoGrid is a Finalist for Best Virtualization Solution. (I would think that next year’s Awards would include a Best Cloud Computing Solution, but alas, this year’s did not. We probably would have won that one hands down!)

ServePath, the parent company of GoGrid, won the 2007 LinuxWorld Product Excellence award for Best Grid Computing Solution, and given the tremendous press and public uptake of GoGrid, is well on the way toward winning other awards in the future.

A full list of companies and product nominated for the various 2008 LinuxWorld Product Excellence awards can be found here.

GoGrid is an exhibitor at 2008 LinuxWorld and can be found at Booth #900 which is located directly inside one of the entrances of the Expo. The Conference runs from August 4th through August 7th 2008 (Exhibit Hall is open August 5th-7th from 10am to 5pm) in Moscone Center North.

If you would like a complimentary Exhibit Hall Pass, please contact me with your mailing information.

15-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky spent some time with me at GigaOM’s Structure ‘08. Below is an interview that I did with Daniel where we discussed GoGrid and Cloud Computing.

Daniel is the founder and CEO of TeensinTech.com, an organization working to create “a community for teenagers who want to start podcasting, blogging, video-casting and producting all types of new media.” See an interview with Daniel here.

Peter Wayner, contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center, today posted a side-by-side comparison of 4 Cloud Computing providers: Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, GoGrid and AppNexus, titled “Cloud versus cloud: A guided tour of Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid.” What was fairly obvious was that there isn’t a clear “winner” simply because Cloud Computing is so new and standards are still being written. What was clear, is that Wayner believes that GoGrid is “easy to use” and differentiates itself through the offering of both Windows and Linux cloud server images.

Wayner writes:

“GoGrid also has a wider variety of OS images ready to go. There is the usual collection of CentOS/Fedora and common LAMP stacks. If you need Windows, you can have Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0, and Microsoft SQL Server is available at extra cost. There are also images with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and the Facebook application server. These make it a bit easier to start up. “

Wayner also recorded a video of his analysis of GoGrid. Below he shows how a GoGrid cloud server can be easily and quickly deployed as well as some of the management features within the GoGrid control panel:

Wayner writes: “while GoGrid offers many of the same services as Amazon’s EC2, the Web-based control panel is much easier to use than the EC2 command line.” However, to round out the offering, it is important to mention that the GoGrid API is now available for use by all GoGrid users. GoGrid now truly offers full “Control in the Cloud.” The extensibility that the API gives moves GoGrid quickly to the top of the Cloud Computing provider list.

Yesterday we officially launched the new GoGrid API and I wanted to pass on a few notable mentions that recently appeared in the blogosphere. This release was a fairly significant event for us as well as for users of Cloud Computing because for the first time, users now have a choice of using either a slick and intuitive web-based interface or an Application Programming Interface (API), depending on their needs.

NetworkWorld

Technology writer, Mark Gibbs, who has been closely following GoGrid’s progress over the past few months writes:

“The GoGrid API is remarkable because of its depth – through a REST-style interface it provides access to everything that the GoGrid platform can do including configuring components, starting and stopping services, and retrieving status information as well as real time usage and billing data. “

He continues by discussing some possible options for hooking the GoGrid API into a Microsoft Visio COM object or C# to use Visio to diagram and control the service architecture. He extends this idea to incorporate the use of Business Objects’ Xcelsius to potentially create comprehensive GoGrid dashboards.

Additionally, he calls out to other services providers with a global wake-up call:

“GoGrid’s API is the kind of positioning that all service providers should adopt – complete openness on the front end so that customers can use the default user interface or where they have specific service goals they can interface to the service with alternative and extended user interfaces.”

C|Net News

Dan Rosenberg, who discusses the dynamics of growing a startup company on c|net’s Negative Approach blog, comments on how GoGrid has moved from what was “previously called Utility Computing to more of a full-on Cloud approach.”

He, like Gibbs, see the importance of pushing the envelop with Cloud Computing, stating:

“It’s pretty interesting to see the smaller, bleeding edge vendors figure this stuff out before the BigCo’s. This should put some pressure on those who still seem to be missing the Cloud blimp.”

TechCrunchIT

TechCrunchIT, who exclusively covered GoGrid reaching the 1000 paying customer mark, also reported on the release outlining the more technical aspects of the API. Cameron Christoffers writes:

“The API allows user’s to programmatically control their GoGrid environment. This allows users to, for example, auto-scale the GoGrid instance in a timely and efficient manner…GoGrid delivers similar on-demand, pay-by-the-hour server hosting as Amazon’s EC2, but uniquely offers a web-based GUI, Windows Cloud servers, free load balancing, and free support deals.”

Calling All Press and Bloggers

If there are any press or bloggers who are interested in reviewing GoGrid and/or the new GoGrid API, please fill out the Contact form and I will guide you through the process.

If you were watching closely, the GoGrid API was released at the end of last week. Today however, we are making it official! With the release of the API, GoGrid users can now programmatically control their cloud infrastructure on GoGrid. What is truly unique about this offering is that we are the first Cloud Computing provider to provide both a web-based control panel/GUI (Graphical User Interface) and an API (Application Programming Interface), coupled with Windows and Linux cloud servers, free load balancing and support, free static IPs and more.

API’s are critical to many Developers and System Administrators who are looking to have even more rigorous control over their environments. The GoGrid API provides the ability to:

• create interactive GoGrid management applications
• allow Resellers to skin their own GoGrid portals
• script and link various GoGrid commands for automation
• connect GoGrid functions to other management tools or environments
• query and retrieve real-time information on billing, usage and GoGrid devices and objects

When we created the API, we wanted to be sure that it not only lived up to our phrase “Control in the Cloud” but also that it was easy to use, well documented and feature-rich. Others in the Cloud Computing space (like Amazon’s EC2) elected to release an API first and then hope that others would build more friendly interfaces around that API. We decided to produce the web GUI first (so that everyone from novices to tech-savvy users could use GoGrid immediately) and then round off our offering with the API (more skewed towards Programmers and Developers).

For those technically inclined, here are some details on what you can expect from the GoGrid API:

• REST-like Query interface that allows the sending of HTTP GET or POST requests to the GoGrid API REST server
• API Keys are easily generated within the GoGrid web GUI
• Unlimited number of API Keys can be generated per account
• API Keys can be individually enabled or disabled at any time through the web GUI
• API Keys can be assigned the same role-based access controls (RBACs) as GoGrid GUI users
• Changes made via the GoGrid API are reflected in GoGrid’s GUI in real-time
• API output formats: JSON (Java Script Object Notation), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and CSV (Comma Separated Value)
• Supports API calls from Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby as well as shell scripting language like bash

There are several methods available:

• General commands
  • List – lists all requested objects
  • Get – retrieves all information on selected single object
  • Add – add a device or object
  • Delete – delete a device or object
  • Power – start/stop/restart servers
• Items supported and available methods:
  • Load balancer (list, get, add, delete) – commands related to Load Balancers
  • Server (list, get, add, delete, power) – commands related to Servers
  • Image (list) – lists available server images available
  • IP (list) – lists all assigned, unassigned, public and/or private IPs
  • Password (list, get) – lists all passwords for system/server
  • Billing (get) – display billing summary data for account
  • Utility (list) – lists all valid options for a particular lookup

Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) are available. The matrix below illustrates the support:

I could probably go on and on about the plethora of features contained within the API. Best bet though is to sign-up for a GoGrid account and try it yourself. More information on the API can be found on the GoGrid website.

TechCrunchIT, the latest property of TechCrunch, released a story about GoGrid reaching its 1000th paying customer since the service entered public beta in  mid-March. TechCrunchIT “obsessively” profiles products and companies in the Enterprise Technology space, aiming to “promote an understanding of emerging and existing Enterprise technologies.”

TechCrunchIT was able to set up a quick infrastructure on GoGrid, complete with 2 Web Servers, 1 Database Server and Load Balance the entire thing in under 30 minutes from server and load balancer creation to serving web pages from a blog. The server instances only “took a few minutes” to create and were fully configured within another 10-15 minutes.

TechCrunchIT makes a particular point around the ease-of-use of GoGrid’s web interface compared to other Cloud offerings that do not offer anything similar:

“The control panel and feedback interface has a definite advantage.”

There is some discussion around the RAM GB hour, comparisons to EC2 and CPU horsepower. Users with questions around any of these topics should review the following:

• General GoGrid Pricing
• Volume Discount Pricing Plans
• GoGrid versus Amazon’s EC2
• General FAQs (regarding CPU)

Best thing that you can do is to just experience GoGrid first hand through the free $50 trial offer currently available which allows you to fully test GoGrid for a few days for free!

The dust is still settling from Structure08 put on by GigaOM but the general vibe is that it was a solid event. With well over 600 people in attendance, Structure08 lived up to its promise of delivering timely information to businesses on how they could plan their future computing infrastructure needs.

Here’s a quick round up of GoGrid at Structure08.

GoGrid in Webware

Rafe Needleman, editor for Webware.com,  spoke at length with GoGrid CEO, John Keagy, and within hours posted the results of his interview this article titled “Tiny (comparatively) GoGrid takes on Amazon Web Services“. Rafe actually summarized GoGrid as compared to Amazon’s EC2 into something that could even be written multiple time in a single Twitter message (within the 140 character limit): “The GoGrid pitch: We’re cheaper. And easier.”

Rafe writes:

“I can’t do a hands-on with these two cloud services, but there are a few other points that I found interesting. First, GoGrid offers virtual Windows services, as well as Linux, and about 50 percent of its installations are for Windows processes. Some popular Web 2.0 services, like CommunityServer, are still Windows-only.

Also, GoGrid has never had a system-wide outage, as Amazon has. Keagy is realistic, though: “We’re in beta. It will happen to us too.” But, he says, with well-designed systems, recovery can be swift.”

Be sure to give Rafe’s article a read.

John Keagy Structure08 Interview

Our CEO John spent a few minute in front of the camera discussing what was important about Structure08 and how GoGrid fit perfectly into the mix.

This video and others from Structure08 are also available at the Mogulus Structure08 channel.

Photos from Structure08

More photos from this event can be found on the ServePath Flickr account.

Following Structure08 on Twitter (via Hashtags)

For those interested in reading the “real-time” stream coming from people who use Twitter and flag their Tweets with Hashtags, you can see the Structure08 Hashtag stream here. (Follow me on Twitter here.)

Today, InfoWorld’s Tech Writer, Bill Snyder, brought GoGrid solidly into the race with Amazon’s EC2 with his article titled “Red Hat the latest proof that cloud computing is serious business.” Snyder, who has been following technology and the business of technology for 25 years, discusses GoGrid’s “point-and-click infrastructure” and its ease of use in this article.

While Bill mentions that cloud computing may not be ready for large-scale business or the enterprise, he does point out that it is a force to be reckoned with and that the services of GoGrid and Amazon’s EC now “will give a lot of users a chance to take cloud computing for a low-risk, real-world test drive.” I personally predict that the adoption of cloud computing and cloud infrastructure by the enterprise will be a slow uptake at first, most likely rolling out into skunkwork divisions, short-term projects or IT evaluation scenarios, but that within a few years, business not seriously considering “the cloud” will be behind in their technical and competitive advantages.

Snyder highlights a real-world GoGrid success (that I covered here) about how ScribbleLive was able to handle multiple million page view requests in a short amount of time during the Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference. He emphasized the importance of easy and quick scalability coupled with cost-effectiveness provided by GoGrid:

“ScribbleLive, a two-person operation, quickly scaled up using GoGrid, and was able to keep running with little or no loss of throughput. The price: $15 for a day of server time, plus bandwidth charges. Hmm. Maybe the folks at Mozilla, who tried to set a world’s record for downloads of the new Firefox browser but wound up crashing their site, could have done something similar.”

Simplicity is another key factor that Snyder outlines in his review, stating:

“In theory, at least, setting up servers on GoGrid seems almost too easy. Once a client signs up for the service, an IT staffer can point a browser to GoGrid’s site and choose a configuration from a variety of pull down menus. GoGrid supports Windows Server 2003, CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

His article also comments on pricing, the GoGrid infrastructure and plans for the future. Definitely give Snyder’s article a read as it successfully boils GoGrid down to a few nicely-crafted paragraphs of analysis.