I think that we may have broken a record in having one of the most news-filled newsletters in GoGrid history. And, I don’t think we were able to put everything in there. One feature of particular note is that of RAM Scaling. Now, within GoGrid, you can scale your cloud servers up or down as you need. This month’s newsletter has information about this important feature and a whole lot more, so for those of you who are not currently receiving the GoGrid newsletter, the full content is below.

Below is a copy of the October 2010 Customer Update newsletter that went out to all GoGrid customers:

Hello,

All of us at GoGrid have been working on providing more and more value to you not only in our feature and system enhancements, but also with educational webinars and trainings. In this issue of the GoGrid newsletter, you’ll discover ways in which we can form a partnership to help you leverage more from your GoGrid cloud.

This edition includes:

New Features and System Enhancements

• RAM Scaling Now Live
• API Enhancements
• GoGrid Firewall Enhancement
• Performance Boost with Intel’s Westmere Chipset
• New Terms of Service

Partner News

• New Partner Images for the GoGrid Exchange
• Updated Partner Images

Webinars

• Live GoGrid Training Session
• Cloud Hosting 101
• Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud
• Capture Your Share of the Cloud Market: Learn How With GoGrid’s Channel Program
• BuycPanel (title pending)
• Deploying NOSQL in the Cloud
• Scale Your Applications in the Cloud Without Downtime or the Headache

Events and Other News

• FailCon
• SYS-CON Cloud Expo

New Features and System Enhancements

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RAM Scaling

The ability to scale your RAM up or down is now available! Our RAM scaling feature allows you to upgrade to the maximum amount of RAM available for your operating system on your Cloud servers. RAM scaling only applies to RAM, so your core and disk allocations remain untouched. Also, all your settings and configurations (except RAM of course) remain the same when you scale your RAM.

Changing the RAM of any cloud server is easy. Use the API to programmatically change your RAM allocation or simply log in to the portal my.gogrid.com and follow these four steps:

1. Select the cloud server you wish to scale up or down
2. Click the Upgrade button.
3. Choose your desired RAM allocation.
4. Click Submit.
Note: the minimum amount of RAM available for downgrade is equal to the amount allocated when you originally provisioned that particular cloud server.
Read more on our blog.

FREE Live Training! Sign-up for our live training session on October 26 at 11:00 a.m. PDT, where a GoGrid Technical Account Manager will walk you through our new features and provide some use cases and best practices.

Register now: go.gogrid.com/webinar/20101026

API Enhancements

You now have even more control over your cloud servers via the API. Check out the new enhancements:

• Edit Server Description via API – using a simple API call, you can now fully edit the description of your GoGrid Cloud Server. See the API documentation on how to do this.

• Change Cloud Server Classification via API – you can now change the server classification via the GoGrid API. Options are: Web/App Server or Database Server. This will affect where your Cloud Server appears in both the Grid and List views. See the API documentation on how to do this.

The GoGrid Customer Portal and API now also present the number of Cores and Disk Space allocated to your servers. Read more about RAM Scaling and API enhancements on our blog.

GoGrid Firewall Enhancement

We are now accepting pre-sale sign-ups for our enhanced Fortinet Hardware Firewall. This new configuration now supports your existing public IP addresses, our free F5 load balancers and will be available directly in GoGrid’s networking infrastructure. Confidently secure your GoGrid cloud or hybrid infrastructure behind Fortinet’s enterprise-grade hardware firewall. Contact your Account Manager to add this essential security component to your infrastructure.
The Fortinet hardware firewall is $200/month, which includes one type of VPN.

Performance Boost with Intel’s Westmere Chipset

To continue improving GoGrid performance, as well as build an internal foundation for growth while upgrading our infrastructure with cutting edge technology, we’ve changed a few things:

1. We’ve upgraded our hardware, including outfitting our host machines with Intel’s Westmere chipset and fast SAS drives. As a result, you should see even greater I/O performance and in some cases greater CPU performance, an improvement upon our existing hardware, which is already rated the best in the industry. It will take us 4-6 months to completely build out enough Westmere capacity to handle 100% of new server adds. As a result, it is possible for new servers to be provisioned on non-Westmere nodes.
2. In order to achieve this performance boost, there will be a change to the cloud server disk allotment. As of September 15, all cloud servers will receive 50 GB of local storage for every 1 GB of RAM, a reduction of 17% compared with the 60:1 ratio we offered on the older hardware. As always, please note that the amount of usable storage presented by your cloud server’s OS may be slightly less than 50 GB.

Terms of Service

Please note that section 10 (g) of our terms of service has changed. Essentially, we have made improvements to the way we communication terms of service with you. We will now be notifying you via the GoGrid website and a written notice.

Please see www.gogrid.com/legal/terms-service for more information.

Partner News

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The GoGrid Exchange continues to grow with new and exciting partners.  Check out the new and updated Partner GoGrid Server Images (PGSIs) available in the GoGrid catalog.

NEW to the GoGrid Exchange:

• Genero: a platform-independent application development and deployment environment, optimized for data-intensive business applications suitable for businesses of all sizes. Genero applications work well in enterprise environments, interoperate with other languages and platforms, scale well, and lend themselves to Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

• Genero DB: a high-performance, fully transactional, ACID and SQL Compliant RDBMS optimized for modern computer architectures, designed for high throughput in high-content many-user, high-workload environments. Available both as part of the Genero GSI and on a stand-alone basis for use with other programming languages, Genero DB’s scalability makes it an ideal data management infrastructure product for cloud-based applications.

• Toad® for MySQL is a freeware development tool that improves the productivity of developers and administrators running MySQL on Windows.

• BitNami Alfresco is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system featuring document management, Web Content Management, Collaboration Management, Records Management, and Image Management.

• BitNami Opina is a web management tool for poll management. The application is designed so any user is able to create questionnaires, publish them to obtain responses, and process results.

• BitNami EnanoCMS is a content management system that strives to have less bloat and more float than other solutions. It includes powerful administrative capabilities and a variety of plug-ins to add portals, forums, blogs, and other functionality.

• BitNami Moodle is a Course Management System that is designed using sound pedagogical principles to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from one computer to a 50,000-student university and is used in 175 countries around the world.

• Aneka is an integrated middleware package that allows you to seamlessly build and manage an interconnected network in addition to accelerating development, deployment, and management of distributed applications using Microsoft .NET frameworks on these networks.

• ZPanel is a free-to-download Web hosting control panel written to work effortlessly with Microsoft(R) Windows(TM)-based servers or computers. This solution can turn a home or professional server into a fully fledged, easy-to-use, and easy-to-manage web hosting server.

UPDATES to the GoGrid Exchange:

• OpenVPN™ Access Server enables secure and granular remote access to your private cloud network resources.

• BitNami Redmine Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of Redmine and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Customer Portal by selecting the BitNami Redmine image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami SugarCRM Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of SugarCRM and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Portal by selecting the BitNami SugarCRM image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami Joomla! Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of Joomla! and its required dependencies. It can be launched via the GoGrid Portal by selecting the BitNami Joomla! server image when deploying a new cloud server.

• BitNami Drupal WordPress 2.8 preinstalled and preconfigured out of the box.

• BitNami Drupal 6.15 preinstalled and preconfigured out of the box.

• BitNami MediaWiki Stack greatly simplifies the deployment of MediaWiki and its required dependencies. MediaWiki is a wiki package originally written for Wikipedia.

Webinars

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GoGrid Live Training Session

Would you like to have a little more hands-on training? Sign-up for our free live training session where a GoGrid Technical Account Manager will show you the advantages of our new features and provide some use cases and best practices.
Date: October 26
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101026

Upcoming Webinars

Cloud Hosting 101

Do you know anyone who would like to equip themselves with the information needed to take their company into the cloud? Suggest our Cloud Hosting 101 educational webinar. With this educational webinar, we’ll present the basics of cloud hosting, discuss how companies can benefit from the cloud, and what steps to take to get started.
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101110

Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud: Manage Traffic Spikes and Uptime

Join GoGrid’s Sales Engineer for a presentation and discussion on the top use cases and best practices for load balancing in the cloud.
Date: Thursday, October 28, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101028

Capture Your Share of the Cloud Market: Learn How With GoGrid’s Channel Program

Interested in becoming a GoGrid Reseller? Learn more about the available opportunities with our channel program.
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 or Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/reseller/upcoming

Joint GoGrid and Partner Webinars

Become a Hosting Provider with cPanel and GoGrid

Need to automate and offer competitive hosting services? cPanel is the industry standard for turning servers into a fully automated point-and-click hosting platform. By combining GoGrid and cPanel you get a one-stop shop for your hosting and platform administration needs allowing you to instantly license cPanel and deploy infrastructure in the GoGrid cloud.
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101104

Deploy NOSQL in the Cloud

Building a Web 3.0 application? Planning to leverage socially connected data, location based data or web analytics? Looking for alternatives to SQL data bases? Join InfiniteGraph and GoGrid for an educational webinar where we’ll provide you with a powerful data management system to help you build better applications.
Date: Thursday, November 9, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101109

Scale Your Applications in the Cloud Without Downtime or the Headache

Are you ready to scale your applications and business but aren’t sure how to move forward? Join our Cloud experts from GoGrid and Cloudkick for an educational webinar where they’ll present best practices for scaling in the GoGrid cloud.

Date: Thursday, November 11, 2010
Time: 11:00 a.m. PDT – 12:00 p.m. PDT
Register: go.gogrid.com/webinars/20101111

Events and Other News

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FailCon 2010

GoGrid will be sponsoring FailCon on October 25. FailCon is the premier conference on start-up failures and how to prepare and recover from them. From their site: “You aren’t a real entrepreneur until you’ve had to deal with failure, and recovering from it – financially, emotionally and practically – can be challenging. Hear how major players in the industry have dealt with failure, recovered from it, and kept a positive, tenacious, and energetic attitude through it all.”

SYS-CON 7th International Cloud Expo

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley will feature 200+ technical breakout sessions and General Sessions across four days from the leading Cloud industry players in the world. All the main layers of the Cloud pyramid (see: http://pyramid.gogridcom) will be represented in the 7th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo – the infrastructure players, the platform providers, and those offering applications. This event is a must-attend for senior technologists including CIOs, CTOs, directors of infrastructure, VPs of technology, IT directors and managers, network and storage managers, network engineers, enterprise architects, and communications and networking specialists.

GoGrid will be exhibiting at booth #510 as well as presenting a few sessions throughout the conference.

As always, you can find more information about GoGrid by visiting the following links:

• 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 feel free to contact me directly at maria[at]gogrid.com.

Thank you,

Maria Gallegos

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements coming from GoGrid!

This month, we tried something a bit different with our Customer Newsletter for August 2010 in that we sent the newsletter from our Service Teams. In case you didn’t already know this, every GoGrid customer is assigned a service team to help our customers manage and grow their GoGrid account and answer any questions customers may have. The teams consist of an Account Manager, a Support Specialist, a Billing Specialist, a Data Center Technician and a Network Specialist.

Even though it is the summer here, we are hard at work growing the GoGrid product and feature offering as we strive to live up to our new Unique Value Proposition: “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy™”.

Below is the full content of the August 2010 Customer Update newsletter that went out to all GoGrid customers:

Hello,

It’s August and we’ve hit our stride. The release of GoGrid version 3.0 was a major milestone and we’ve continued at a steady pace for feature parity in our new US-East-1 data center. In this edition of the newsletter, you’ll discover how our new features and system enhancements can make an immediate impact on your GoGrid Cloud.

Specific topics include:

• New Features and System Enhancements
• Unique Value Proposition
• Partner News
• CDN News
• Events and Other News

New Features and System Enhancements

---

F5 Load Balancer Support US-East-1

In June, we opened our new US-East-1 data center in Ashburn, VA, which allows for immediate provisioning of virtual servers with GoGrid base images. We’re happy to announce that free F5 load balancing is now available for immediate deployment in the US-East-1 data center as well.

You can use the GoGrid portal or the API to provision virtual servers and F5 load balancers in real time  and in either of our locations: US-West-1 or US-East-1.

16 GB RAM Virtual Servers

In April we began the process of upgrading our node hardware with the latest Intel Nehalem chipset architecture allowing for 25-50% more CPU for virtual servers. We also gave Cloud Servers greater CPU allocations and now have included the ability to provision 16 GB RAM virtual servers in both GoGrid data centers.

As new node capacity continues to be built, we expect to soon have enough new Nehalem nodes to handle 100% of new virtual server adds.  Currently, 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 FAQs for this new feature:

Q: Are the new 16 GB virtual servers compatible with my existing MyGSIs and PGSIs?
A: Yes, all of your existing MyGSIs and PGSIs are compatible with the 16GB RAM virtual servers, and that option will automatically be made available with existing compatible MyGSIs and PGSIs. Note that only server images with a 64-bit OS will have the option to add a 16GB RAM server.

Q: Are there any restrictions with the types of operating systems I can use?
A: Yes, there are some restrictions with Windows operating systems due to Microsoft licensing constraints. Please see the chart below for specifics:

New Virtual Servers
RAM                Cores               Disk Storage
16 GB              16 (Linux)          960
8 (Windows)
Existing Virtual Servers
RAM              Cores               Disk Storage
16 GB            8                       960
If you have questions, please contact your dedicated GoGrid account team or GoGrid technical support.

Six New Images for GoGrid Dedicated Servers

We now support 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for our GoGrid Dedicated Servers. All of the existing images continue to be supported and are still available.
See below for new image details:

• Ubuntu 10.04 (32-bit) Dedicated Server
• Ubuntu 10.04 (64-bit) Dedicated Server
• CentOS 5.5 (32-bit) Dedicated Server
• CentOS 5.5 (64-bit) Dedicated Server
• RHEL 5.5 (32-bit) Dedicated Server
• RHEL 5.5 (64-bit) Dedicated Server

Make an Impact on Your GoGrid Cloud

At GoGrid you have a dedicated service team with cross-functional expertise that is available to help you every step of the way. Our team of experts can translate your business and technical requirements into the best solution for you.

Interested in or have questions about:

• Getting started with Cloud Storage
• Deploying Cloud Servers and F5 load balancers in the US-East-1 data center
• Hardware and software firewall solutions
• Leveraging F5 load balancing
• Provisioning a Partner GSI (PGSI)
• Building a Hybrid solution

Contact us directly to discuss getting started with a GoGrid solution. We will be happy to coordinate a technical and strategy call, as well as a consultative GoToMeeting on how to use our system.

Unique Value Proposition

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Help Improve GoGrid and You Could Win an iPad

As part of our continued effort to provide a positive experience for our customers we are asking for your feedback. Below is a link to our quarterly customer survey. Simply fill out the survey and you’ll be entered to win an iPad. The survey is super quick (only a minute or two of your time) and will help us assess our ability to serve our customers and identify areas where we need to improve. This is your chance to provide input on the features that will help you. Here’s the link so that you can participate: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D7ZDKTY

Partner News

We continue to add exciting new partners to the GoGrid Exchange. In the past month we’ve added several new Partner GoGrid Server Images (PGSIs) to the GoGrid catalog. You can deploy an image directly from the GoGrid Portal.

NEW to the GoGrid Exchange:

• Trend Micro Deep Security – Trend Micro Deep Security 7 provides advanced protection for servers in the dynamic data center, whether physical, virtual, or in the cloud. Deep Security combines intrusion detection and prevention, firewall, integrity monitoring, and log inspection capabilities in a single, centrally-managed software agent.

• Automated Security Assessment Program (ASAP) – Cranium Solutions’ flagship product, ASAP™ (Automated Security Assessment Program), is the first fully automated end-to-end network security testing solution that runs as a loud-based service.  Businesses can perform simple and automated Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Tests of any systems they have deployed on the GoGrid Cloud.

• enStratus – enStratus is a cloud infrastructure management platform for enterprise-class applications in private and public clouds including GoGrid. enStratus delivers governance for the cloud through a patent-pending security architecture and a range of management capabilities including financial controls, role-based security, auto-scaling, and auto-recovery.

UPDATES to the GoGrid Exchange:

• BitNami WordPress 3.0 – WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. The project was started in 2003. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

• BitNami SugarCRM 5.5.2-0 – SugarCRM is a flexible customer relationship management solution for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM can be easily customized and integrated with other software to allow companies to build and maintain a more flexible system. The core functionality includes sales force automation, marketing campaigns, support cases, project management, and calendaring.

• GigaSpaces XAP – GigaSpaces Technologies is a leading provider of a new generation of application platforms for Java and .Net environments that offer an alternative to traditional application-servers. The company’s eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) is a high-end application server designed to meet the most demanding business requirements in a cost-effective manner. It is the only product that provides a complete middleware solution on a single, scalable platform.

Webinar: Sentrigo and GoGrid

Title: Learn to Build a Stable, Scalable, and Secure Databases in the Cloud
Date and time: Thursday, August 12, 2010 10:00 am – 11:00am PDT
In this webinar, GoGrid and Sentrigo, a leader and innovator in database security, share our expertise on database deployments and real-time security in this latest frontier of information technology. Click here to register, or paste http://go.gogrid.com/e/3442/7YXX2/RXDE/7101902 into your browser.

CDN News

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18 Global PoPs

GoGrid is pleased to announce that our Parisian CDN PoP (Point of Presence) is now fully functional, bringing the total number of global GoGrid CDN PoPs to 18. Also new to the GoGrid CDN are upgrades to our Flash Live Streaming Platform and new HTTP Rules Engine.

There are no fees to have a CDN account provisioned. Learn more or have yours created today.

Flash Live Streaming Platform

If you’re looking to stream live Flash video, then our new offering Live StreamCast offers superior scalability and performance over our previous Live Streaming service.
Enhancements include:

• Automatic redundancy and failover
• A new live publishing point in Australia
• Simpler URL structure
• Improved scalability

We’ll continue to offer and support our existing Flash platforms: Flash On-Demand and Flash via HTTP progressive download.

HTTP Rules Engine

The HTTP Rules Engine gives you highly granular control over how, when, and if your content is served. The possibilities are endless, but the end result is much more control over the security, cost, and burden of your content delivery.
The HTTP Rules Engine allows you to:

• Easily block content leeching and hotlinking
• Slash bandwidth costs by specifying precise “origin pull” update intervals for each URL or object
• Reduce load on your origin servers by offloading your existing rules to our processing engine

The cost is $299.99/month and $299.99 for setup.
For more information, consult your Service Team Account Manager.

Events and Other News

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Net Promoter Survey

If you’ve filled out our Net Promoter Survey, Thank You! We recently sent you a short survey asking you if you would recommend GoGrid to a friend or colleague. Your feedback is very important to us and will be reviewed closely by our executive team. If you haven’t had a chance to fill out the survey, there’s still time.

GoGrid 3.0 Webinar

On June 28, we hosted a webinar featuring the release of GoGrid version 3.0 and our new East Coast data center. If you were unable to attend or would like to review the recording, visit our blog.

As always, you can find more information about GoGrid by visiting the following links:

• 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 feel free to contact your service team directly.

Thank you,

[Service Team Account Executive]

Your Service Team

Don’t forget to follow GoGrid on Twitter (@GoGrid) as well as become a fan (or like us) on Facebook. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact your Service Team.

If you are already a GoGrid user, most likely your inbox has a copy of the June 2010 GoGrid Newsletter. But for those of you who are not customers or are simply interested in receiving the latest and greatest information straight from us, below you can find the content of the newsletter. It was definitely an action-packed month for us at GoGrid as you will indubitably see from reading.

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.

So the cat is sort of out of the bag with the release of the May 2010 GoGrid Newsletter. We definitely have some exciting news to share with GoGrid customers and those looking to move their infrastructure into the GoGrid Cloud. If you are currently a GoGrid customer receiving our newsletter, you should have received the following:

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!

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:

1. New Features and System Enhancements
2. New Windows Minimum RAM Limits
3. New Partners GSIs
4. GoGrid and Microsoft WebsiteSpark Event
5. Other News

New Features and System Enhancements

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Coming April 1, 2010

GoGrid will offer two new hardware firewall services. The firewall services are great for ensuring your hosted servers are free from malicious threats. Plus, you can manage security for your GoGrid VLAN from a single device. The hardware firewall services are delivered via a custom hybrid network and require a GoGrid Prepaid Data Transfer Plan.
Here are the available options:
Option 1: Fortinet Firewall
Pricing

• $99.99/month
• Free setup
• Requires a monthly data transfer plan

Included features

• 100 Mbps throughput
• 100,000 concurrent sessions
• Includes one VPN (SSL, site-to-site, or IPSec)

Option 2: Cisco ASA Firewall
Pricing

• $349.99/mo
• Free setup
• Requires a monthly transfer plan

Included features

• Robust site-to-site and remote access IPSec VPN connectivity
• Multi-Vector Attack protection
• Layer 2 transparent firewall capability

To learn more about GoGrid firewall services, please contact your GoGrid account manager or call the GoGrid sales line 1-877-946-4743.

System Enhancements

On Thursday, March 25, we will release updated Windows Server 2003 and 2008 base operating system images. The new images will appear in the image selection widget located in the GoGrid portal and include the following enhancements:

• Updating the images with the latest (as of Feb. 2010) MS Windows Update HotFixes

New Windows Minimum RAM Limits

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On March 25, we will implement new minimum RAM limits for all Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server operating systems.
Here are the new minimum RAM limits:

• Windows Server 2003 – 1 GB minimum
• Windows Server 2008 – 2 GB minimum
• Microsoft SQL Server – 2 GB minimum

We are implementing these minimum RAM limits (based on Microsoft recommendations) in order to address server performance issues caused when Windows virtual servers are deployed without sufficient RAM. Existing virtual servers will not be affected by the new minimum RAM limits – the new RAM limits apply only to new server deployments.

New Partner GSIs

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The GoGrid Exchange allows our partners to offer their services to the GoGrid community. This month we have rolled out 3 new partners. The new partners offer services that should allow you to better manage, control and secure your GoGrid infrastructure. Here are the new partner details:

EVault Off Site Backups

This is a cost-effective off site backup and recovery service for businesses that are hosting critical data in the GoGrid cloud. Look for EVault SaaS in the image selection widget located in the GoGrid portal.
For price details, please contact your GoGrid account manager or visit the GoGrid Exchange for EVault service details.

art of defence: hyperguard® SaaS

Protect your web and cloud applications against known and unknown attacks at the application layer (such as SQL injection, cross site scripting or more general OWASP Top10) with art of defence’s firewall (dWAF), hyperguard.
Pricing: $39/month
Access hyperguard SaaS by simply using the image selection widget locate in the GoGrid portal.
More details on art of defence is on the GoGrid Exchange.

Gear6

Delivers higher memory efficiency and is the only Memcached service that can leverage cloud-based storage to increase cache depth by several orders of magnitude. Free and paid images are now available in the GoGrid portal.
Find out more about Gear6 on the GoGrid Exchange.

Upcoming Webinar: Learn about the pros and cons of implementing Memcached in a cloud environment, the basics and best practices of implementation and leveraging free and commercial Memcached GoGrid offerings.

Title : Memcached: Making the Cloud Scalable for Web 2.0 presented by Gear6 and GoGrid
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PD
Reserve your webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/511484563

To get started with any of our featured PartnerGSIs or to learn more, visit the GoGrid Exchange or contact your GoGrid account manager.

GoGrid and Microsoft WebsiteSpark Event

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Win with GoGrid and Microsoft WebsiteSpark

Learn about this outstanding business opportunity that can save your startup or small business literally thousands of dollars in licensing and hosting costs.

Date : Tuesday, March 30, 2010 from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM PST
Location: Microsoft – Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA
Click here to register: http://websitespark-gogrid-01.eventbrite.com/?ref=ecount
For more information about using GoGrid as your WebsiteSpark Hosting Partner visit: http://www.gogrid.com/microsoft_websitespark/

Cloud Connect 2010 Expo

GoGrid will be an exhibitor at the Cloud Connect Expo. Explore the benefits and opportunities of cloud computing, learn how to develop successful business models and build relationships and get in-depth technical information on cloud development.
Date: March 15th – 18th
Location: Santa Clara Convention Center
For a Free Expo Pass or to save 40% on the price of a Conference Pass, use priority code: CNJPCC01 when registering at: http://www.cloudconnectevent.com

Other News

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Watch the GoGrid New Feature Release Webinar

We recently hosted a webinar featuring recent updates to GoGrid. If you didn’t get a chance to attend, you can still view the video at GoGrid Feature Release Webinar.

GoGrid is HIRING!

We currently have over 10 open positions in Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Sales, Services and Administration. See: http://www.gogrid.com/company/careers.php for more details.

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

Thanks for reading!