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Riverbed Stingray 8.1 Now in the GoGrid Cloud!

Rupert Tagnipes — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:20:00 +0000

As of today, GoGrid has released multiple images of the leading software load balancer, Riverbed Stingray! The following images are available on the GoGrid Partner Exchange in both San Francisco and Amsterdam:

Riverbed 7.4 Simple Load Balancer 10 Mbps
Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 10 Mbps
Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 200 Mbps
Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 200 Mbps WAF

Note that the Riverbed 7.4 image is still Zeus branded. We have made that available in order for users to have access to the Simple Load Balancer on GoGrid. It currently supports up to 10Mbps bandwidth and basic load balancing. It does not have clustering, SSL decryption, health checks or any advanced load balancing features.

The Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 10 Mbps Load Balancer supports bandwidth up to 10Mbps, clustering, no SSL, basic load balancing, and health checks.

The Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 200 Mbps Load Balancer supports bandwidth up to 200Mbps, clustering, no SSL, basic load balancing and health checks.

The Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 200 Mbps Load Balancer WAF supports bandwidth up to 200Mbps, clustering, SSL, load balancing, health checks and integrated Web Application Firewall.

Finding the Images

The images are available via our image selector. In order to find and launch the Riverbed images, click on “Add Cloud Server” for the Data Center that you want to use. In the “Name” field type “Riverbed” and then hit enter. This will filter for just the Riverbed images.

The charges are monthly and you will be charged after you deploy the image. There is a special promotion occurring for Amsterdam regarding deployment of the Riverbed images. Please contact your GoGrid Sales Representative for more details.

Deploying the Load Balancer

The deployment of Stingray is similar to the setup for Zeus. The main difference is the setup is now automated and the license is automatically applied. Note that these instructions ONLY apply to the Riverbed 8.1 versions. These are the basic steps.

Select the Load Balancer image based on your needs. For this example, I will select “Riverbed 8.1 Load Balancer 10Mbps”. Click “Next” and then enter a Server Name, select an IP and the amount of RAM – I recommend using at least 1 GB of RAM on the server. This will generate a Virtual Machine with the software pre-deployed after you click “Save”.
All the Stingray Images run on Ubuntu x64 base images. You will need to access the server via SSH using the root login. Your logins can be found in the GoGrid web portal by clicking on the server icon, then Tools > Passwords.
One of the main differences with this version is that the installer starts immediately upon login and applies the appropriate license. Type “accept” at the prompt to begin the installer or press “return” to abort. If you do not accept the license terms, please delete the server.
The script will configure the Load Balancer for you and generate a temporary password. The password for the Load Balancer will be documented at the end of the script so look for it there. Make sure to take note of it since you will need it to login to the GUI.
You will be returned to the prompt – at this point I recommend changing the server password (note that this is NOT the password for the load balancer). This is the password that you will use to access the server again via SSH. In case you have forgotten, the command to enter a new password for Ubuntu is “passwd”.

Launching the UI

Launch your favorite browser and enter the IP address of the server with the port 9090. For example, you would enter something like:

https://190.10.1.1:9090

Since you are connecting via SSL with a self-signed certificate, your browser will give you a warning message. Since this is your own server, you can bypass the message (assuming that you entered the address correctly) and set an exception for this address.

Once you have cleared the warning page, you will be presented with the Riverbed Stingray GUI. At the login screen, enter the following:

Username: admin

Password: [the password generated for you by the system in the previous step]

Update the Admin Password

Go to the tab “System”.

Select Users > Local > Admin

Change your admin password on this screen. You can also create other accounts from the User tab.

All the Stingray 8.1 licenses in GoGrid allow for clustering and basic health checks. You can configure this on the GUI – the process is the same as the Zeus Load Balancer so you can refer to my previous blog post for more details – “How to Configure Zeus’ New Load Balancer in the GoGrid Cloud“. You can just scroll past the SSL Certificate graphic to bypass the Zeus-specific instructions and into the details on how to add servers to a pool and configure the load balancer.

You can also refer to the Riverbed Quick Start Guide on our wiki.

Since this is a partner image, all support will go through Riverbed. There is extensive documentation on the Riverbed support website as well.

With four different images to chose from, you will now have the flexibility to select the features and price point that work best for you. From controlling traffic to a single web server to managing a large pool of servers across multiple data centers, GoGrid with Riverbed Load Balancers offers the right, scalable solutions for your unique Cloud Fingerprint.

How To Set Up Private IP Segregation with CloudPassage in the GoGrid Cloud

Rupert Tagnipes — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:27:18 +0000

CloudPassage is a key security partner that has images available on the GoGrid Partner Exchange. The CloudPassage images on GoGrid come pre-installed with their Halo daemon. This is available on CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, and Ubuntu on both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Alternately, you can launch a GoGrid base image and install the Halo daemon on your own. This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of Linux and SSH as well as basic firewall strategies. It also assumes that you know how to configure private IPs so that will not be covered here.

Launch a server with the CloudPassage Halo daemon

In your account, add a cloud server. You will be presented with a screen where you can select all the images available to customers on GoGrid. If you enter “Halo” in the name field, it will filter for only the CloudPassage partner images. For this tutorial, I will be using the Ubuntu x64 version on US-West-1.

Register for CloudPassage

While your server is spinning up, go ahead and go to this link and register for CloudPassage (if you haven’t already). One of the advantages of CloudPassage is that you can centrally manage your security from a single web site.

Retrieving your CloudPassage API key

Once you have registered, you will want to pull your CloudPassage API key. Navigate to “Settings > Site Administration > API Keys” to retrieve your CloudPassage API key. Check your email spam folder if you haven’t received an email from CloudPassage. To have future emails from CloudPassage delivered to your Inbox, add cloudpassage.com to your safe senders list.

Upgrade your existing daemon

Log back into the Ubuntu server that you just provisioned. It’s a good practice to change the pre-assigned password so do that first. Next, you will want to upgrade the existing Halo daemon to make sure that you are using the latest version.

Run at the prompt:

apt-get update && apt-get install cphalo

Start the daemon with your API key

At the prompt enter:

/etc/init.d/cphalod start --api-key=

to start the CloudPassage Halo daemon on your cloud server.
This will start the daemon and link the server to your account on Cloud Passage. If you go to Servers > Server Access you will see your server listed.

Create a new Firewall Policy

Next, go to Policies > Firewall Policies. Click on the button “Add New Firewall Policy”.
You will then be presented with a page where you can set the inbound and outbound rules.

I am going to create a rule on the private network (eth1) that allows only one private IP address to access this server. For the first inbound rule, select “eth1″ from the Interface drop-down.

Determine which IP can access your server

CloudPassage has the concept of IP Zones which is a grouping of IP addresses. At the Source drop-down, select “Add New” to create a new IP Zone. I have created a new Zone called “Access OK” and assigned it only one IP address. You can also assign a block of IPs or separate IP addresses. Click the Create button which will set the IP Zone as the default selection for the Source drop-down. Leave Service as “any, ” Conn. State as “Any”. Action as “ACCEPT”.

Set the default-deny rule

For this tutorial, I am just setting up access for one private IP into this server and blocking every other IP. This will only work if you configure a static private IP for the server you want to give access to. Alternately, you can select a predefined Server Group in the Source drop-down but servers will only appear there if you install the Halo daemon. Since our images are set to use DHCP for private IP assignment, you will still need to set a static private IP for this to work.

A best practice is set the last rule as a default-deny. This will prevent any other connections from accessing the server. Note that this configuration is only to control private IPs – this policy has no rules for public traffic. Realistically, you will want to control this as well in order to prevent external access to your servers. However, this tutorial is focused on demonstrating that private IPs can also be controlled centrally.

Click on the “Add” link as shown on the screen shot. This creates a default-deny rule. Make sure to select “eth1″ for the Interface drop-down or else you will lock out your public access as well.

Click Apply once you have made that change.

Assign the Policy to your server

First, go to Servers > Firewall Management. Your server will most likely not be assigned to any server group so it will be in the (1) Unassigned Group. Since the Firewall Policy is assigned at a group level, create a new group for this server by (2) clicking on the Link “Add a New Group”.

Select the Firewall Policy for the Group

After clicking on “Add a New Group” you will see a form where you can select the Policy that you just created and name the new group. Note that this policy is set GROUP wide so you can assign any new servers to this group and it will then have that Firewall policy applied. I have named this group “Private Network” and selected the Firewall Policy that I just created “Private Network Access”. Click “Save” when you are done with this form.

Move your server from Unassigned to the new group

Now that you have create a new Server Group, you will want to move your server to that group. (1)Click on the check box on the right of the server and on the (2) Actions drop-down select “Move Server(s). You will then be presented with a form – simply select the new group that you created (called Private Network in this tutorial) and then click the “Move Servers” button.

You’re done!

This configuration will then allow for you to assign certain private IPs to have access to your server while blocking others. This will help a few use cases:

1. You have a group of users who each have 3 servers and want only the three that they own to access each other via the private network. You can configure cloud passage to allow access to those 3 servers and block the other users servers. This will provide private network isolation that can be centrally managed via the CloudPassage Portal.
2. You have a group of web servers but you only want one to access your back-end servers via the private network.

Using CloudPassage is a great way to centrally manage security on any numbers of servers that you might have running on the GoGrid cloud. While, this tutorial has focused on the private network, CloudPassage is also excellent at manage firewalls for public access as well. Install their image and start using it to protect your servers today!

How to Set Up a Gluster File System within the GoGrid Cloud (Part 1)

Zane Williamson — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:38:40 +0000

In this blog post series, I want to take a closer look at a storage technology called Gluster File System, and how it can be set up (this article), connected to (article #2) and expand storage (article #3). This is the first blog post of the series and I will review what GlusterFS is, why you would consider using it, and how to deploy it using the GoGrid GlusterFS Partner GSI.

GoGrid offers a great storage solution called Cloud Storage. But what if you want to deploy your own storage so that you can directly control performance and redundancy? What software would you use to provide this? The simple answer is Gluster. It is a powerful software-based storage solution that offers a centralized controlled storage pool management system that is very easy to use.

There are many different ways to take advantage of the GlusterFS storage solution. (Note: in the descriptions below a “brick” is a GoGrid Virtual Server.)

1. Distributed Volumes:

“Distributed volumes distribute files throughout the bricks in the volume. You can use distributed volumes where the requirement is to scale storage and the redundancy is either not important or is provided by other hardware/software layers.” – Gluster.org

2. Replicated Volumes:

“Replicated volumes replicate files throughout the bricks in the volume. You can use replicated volumes in environments where high-availability and high-reliability are critical.” – Gluster.org

3. Striped Volumes:

“Stripes data across bricks in the volume. For best results, you should use striped volumes only in high concurrency environments accessing very large files.”

These storage volume options seem very familiar, don’t they? Well, if you are familiar with the different RAID configurations of hard drives in server deployments, you will notice similarities with these options. For example, the “Distributed Volume” for Gluster is essentially a RAID 0. You sacrifice redundancy to gain superior performance and ease of capacity scaling.

The Replicated Volume is similar to a RAID 10 or RAID 1 where data integrity, redundancy and reliability are very important. However, the cost to scale is more since you need to basically add GoGrid Virtual Servers (bricks) in pairs to maintain the Replicated Volume structure.

The Striped Volume is similar to RAID 5 where data is striped across the GoGrid Virtual Servers (bricks). This comes in very handy when you are dealing with very large files (multiple GB files) and when the file is accessed multiple servers will stream the data to the web-server needing the file – offering very fast reads.

For my blog post, I am going to configure a 4 server Distributed Volume Gluster setup using the GoGrid Gluster Partner Image. I am going to deploy 4 x 8GB Gluster servers. Each Gluster server will have 384GB of storage available. In the Distributed Volume setup (similar to RAID 10), I will have 384GB x2 worth of space equaling approximately 768GB of usable space.

First step is to deploy the 4 new GoGrid Gluster Virtual Servers using the GoGrid Partner GSI. I log into my portal and then follow the next steps:

1. Click “Add”

2. Choose “Cloud Server”

3. Filter for “Gluster” & choose that image

4. Accept the Terms

5. Fill in the server information (name, public IP, description, memory allotment)

6. Repeat this process 3 more time but using different server name and public IP address.

Once you have all 4 of your new Gluster servers deployed, you can then view the Support → Passwords page in your portal to find the login information. With this login information, you can run this command from your local Linux workstation to change the hostname, set the private IP address and reboot each system. Run the following Bash script from your Linux workstation. The script will prompt you for the server address and root login, and also ask for the hostname and private IP address/netmask you want to use. If you don’t want to use this script, simply log into each system manually, update the host names and private IP addresses, and then reboot.

https://github.com/sepulworld/Remote_Linux_System_Update/blob/master/system_update.sh

I should now be able to log into all 4 systems and see the appropriate hostnames and IPs on each.

This looks good – if you don’t see the right hostnames or IPs on one or more of the systems, double check what is configured in the /etc/sysconfig/network file and in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 file. Also, confirm if your host performed the intended reboot (this is necessary for the host name to update at the command line).

From one of your Gluster servers, confirm private network connectivity by pinging each of the other Gluster servers via their private IP addresses. See image below.

Once this has been confirmed, we can take a look and see if the Gluster process is already running. It is configured on this GoGrid Partner Image to start on boot.

Now I need to configure the trusted server storage pool. Basically, I log into just one of my 4 Gluster servers (I choose Gluster_1) and I run a single command to put each of the other 3 members into the trusted server storage pool.

[root@Gluster_1 ~]# gluster peer probe 10.129.151.107

See image here -

Next, I run the command to create the distributed volume using my 4 Gluster servers.

command: gluster volume create DataStore1 replica 4 transport tcp 10.129.151.105:/store1 10.129.151.98:/store2 10.129.151.108:/store3 10.129.151.107:/store4

You can name the directories anything you want. I used “store1” thru “store4”. You can also name the volume whatever you would like. I choose DataStore1.

Now let’s start the Volume with one simple command: gluster volume start DataStore1

And finally let’s view the volume information: gluster volume info DataStore1

Helpful link:

http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Main_Page

If you run into any issues or have questions about the Gluster Partner GSI, please email gogrid-beta@gluster.com

That is it! You have successfully deployed the GoGrid Gluster servers from the GoGrid Partner GSI and configured 4 of them in a new replicated storage volume. My next blog post will cover deploying a web-server and connecting to this new storage volume. The third and final post will cover how to scale your replicated storage volume on GoGrid.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3. Please let me know if you have any questions.

GoGrid Cloud Survey Report – Security & Compliance (Part 4)

Michael Sheehan — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:56:55 +0000

Last time in the GoGrid Cloud Survey Report series, I wrote on cloud use cases and reasons for migrating to the cloud. This week, I wanted to focus on everybody’s favorite topic: security and compliance in the cloud.

If you’re brand new to this series, let me catch you up to speed. At the beginning of the year, GoGrid gathered feedback from over 500 CTOs, developers and IT professionals relating to cloud computing and best practices. This week, we’re highlighting the results from the question “What type of security/compliance do you require in the cloud?”

You may have noticed, whenever there is a conversation about Infrastructure-as-a-Service, the security debate is sure to follow. We wanted to see what types of security the IT industry uses and which were the most important to maintaining compliance.

What Type of Security/Compliance Do You Require in the Cloud?

As seen in the chart above, private VLANs, network layer firewalls and DDoS mitigation are the most required form of security according to our respondents, followed closely by Virtual Private Networks.

Obviously, security is only as good as the amount of effort that you put into implementing it. At GoGrid, we believe that providing raw infrastructure that you can control and manage is paramount. And, we provide the tools to help make your environment more secure. Private VLANs enable traffic to flow between your server instances that is not public in any way to other users of the public cloud. We launched with this service and believe that is should be core to any cloud. DDoS protection is something that most web infrastructure providers and hosters have built into their service offering. No site is 100% immune to Distributed Denial of Service attacks, however, attacks can be thwarted and mitigated. Also, GoGrid provides firewall services either via a hardware appliance or via a Partner GoGrid Server Image (PGSI) – like CloudPassage, Gazzang, Cranium Solutions, Sentrigo, Trend Micro, Art of Defence or CohesiveFT (for VPN solutions), among others, where GoGrid users can choose best-of-class server image solutions to further harden and monitor their GoGrid environments.

PCI compliance is very business-specific. While GoGrid does not offer full PCI-compliance, we can provide the tools to “get you down the path” of achieving PCI-compliance. One example is via our hybrid hosting offering. By mixing and matching physical and virtual environments, you can work to achieve compliance of certain aspects of your hosted environment. Also, some of the partner images in the GoGrid Exchange offer means to achieve compliance for particular components of the PCI-compliance checklist – for example IDS/IPS, logging and web application firewalls. Our account teams have assisted many GoGrid customers in achieving PCI or HIPAA compliance.

Security/Compliance Requirements (Grouped)

This graph took the same data from above and really highlights what the IT industry views as important for IaaS security requirements. One of the reasons HIPAA and PCI are low are because is is very specific to a business vertical. Since many of the respondents may not have a need for PCI compliance, they will mark it as a lower of a priority than more commonplace items like firewalls, Private VLANs and VPNs which most companies should use as part of their Security Best Practices implementations.

Now that you know the security requirements from over 500 professionals from the IT industry, how do you stack up? Is your infrastructure more or less secure than our respondents? Stay tuned to the GoGrid Cloud Survey Report series because next time we’ll be diving into the private cloud!

For more information on our survey methodology or to see all of our results, please download the Cloud Survey Report.

GoGrid & Equinix Webinar: Learn Why 2011 is the Year of the Hosted Private Cloud

Michael Sheehan — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:14:25 +0000

On May 25th, GoGrid and partner Equinix will be educating you on why we call 2011 the “Year of the Hosted Private Cloud.” If you are doing business that requires technology, in order to increase profitability and productivity, you frequently need to lower your total cost of ownership of that technology. Cloud Computing has been great for this as we see with the 10s of thousands of active GoGrid customers currently. As corporations and enterprises expand their technology footprints, they need to carefully weigh the various infrastructure solutions available to them. But be forewarned, some of the antiquated options are expensive and can consume huge amounts of human capital in the process. For many, a Hosted Private Cloud is a much better option.

While public clouds offer incredible advantages over traditional, dare I say, old fashioned (physical) infrastructure implementations, sometimes corporations need to be able to leverage the benefits and technology of a state-of-the-art public cloud, but within a non-shared environment. This is where GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud comes in to play.

On Wednesday, May 25th from 11:00am to 11:30am PST, GoGrid and Equinix will be providing an educational webinar to discuss a variety of topics surrounding public and private clouds, including:

Distinguishing between a Public vs. Hosted Private Cloud
Determining which type of cloud is right for your business
How enterprises are leveraging the private cloud

Additionally, the webinar will provide attendees various Resources on how to get started as well as answer questions from the audience.

Panelists for this webinar are:

Lou Najzdin – Lou is a Subject Matter Expert with Equinix’s Cloud and IT Services vertical. In this role Lou consults with both Cloud companies and Enterprises on deploying and utilizing cloud technologies. Lou is in the unique position to see Cloud the subject from both the provider and user perspectives.
Mario Olivarez – Mario is GoGrid’s Vice President of Product Management and leads all aspects of product strategy, development and execution; including product roadmap planning and management, product marketing initiatives and is a key member of the executive team that took GoGrid to market.

Register now at: http://go.gogrid.com/equinix