Last week we announced several updates to GoGrid’s cloud infrastructure services. One of the highlights of this update was the enhancement we made to the saving your GoGrid Server Images (MyGSI) process.

Up till now, saving your MyGSI has been a fairly simple 3-step process that was helpful for horizontal scaling, re-imaging of servers, disaster recovery, or setting up failover environments. Through the update, this process can now be completed in a single step.

We’ve created several helpful tutorials to help educate users on the new process. Please reference our video and text tutorials below or take a look at the MyGSI User Manual on the GoGrid wiki for more information regarding the new process.

Video Tutorial

Below is a video screencast on how to create a GoGrid Custom Server Image (MyGSI). (Direct YouTube link)

Text Tutorial

To create a GoGrid Server Image (MyGSI), the process is very simple and easy to do. First, within the Grid View, click on the server you want to create a Server Image from. When you do that, a Save icon will appear (see the green arrow below):

The Save button is also in the List view:

Once you choose the server that you want to save and click the Save icon or link, you will get the following prompt:

Note that if your server has more than 50 GB of data on it, the saving process will fail and you will need to reduce the amount of data on your server.

Simply give your server image a name, description, and indicate whether it is a Web or Database server.

After this, you server will be gracefully shut down, and the image saving process will start. You will see your server’s status light turn to amber:

And there will be an entry in the Jobs tab that not only states that the action has started, but also after a few seconds, displays the expected time for the server to be fully saved to cloud storage. If there is no “Estimated Job Duration,” just wait a minute and refresh the Jobs tab.

Your server will come back on line shortly.

Once the server image is created, you have the ability to instantiate new servers from it, or share it with the GoGrid community as a Community GSI (CGSI).

Lastly, the MyGSI process is backwards compatible, meaning that if you had created a Sandbox Server previously and it still appears within your GoGrid account, you can still convert it into a MyGSI using the same older process. Also, any MyGSIs created using the legacy process will still be available to create new server instances. However, the creation of Sandbox Images has been removed as of this release, and replaced with the much easier process described above.

Have any questions about the MyGSI update? Contact our support team. We’re excited to help you!

Last week GoGrid CEO, John Keagy, was a guest on “This Week in Cloud Computing” hosted by Amanda Coolong & David Linthicum. The video podcast covered a variety of interesting topics including Fujitsu’s new cloud offering in Asia-Pac, Microsoft’s war of words with Google over Cloud Connect and Intel’s rumored client-aware cloud offerings. John Keagy weighs in with some very interesting thoughts on each of these topics. We’ve embedded the full episode for your viewing pleasure, but we’ve also included highlights and the discussion about GoGrid’s past, present and future!

Note: each of the clips below the main one will jump directly to the relevant content.

Full Episode

Highlights

Australia is the first country outside of Japan to roll out Fujitsu’s standardized cloud offering. Do you think the expansion of cloud computing in Asia-Pac will add a boom to business development?

Google and Microsoft are sparring over Cloud Connect and Microsoft Office. Microsoft claims that Cloud Connect is Google’s ploy to get their hands on more of our data. Should Microsoft be worried and is Google going to succeed with enterprise?

Intel is planning a Cloud Vision event and are expected to reveal client-aware cloud. Will this mean cloud providers will write for devices directly and move further away from the browser and closer to apps?

Amazon launches AWS Cloud Formation to make easier for enterprises to mack stacks of apps and recourses. With this ability to combine resources, will this provide a strategic advantage for Amazon?

Amanda Coolong, David Linthicum and CEO John Keagy discuss GoGrid’s past, present and future.

Do you have an opinion on what’s happening in cloud computing? Share in the comments section below!

On Wednesday, we held a webinar titled: “Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud – Utilizing F5 BIG IP to Manage Traffic Spikes & Uptime“. As with previous webinars, we wanted to make this GoGrid webinar public to other users in case you were not able to attend.

The agenda of the webinar was as follows:

• Overview of GoGrid and F5 Networks
• Load balancing with GoGrid and F5 BIG IP
  • Benefits of load balancing overview
  • Use cases
  • Best practices
• Question and Answer Session

As mentioned previously, if you aren’t using a load balanced solution in your Cloud infrastructure, you may be putting your site or services at risk. Here are some reasons why you should seriously consider using GoGrid’s FREE F5 load balancing service within the GoGrid cloud:

• You can prevent application downtime – when you have more than one server in a load balanced environment, you can rest assured that if one of those servers happens to become unavailable, traffic to your site is automatically redirected to the other available server(s).
• Scaling infrastructure – without a load balancer in place, it can be difficult to scale up (or down) your infrastructure.
• 1-2-3 Process – deploying a load balancer on GoGrid is just a matter of filling out a form and once you configure it, your new load balancer is available in minutes.
• Moving beyond the “Free” offering – we have solutions that go beyond the standard load balancing offering within GoGrid. If your routing needs are more complex, we are here to help!

If you were unable to attend this webinar, the complete recording is available below as well as on our Vimeo channel:

Load Balancing in the GoGrid Cloud – Utilizing F5 BIG IP to Manage Traffic Spikes and Uptime – Webinar (August 2010) from GoGrid on Vimeo.

The presentation that was used in the webinar is also available on our Slideshare channel:

If you are looking for a Load Balancing solution in the cloud, definitely consider GoGrid’s free F5 load balancing service. If your needs go beyond what is offered for free, you can contact a GoGrid Sales Representative or if you are a current GoGrid customer, you can talk with your Dedicated Service Team and work on some more advanced solutions.

If there are any other topics you would like covered in a future webinar from GoGrid, please let me know.

Yesterday, I posted an article about a webinar we held that was targeted at current GoGrid users. To round out the mix, we held another webinar geared towards users who might be new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid itself. This second webinar, titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud” was recorded on 6/29/10.

Similar to its predecessor, this webinar covered many aspects of the GoGrid 3.0 release. Presenters were Jeff Samuels, Michael Sheehan and Kole Hicks of GoGrid. The topics we discussed included:

• Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy
• Landscape & GoGrid 3.0: What is the Cloud, GoGrid 3.0 new features
• Partner Ecosystem: Solutions from the GoGrid Exchange
• GoGrid’s Unique Value Proposition: Direction of the GoGrid Cloud

If you were unable to attend this webinar, the full recording is available below as well as on our Vimeo channel:

GoGrid 3.0 Webinar: Learn How You Can Leverage the GoGrid Cloud from GoGrid on Vimeo.

The presentation deck is also embedded below and is similarly available on our SlideShare channel:

We realize that it is very difficult to cover all of the features and services available to GoGrid customers. This webinar obviously only touches upon a few key items. We encourage you to explore the newly redesigned GoGrid website and be sure to contact a Sales Representative should you have any additional questions.

If there are other topics you would like to see covered in future webinars (or blog posts), please leave a comment and let me know.

With the release of GoGrid 3.0 a few weeks ago, we held a webinar titled “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release & Our New East Coast Datacenter“. This webinar was primarily geared towards current GoGrid customers. We also did a webinar the next day that was targeted at people who are new to Cloud Computing and GoGrid. I will be posting that webinar shortly as well.

This webinar was recorded on June 28, 2010, the day of the official release of GoGrid 3.0. Presenters were Mario Olivarez & Justin Kitagawa of GoGrid and Ryan Holland of TrendMicro. The topics included:

• Overview: Complex Infrastructure Made Easy – GoGrid’s unique value proposition
• GoGrid 3.0: The latest version of the GoGrid platform – East Coast demo
• GoGrid Security: New services from Cisco, Fortinet, TrendMicro & Sentrigo
• PCI Compliance: PCI compliance in the GoGrid Cloud – Demo with TrendMicro
• Questions & Answers

I realize that not all GoGrid customers were able to attend this webinar, so I have provided the full recording below (it is also available on our Vimeo channel):

GoGrid 3.0 Webinar: Learn About the GoGrid 3.0 Release & New Datacenter from GoGrid on Vimeo.

Also, for those interested in seeing just the presentation slide deck, that too is available for viewing below (as well as online in our SlideShare channel):

If you have any questions about the content that was covered within this webinar, please leave a comment on this post and I will be sure that it is answered. Also be sure to check the “Webinar” category on the GoGrid blog for past webinars that have been delivered.

Are there any topics you would like covered in future webinars? Please let me know.