Yesterday we release several new and updated base GoGrid cloud server images as part of our regular Operating System refreshes.

Below is a quick lists of the New, Updated and End of Life-d base images.

New Major Versions

• CentOS 6
• What’s new in CentOS 6 (RHEL technical details): http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/details/
• This version of CentOS is not subject to the “time drift” issue
• These machines now run in PV (paravirtualization) mode
• Debian 6
• What’s new in Debian 6: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/armel/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html

New Minor Versions

• CentOS 5.6
• RHEL 5.7

Updated Versions

• Windows Server 2003 – updated with Microsoft Security Patches & Powershell 2.0
• Windows Server 2008 – updated with Microsoft Security Patches, Powershell 2.0 and on SQL Server images, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 R2 – updated with Microsoft Security Patches

End of Life-d (EOL) Versions

• CentOS 5.3
• RHEL 5.4

Note: Servers already deployed that are running older (perhaps EOL-ed) images are not affected (meaning, we do not delete them) but you may want to consider refreshing those servers to a later version of the OS. When a server is EOL-ed, it is simply removed from the GoGrid base OS repository and you cannot create new servers from these images.

Remember that these updates and new versions only apply to NEW VMs that you create using these images listed above. If you have existing cloud servers running, please be sure that you regularly run security and Operating System updates to ensure that you servers are running the latest versions and have the most current security patches.

When most people hear the phrase “operating system in the cloud” they usually think of a really cool client-side, Web-based desktop like EyeOS or CloudMe or even Chromium OS. Perhaps that is the future of client operating systems, but when cloud infrastructure providers talk about operating systems, they are making reference to which OS your cloud infrastructure will run on. And, it’s not always limited to just one in many cases.

At GoGrid, we provide a variety of operating systems including:

• Windows Server
• Ubuntu
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Debian
• CentOS

Operating systems in the cloud are very important because they are what your applications and infrastructure are built upon. Whether you’re using the cloud to deploy test & development environments, act as your data center or run your company’s business critical applications, the operating system plays a vital role in cloud infrastructure.

Most IT professionals are pretty passionate about what operating system they prefer. For instance, search for “Windows vs. Linux” on Google – over 109 million results have some sort of opinion on the topic. But, since actions speak louder than words, we wanted to determine which operating system was used more by the IT industry.

In early 2011, as part of the GoGrid Cloud Survey Report, we polled over 500 CTOs, developers and IT professionals and asked them a variety of questions regarding cloud computing trends, best practices and use cases. Because there is such a wide variety of operating systems that serve different use cases, we decided to ask: Which OS do you use for your critical business applications?

The numbers exceed 100% because most businesses use several different server operating systems to run their critical applications (businesses either run several physical, virtual or mixed environments to accomplish this). When we look at the results, it isn’t terribly shocking that Windows Server is used by 80% of the sample – they’ve been dominating the server scene since Windows Server 2003 or earlier. However, the amount of Linux and Solaris servers is much higher than anticipated. In fact, if you do a search of various Linux distros, you can see how Ubuntu, for example, is making huge advances in the space.

Just last year, ZDNet shared stats from the International Data Corp. (IDC) that found 73.9% of servers were Windows and only 21.2% of servers were Linux based. Perhaps our 2011 survey data is showing Linux use in the cloud is on the rise.

Do you have any strong thoughts or opinions about operating systems in the cloud? Which server operating system do you use? How do you think cloud computing will affect server operating systems? Does the Operating System even matter? We look forward to your responses.

With only one more blog post left in the series, the GoGrid Cloud Survey Report is coming to a close. Our next post will also be our last survey results article, but it covers the most interesting cloud computing question thus far: Why aren’t you using cloud computing? Stay tuned…

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

Right on the heels of the GoGrid 3.0 release, we needed to be sure that we didn’t slow our momentum down. To that end, this week we have released some new features to GoGrid which are important to highlight.

We have 3 exciting features, specifically:

• East Coast Load Balancers
• New GoGrid Dedicated Server Images
• 16 GB RAM on GoGrid Cloud Servers

East Coast Load Balancers

As we work towards obtaining full feature parity within a few months in our East Coast Datacenter launch, one of the first items that we enabled was that of Load Balancing. Just like in the West Coast Datacenter, Load Balancing on the East Coast remains FREE. With the rollout of Load Balancers in the East Coast, all GoGrid users now have the ability to deploy 6 total Load Balancers for free, 3 in each Datacenter.

Remember though, you can only balance traffic within 1 particular datacenter. That is to say, you currently cannot use one load balancer to manage traffic across 2 datacenters. You must set up a load balancer within each datacenter to route traffic therein.

New GoGrid Dedicated Server Images

At GoGrid, we were the first to pioneer the term “Hybrid Hosting” which means that you can mix and match the best of breed infrastructure solutions within your GoGrid Cloud. You can choose to instantiate GoGrid Cloud Servers for elastic scalability as well as deploy GoGrid Dedicated Servers should you want PCI compliance or require a dedicated solution. You can use the Load Balancers to route traffic between Cloud and Dedicated servers as well as attach Cloud Storage to either Server type.

With this release, we added SIX new images to the GoGrid Dedicated Server list, bringing the total available Dedicated Server Images to 26. The new Dedicated Server Images are:

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

With this update, the list of available GoGrid Dedicated Servers now includes:

• Linux
  • Fedora Core Linux 11 & 12 (32 & 64-bit)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8, 5.4 & 5.5 (32 & 64-bit)
  • CentOS Linux 4.8, 5.4 & 5.5 (32 & 64-bit)
  • Ubuntu Linux 8.04, 9.04 & 10.04 (32 & 64-bit)
  • Debian Linux 4.0 & 5.0 (32 & 64-bit)
• Windows
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard (4 & 8 Core License)
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard (4 & 8 Core License)
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard (4 & 8 Core License)
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (32 & 64-bit and 4 & 8 Core License)
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (64-bit and 4 & 8 Core License) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 & 2008 Standard (64-bit and 4 & 8 Core License)

The process for ordering a dedicated server has not changed. Simply click the ADD button within the GoGrid portal, and select Dedicated Server:

Then choose the Configuration you would like:

And then select the Operating System image you want on that GoGrid Dedicated Server (note: I have highlighted the new CentOS 5.5 options in the list):

Once you save your GoGrid Dedicated Server configuration, it will be available for you within 2 business days.

16 GBs of RAM on GoGrid Cloud Servers

For those GoGrid users requiring more RAM, Cores and persistent hard drive space, we have now enabled the ability to provision GoGrid Cloud Servers with 16 GB RAM allocations.

GoGrid Cloud Servers deployed with the 16 GBs of RAM configuration also have 960 GBs of persistent storage and either 8 or 16 cores depending on the Operating System (Windows and Linux respectively). 16 GB configurations are backwards compatible with MyGSIs and Partner GSIs. However, this configuration is only available for 64-bit Operating Systems.

There were also a series of bug fixes included with this release.

What other items would you like to see included in future releases of GoGrid? Leave a comment and let me know!

Gear6, the leading provider of commercial Memcached solutions, and GoGrid today announced the availability of Gear6 Cloud Cache, an on-demand service offering designed to speed up, scale out and ensure uptime of web services and applications built within servers deployed within the GoGrid cloud. Memcached is a popular, open source distributed memory system used to scale dynamic content for busy web sites. As dynamic content gets pushed to cloud applications, Memcached provides an ideal mechanism for accelerating performance.

By choosing the Gear6 GoGrid Partner Server Image (GSI), GoGrid users will receive a 100% Memcached compatible server that delivers dramatically better memory efficiency. GoGrid users who deploy a Gear6 optimized server within GoGrid benefit from:

• A more efficient cache
• Cache depth amplification
• An easy to use web GUI & REST interface
• Commercial support
• …and more

Using Gear6′s Memcached server images on GoGrid means that those servers will have optimized memory management which translates to a much higher speed of cached data and up to a 50% increase in DRAM efficiency without any noticeable performance degradation. There are currently a couple of Gear6 images available within GoGrid, including:

• CentOS 5.3 (32-bit) – free (plus standard GoGrid RAM & Bandwidth charges)
• CentOS 5.3 (64-bit) – $60/month/server (plus standard GoGrid RAM & Bandwidth charges)

More information on Gear6 can be found within the GoGrid Exchange on the Gear6 Partner Page, as well as on the Gear6 GoGrid page.

The following press release was issued by Gear6 today and the full text which discusses the Gear6/GoGrid partnership and Gear6 Cloud Cache server offering is below:

Gear6 Memcached Service for the Cloud Now Available on GoGrid

GoGrid Customers Among First to Be Able to Take Advantage of Better Memory Usage, Speed and Scalability Offered by Only Commercial Memcached Service on Market

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA and SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – February 9, 2010) – Gear6, the leading provider of Memcached solutions, and GoGrid, a leading Cloud Infrastructure Hosting provider, today rolled out Gear6 Cloud Cache™ for the GoGrid Cloud. This on-demand service allows GoGrid customers to take advantage of Gear6′s robust, commercial-grade Memcached offering to speed up, scale out and ensure uptime for their web services and applications.

First introduced in December 2009 as Gear6 Web Cache Server for the Cloud, Gear6 Cloud Cache is the industry’s first enhanced Memcached offering for cloud platforms. Memcached is a popular, open source distributed memory system used to scale dynamic content for busy web sites. As dynamic content gets pushed to cloud applications, Memcached provides an ideal mechanism for accelerating performance. Cloud Cache, Gear6′s Memcached distro for the cloud, uniquely leverages cloud-based storage resources to increase cache depth by several orders of magnitude and offers optimized memory management that delivers even higher levels of performance and increased efficiency. Free and paid images of Cloud Cache are available on GoGrid today.

“Just as file services and storage services have become common to cloud-based platforms, memory services are now a must-have for fast, scalable cloud applications,” said Joaquin Ruiz, Executive Vice President of Products for Gear6. “Given its popularity with many of the busiest Web 2.0 sites, Memcached is the natural universal API to address memory usage in the cloud. Already proven on other platforms, Gear6 Cloud Cache is now ready for GoGrid customers looking to speed up their web apps without breaking the bank.”

GoGrid offers both on-demand, self-service cloud hosting services as well as hybrid hosting enabling customers to connect to physical hardware. GoGrid’s open front-end is backed by state-of-the-art hardware and broad operating systems support.

“With the addition of the Gear6 Cloud Cache service, GoGrid continues to maintain our edge in the cloud hosting market,” said John Keagy, CEO and co-founder, GoGrid. “Now, GoGrid can deliver the needed on-demand memory services required by our customers to scale out their applications, improve the utility of our service and manage their memory usage easily.”

Gear6 Cloud Cache Server offers capabilities and benefits in the following areas:

• Efficiency: Optimized memory management delivers up to 50 percent increase in DRAM efficiency per cloud image with no performance degradation. This enables more high speed cached data per cloud image.
• Cache depth amplification: Transparent cloud storage access enables a two-tiered caching mechanism resulting in orders of magnitude more utility per image. This capability is a unique feature of Gear6′s Memcached offering.
• Choice of 32- or 64-bit image sizes: 32-bit GSIs are offered at no cost (not including GoGrid RAM & outbound Bandwidth costs); 64-bit GSIs, which support larger cache sizes, incur a monthly fee (in addition to GoGrid RAM and outbound Bandwidth Costs).
• Ease-of-use: A comprehensive web GUI and REST interface provide ease-of-management and integration for cloud deployments. Historical cache information can be easily accessed for application debugging and optimization.
• 100% Memcapable: Gear6 Cloud Cache is Memcached protocol compliant http://www.gear6.com/gear6-web-cache-memcapable).
• Commercial Support: Priced offerings include 24×7 email and phone support, including installation and trouble-shooting assistance.

Gear6 Cloud Cache is immediately available on GoGrid. For more information about this offering, visit http://exchange.gogrid.com/partnergsi/gear6-cloud-cache-server or http://www.gear6.com/memcached-product/cloud-cache/GoGrid.

To stay up-to-date on Memcached and Gear6, follow @g6memcached on Twitter.

About Gear6

Gear6 (www.gear6.com) introduced the first mission critical software distribution for Memcached, enabling high-growth media, social networking and content aggregation web sites to deliver and scale dynamic applications and content. By focusing on the emerging need for a dedicated Web caching tier, Gear6 solutions dramatically improve the scalability of web applications and databases, while improving quality of service and reducing infrastructure cost. Gear6′s flagship offering is Gear6 Web Cache, a Memcached protocol-compliant solution that enables web site developers and operators to scale web services and applications, to save money, rack space, power and time, to protect users and sites from failures and traffic spikes, and to manage all aspects of caching operations. Gear6 corporate headquarters are in Mountain View, California.

About GoGrid

GoGrid is a leading Cloud Infrastructure Hosting provider that delivers true “Control in the Cloud™”. GoGrid enables sysadmins, developers, IT professionals and SaaS vendors to create, deploy, and control free f5 load balanced cloud & dedicated servers and complex hosted virtual server networks with full root access/administrative server control which includes personal server images (known as MyGSIs). GoGrid server instances maintain industry standard specifications with no requirement to learn and adapt to proprietary standards. Deploying GoGrid infrastructure takes minutes via a unique, award winning web control panel or GoGrid’s API. GoGrid delivers portal controlled servers for Windows Server 2003/2008, SQL Server, and ASP.NET, as well as multiple Linux server operating systems like RHEL and CentOS. GoGrid gives users the control of a familiar datacenter environment with the flexibility and immediate scalability of the cloud, a “cloudcenter.” To learn more, visit www.gogrid.com.

More information on other GoGrid Partners can be found on the GoGrid Exchange.

In an effort to be as proactive as possible, GoGrid has officially notified select customers of the removal (End of Life – EoL) of two specific GoGrid images. The users that were notified are ones that are actively using the images. On 2/9/10, GoGrid will be removing the following images from the GoGrid image repository:

• CentOS – CentOS 5.1 (64-bit) w/ Apache 2.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux – RHEL 5.1 (64-bit) w/ Apache 2.2

I’m sure that some of you will have questions about this. In anticipation of this, I have compiled some quick Q&A’s:

Question: What does the removal of these images mean?

Answer: Simply that after the removal date, they will no longer appear within the GoGrid Image Selection widget.

Question: I have server(s) deployed that use these images? Will they continue to function?

Answer: Yes, there is no change to how your server(s) will function if they are using one of these EoL-ed images. Just be sure that you keep everything current within those servers.

Question: Will you continue to provide support for servers that are based on the EoL-ed images?

Answer: Yes, we will continue to support all Windows and Linux images that you have deployed using GoGrid, even ones that have been EoL-ed.

Question: But wait! I still want to use those particular images in my GoGrid infrastructure! What can I do?

Answer: If you want to use either of these images after February 9th, 2010, you will need to create a personal GoGrid Server Image (MyGSI) prior to that date. If you follow the process outlined in this blog post, you can be assured that you can deploy servers based on those EoL-ed image(s) after that date from your personal GoGrid repository.

Question: Since those images are being removed, what are replacing them?

Answer: As of the writing of this blog post, we have several CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) images available including the ones listed below and others will be added in the future:

• RHEL 5.4 (32-bit)
• RHEL 5.4 (64-bit)
• CentOS 5.3 (32-bit)
• CentOS 5.3 (64-bit)

The images below are a filtered set of images (filtered on OS and grouped by “GoGrid” owner) as of this writing (note that in the future, this set of available images WILL change):

Question: What if I have more questions about this? What can I do?

Answer: There are a couple of things you can do. First, be sure to read up on how to create, deploy and store MyGSIs. If you have further questions, you can contact GoGrid Support either via the Live Chat within the GoGrid Portal, or by logging a Support Ticket within the portal as well.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me or leave a comment on this post. I hope that these proactive notifications are useful!