The GoGrid newsletter went out today. Unfortunately, if you are not already a GoGrid customer, you didn’t receive it…until now! There are a lot of exciting items covered here (a few of which you already know if you subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed including the Edit, Delete and Restore function of MyGSIs). If you aren’t already a GoGrid user, I recommend that you sign up (and here is a quick hint, if you want a $100 GoGrid credit on new account, contact a GoGrid Sales Rep and they can consult with you on your best options for the Cloud).

Below is the entire GoGrid Newsletter (October 2009):

Hello Michael,

In this edition of the GoGrid newsletter I cover recent feature releases, planned features for the next release, and the end-of-life (EoL) of Server Images with preinstalled applications.  Here are the specific topics:

1. MyGSI Enhancements: Edit, Delete, and Restore
2. Revamped Billing Summary Widget
3. Cloud Storage: Data Import via Postal Service
4. Sneak Preview: Planned features for the next two releases slated for early and mid November:
   • Windows 2003 32 bit base operating system
   • Windows 2003 64 bit base operating system
   • RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4 base operating system
   • CentOS 5.3 base operating system
   • New Monthly and Annual Pre-Paid Price Plans
   • Partner GSI
   • Ubuntu 9.04
5. Server Images: EoL Image  List

MyGSI Enhancements: Edit, Delete, and Restore

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You can now edit, delete and restore GoGrid Server Images (MyGSIs).  Michael Sheehan, GoGrid Technology Evangelist, has provided an excellent screencast of the new functionality located at the GoGrid Blog.
Here is a quick snapshot of the enhancements:

• Edit allows you to change the “Name” and “Description” of a MyGSI
• Delete allows you to delete a MyGSI
• Restore allows you to restore a MyGSI up to 24 hours after it was deleted

The enhancements are live and available in the GoGrid portal and API.

Revamped Billing Summary Widget

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The Billing Summary Widget has been revamped to make it clearer.  The widget includes 3 new sections:

• Billing Cycle: displays your billing start and end date
• Memory: displays RAM deployed and projected monthly Server RAM usage
• Transfer: displays Transfer used and projected monthly usage

View Michael Sheehan’s screencast for complete details or read the documentation in the GoGrid wiki.
Cloud Storage: Data Import via Postal Service

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If you have a large set of data that you want added to your Cloud Storage account, and you don’t want to upload it via the internet, simply ship us a physical hard drive(s) with the data and we will upload it for you.  There is a one-time fee of $99.99/per device and you are not billed for the data transfer from the hard drive to Cloud Storage.  Read Michael Sheehan’s blog post for more details about this service.

Sneak Preview: Planned Features for the Next 2 Releases

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The next two releases are scheduled for early and mid November 2009 and include:

• Windows Server 2003 32 and 64bit base operating systems with no preinstalled applications
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4 32 and 64-bit base operating system with no preinstalled applications
• CentOS 5.3 32 and 64-bit base operating system with no preinstalled applications
• New Monthly and Annual Server RAM Hour and Transfer prepaid pricing plans:
  • We are revamping all Pre-Paid plans.  Server RAM Hour pricing will start as low as $0.05/Server RAM Hour.  Annual Pre-Paid pricing plans are available today.  With Annual Pre-Pay plans, pay annually and receive 2 FREE months of service, which is a savings of 17%.  Speak to your account manager for more details.
• Partner GSI:
  • We are working with several Partners to make their Partner GSI images available to all users through the GoGrid portal.  A Partner GSI is a customized GoGrid Server Image that comes preloaded and configured with a partner’s software.  Some Partner GSIs have a monthly fee.  Expect detailed information on Partner GSIs in the next GoGrid Newsletter. To learn more about our partner programs and explore partnering with GoGrid to release your own Partner GSI please visit the partner page: http://www.gogrid.com/partners/index.php or contact Kole Hicks, GoGrid Product Manager, at Kole AT gogrid.com.
• Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit base operating system

Please expect more details on all these new features in the October newsletter, which will be sent out in late October.

Image Templates: End-of life list

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The below images will be end-of-life on 11/03/2009; moving forward our focus is on the root OS (of course you can add software installations as you see fit).  If you want to continue to use the images below, please create a MyGSI and save it to your Cloud Storage.  We will continue to support all current Windows and Linux base operating systems.

• Windows 2003 IIS (32 bit)
• Windows 2003 IIS (64 bit)
• 32-bit Windows Server 2003 IIS6 / MSSQL Server 2005 Express / ASP.NET
• 32-bit Windows Server 2003 R2 MSSQL 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / PHP / MSSQL 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / PHP / ASP.NET / MSSQL 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / PHP / MySQL
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 Apache / PHP / MSSQL 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7+FastCGI(PHP)+MSSQL 2005 Express
• 64-bit Windows Server 2003 R2 IIS6 / MSSQL Server 2005 Express / ASP.NET
• 64-bit Windows Server 2003 R2 MSSQL 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / MS SQL Server 2005 Express
• 32-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / MS SQL Server 2005 Express / ASP.NET
• 64-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7
• 64-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / MS SQL Server 2005 Express
• 64-bit Windows Server 2008 IIS7 / MS SQL Server 2005 Express / ASP.NET
• 64-bit CentOS 5.1 Apache 2.2
• 64-bit CentOS 5.1 Apache 2.2+PHP 5.1
• 64-bit CentOS 5.1 LAMP
• 64-bit CentOS 5.1 MySQL 5
• 64-bit CentOS 5.1 PostgreSQL 8.1
• 64-bit RHEL 5.1 Apache 2.2
• 64-bit RHEL 5.1 Apache 2.2+PHP 5.1
• 64-bit RHEL 5.1 LAMP
• 64-bit RHEL 5.1 MySQL 5
• 64-bit RHEL 5.1 PostgreSQL 8.1

Become a Fan of GoGrid on the Facebook Fan page!

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If you have pictures of your hundreds of GoGrid servers or photos from an event where you saw GoGrid in action or met with some of our employees, we encourage you to post them to the Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GoGrid/12731148364

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.
Mario AT gogrid.com

Thank you,
Mario

This email newsletter was sent out by our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez.

8.27.08 – Note: Facebook and MySpace-enabled servers are currently unavailable on GoGrid. However, we have added other server images since the writing of this article. The table below has been slightly modified to reflect some changes. For a comparison of GoGrid to Amazon’s EC2, please see this page.

With the Facebook QuickStart Servers available now on GoGrid, we have received questions as to how the GoGrid service compares with others in the cloud computing and Facebook space. While this is not the “end-all” comparison, it does provide a point of reference between GoGrid, Amazon EC2 and Joyent.

Chart updated on 8/27/08.

*Pricing based on GoGrid Advanced Cloud and Transfer 200 GB plans

With GoGrid there are other choices as well for RAM and Storage allotments (1GB RAM servers have 60 GB disks and 2 GB RAM servers have 125GB disks). Key differentiators are the FREE support and Load Balancing offered by GoGrid as well as support for both Windows and Linux servers (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and CentOS 4.4.) More OS images are added on a regular basis so check back regularly.

Being your humble servant, I have a special discount available to all of my readers. Contact me directly for a discount on your first GoGrid account! (Limited time only!). So what are you waiting for? Get a new GoGrid account now!

Attendees of the inaugural meeting of StartUp SF, a new meetup for technologists, developers, entrepreneurs and startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, were given a great GoGrid gift, $100 off their first GoGrid account. But the value went further than just that including a valuable CD-ROM from Orrick containing helpful document templates useful in launching your own startup. Attendees also learned some important tips on how move their company “from concept to company” as delivered in a presentation by Jonathan Cobb, CTO and Founder of Kiptronic.

StartUp SF is an event that is co-hosted by Orrick and ServePath designed to help “kick-start your startup” by providing a venue, topics and experts, as well as food and drink to facilitate the process.

More details on yesterday’s event can be found here and here. We were even lucky enough to get Pete Cashmore (of Mashable) to pose with Paul Lancaster (of ServePath) in one of our stylish GoGrid hats.

More photos can be found on our Flickr photostream and the StartUp SF Facebook group. Don’t forget that GoGrid now really helps you get your Facebook app up and running FAST with the Facebook QuickStart Server Images for Windows and Linux!

With the bubble-wrap just coming off of the public beta of GoGrid, we were able to get a last-minute booth at the upcoming Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Those of you going to the Web 2.0 Expo are encouraged to come by our table located in the Long Tail Pavilion (table 22). (If you are heading to get food, we are right on your way to get there.)

At our table, we will be doing product demonstrations of GoGrid, answering questions, and giving away $$$ towards a GoGrid account. Come loaded with your questions and ideas on how you can use GoGrid to better your business. Also learn about the new GoGrid QuickStart Facebook Servers that are now a hot template within your GoGrid server deployment UI.

Web 2.0 Expo runs from April 22 through April 25 at Moscone West located at 747 Howard Street in San Francisco. The Exhibit Hall is open: Weds 10:30am – 4:00pm, Thursday 10:30am – 6:00pm and Friday 10:30am – 3:00pm.

If you…

• …have ever wondered how to get your application on the Facebook network quickly…
• …need to rapidly scale a server environment…
• …want a sandbox, QA or demo environment that you can turn on and off at will…
• …are tired of paying for dedicated or shared hosting…
• …want to deploy real Windows servers in minutes…
• …are a LAMP or Ruby-on-Rails or Linux developer and a looking for a hosting provider…
• …want to experience an extremely slick and elegant web-based UI used for deploying and load balancing servers…

…then you should definitely come by our table and/or give GoGrid a try!

See you at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo!

With the additions of new GoGrid server templates, especially the Facebook-ready ones, we know that you will really want to understand what is contained within each image, down to the version numbers. We have made this as easy as possible to get to. When you install a Server using one of the pre-defined Operating System templates, you now have an icon that looks like an “i” next to the OS and Template selections. Clicking on that icon will launch the new GoGrid Wiki that contains useful details on GoGrid.

The GoGrid Wiki provides information around the:

• Supported Operating Systems
• Template Images
• Billing Model
• User Interface
• Network Devices

As more functionality is added to GoGrid, this information will expand.

You can drill down through each of the sections. Below is the Operating Systems expanded.

And within each Operating system, you can view details of what the current different templates are. All new templates are flagged with the icon.

Clicking on the CentOS 4.4 Facebook image, for example, provides the following information:

• Install Notes – basically an output of “uname -a;“
• Security – how the iptables is set up, for example
• Image Details – see the software packages and associated version contained within the default GoGrid template. You can see this by running the Linux command: “rpm -qa;“

We encourage you to peruse the new Wiki as many of your version question can be answered there. Also, you can get additional details on Load Balancing, the UI and Billing. If there is something that is not covered within the Wiki or this blog, drop me a note.