We at GoGrid are excited to introduce you to the latest version of GoGrid! (Perhaps you already saw the “Sneak Peak” article I posted earlier.) After several months of planning, developing, implementing, testing, deploying and wiping the sweat off of our collective brows, we present to you, GoGrid 3.0.

This post will not be about the nitty-gritty details of the release as there will be several other posts that touch on all of the activities going on at GoGrid. To provide some guidance though, here’s what I’m going to briefly cover:

• New GoGrid Product Site
• Webinar for New GoGrid Customers
• High-level Overview of GoGrid 3.0 Features
• Copy of Press Release on GoGrid 3.0

There are many ways to get more information about this release and what it can do for you as someone shopping for Cloud Infrastructure or already using the GoGrid Cloud. One of the best ways is to talk to a GoGrid Sales Representative as they have great ways to choose the right GoGrid infrastructure solution for you. You can call them at: 1.877.946.4743 (US & Canada) or 1.415.869.7444 (Worldwide). Or we typically have 24×5 Live Sales Chat & Contact forms available here.

New GoGrid Site

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On Wednesday February 24, 2010, GoGrid hosted a webinar for new and existing GoGrid users designed to discuss the recent February 2010 Feature updates to GoGrid. There is a blog post that details all of the new features included in the release as well as a screencast which walks through these features and important changes. The webinar covered the following information:

• What is our view of Cloud Computing
• What is GoGrid
• New feature: GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• What is Hybrid Infrastructure
• A GoGrid Portal Demo
• Deploying a GoGrid Dedicated Server
• The new GoGrid List View
• Walk-through of other Interface Enhancements & Links
• Question & Answer Session

The entire Webinar is below and is broken into two parts:

• Part One – Overview presentation, discussion of Cloud & GoGrid, demonstration of the GoGrid Portal & GoGrid Dedicated Server Deployments (30 minutes in length)
• Part Two – Question & Answer session from the audience and Additional Information (19 minutes in length)

Also included later on in this post is the stand-alone presentation (without audio, demo walk-through or question and answers).

GoGrid Feature Webinar – Part 1

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Today, the team at GoGrid is pleased to announce several new enhancements and features to our Cloud Infrastructure Hosting service. With us, it is all about trying to make our Cloud offering as powerful as possible. To that end, we have released our latest version of GoGrid, available now! Some highlights include (each of which I will go into further details later on in this post):

• GoGrid Dedicated Servers
• List View of GoGrid Objects
• Edit f5 Load Balancers
• New Login Page
• Self-Service Support Links
• Other Items

We hope that you share our excitement about this release! Now, let’s get into the details. Also be sure to see our video that talks about many of the items listed here (Available on GoGrid YouTube channel and the GoGrid Facebook Fan Page as well.)

GoGrid Dedicated Servers

Let’s face it, we have been doing dedicated hosting for over 8 years so we do know a little bit about it. Last year, we introduced a first-to-market service that we internally called “Hybrid Hosting” which allowed users to connect GoGrid cloud infrastructure with a separate dedicated infrastructure, all within a private network. This proved to be incredibly successful, and something that many of our customers had desired. So, we decided to take it to the next level by offering Dedicated Servers within the GoGrid infrastructure.

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Yesterday an update to GoGrid was released with the following enhancements:

• Edit, Delete & Restore MyGSI Images
• Updated Billing Widget
• Updated GoGrid API

On August 11, 2009, we announced the availability of GoGrid 2.0 which included the new personal server images (MyGSI) functionality. Details on that important release are found here. Using MyGSI to manage your server repository or inventory is a great way to not only speed up your workflow in terms of deploying copies of servers quickly and easily, but also save money in the process (by storing your personal server images in GoGrid Cloud Storage for just a few dollars a month).

Edit, Delete & Restore MyGSI Images

As our customers were demanding this feature (MyGSIs), we got it out to market as quickly as possible. This new release now provides you with the ability to Edit, Delete and Restore MyGSIs that are located within the Server Images tab.

DELETE

Hopefully many of you are already enjoying the MyGSI feature. Here are a few things you should know about the newly pushed functionality. Within the Server Images tab, you should now see a new icon to the far right hand side of the server images that looks like a trash can:

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You know about Cloud Computing right? And you know that GoGrid is probably one of the easiest onramps to hosting within the Cloud with our award-winning web-based portal, private server images called MyGSI, point-and-click deployments of Windows & Linux cloud servers, f5 load balancers and Cloud Storage. So, how can we further lower the barrier to entry to the Cloud? How about by providing a service that lets you ship us physical media like hard drives crammed full of data that you want in your GoGrid cloud? Let us load it for you to our Cloud Storage solution!

GoGrid Cloud Storage

First, you might be asking, what is GoGrid’s Cloud Storage anyway? It’s pretty simple actually. It’s an instantly scalable and reliable file-level backup and storage service for Windows and Linux cloud servers running in the GoGrid cloud. You basically mount GoGrid’s Cloud Storage, which uses a secure private network, using common transfer protocols like SCP, FTP, SAMBA/CIFS and RSYNC to move your data in and out of Cloud Storage. Your storage scales dynamically, on-the-fly, and you only pay for what you use.

Another nice thing, we give you an initial 10 GB of space for FREE! Each additional GB is $0.15/GB per month. More info can be found on the GoGrid product page as well as on this (older) blog post.

The New Data Transfer Service

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If you are a GoGrid customer, you recently received the April GoGrid newsletter that talks about one of the exciting new features coming from GoGrid, specifically “Personal Server Images” which we call “MyGSIs.”

Definitions

First, it probably would be helpful to understand some of the new & current terms we are using:

• Base GoGrid Server Image is a standard GoGrid server images (e.g., Windows or Linux) that is created by GoGrid and currently available within the GoGrid system for deploying servers
  
• Image Sandbox is a development environment where you can create a “MyGSI.” Server Images created within the Sandbox are unique in that they have a predefined RAM allocation and hard drive sizes and are only used temporarily to create a Server Image. Images created within the Sandbox contain any and all custom code or applications that you choose to put on them.
  
• MyGSIs are based on either a Base GoGrid Server Image or other MyGSIs but where you have the ability to personally configure, customize and save it to your liking from the Image Sandbox environment. They are used to spawn or instantiate new custom servers within GoGrid, with all your customizations, code and applications present.
  

Think of MyGSIs as originals that can be used to make copies, much the way you would have a Golden Master CD and you would make copies or clones based off of that Golden Master.

Usage

From a high level, creating a Sandbox Image can be done in 3 easy steps:

1. Add an Image Sandbox;
2. Install, Configure & Prepare (bundling scripts) your Image Sandbox for imaging;
3. Save your Server Image from your Image Sandbox to your personal Images repository on Cloud Storage.

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Many of you have been asking about when the next release of GoGrid will be and what new features it will have. Trust me, we have been just dying to get this exciting release out, so much so that I tried to extract some details from the development team back in September. Well that day has arrived and you can now unwrap your holiday gift early!

Some highlights of what is included in this release:

Cloud Storage v0.7

GoGrid Cloud Storage is an instantly scalable and reliable file-level storage service for Windows and Linux servers running in the GoGrid Cloud. If you want to place it within the Cloud Pyramid, it would be considered a Cloud Extender which means that it works in conjunction with another Cloud Service (specifically, GoGrid Server Clouds):

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I don’t typically write about vaporware, but in this case, I will make an exception not only to finally get to use the phrase “cloud computing is truly vaporware” but also to seriously introduce this new GoGrid feature. Contrary to the definition of “vaporware,” Cloud Storage on GoGrid will be coming soon, so I wanted highlight many of the items in this upcoming release.

First, a picture is worth a thousand words. Below are a few screenshots of what is our vision of GoGrid’s Cloud Storage. Please note that these screenshots represent current ideas and may not actually represent the first implementation or subsequent updates.

Now for the juicy details:

• Technical
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If you were watching closely, the GoGrid API was released at the end of last week. Today however, we are making it official! With the release of the API, GoGrid users can now programmatically control their cloud infrastructure on GoGrid. What is truly unique about this offering is that we are the first Cloud Computing provider to provide both a web-based control panel/GUI (Graphical User Interface) and an API (Application Programming Interface), coupled with Windows and Linux cloud servers, free load balancing and support, free static IPs and more.

API’s are critical to many Developers and System Administrators who are looking to have even more rigorous control over their environments. The GoGrid API provides the ability to:

• create interactive GoGrid management applications
• allow Resellers to skin their own GoGrid portals
• script and link various GoGrid commands for automation
• connect GoGrid functions to other management tools or environments
• query and retrieve real-time information on billing, usage and GoGrid devices and objects

When we created the API, we wanted to be sure that it not only lived up to our phrase “Control in the Cloud” but also that it was easy to use, well documented and feature-rich. Others in the Cloud Computing space (like Amazon’s EC2) elected to release an API first and then hope that others would build more friendly interfaces around that API. We decided to produce the web GUI first (so that everyone from novices to tech-savvy users could use GoGrid immediately) and then round off our offering with the API (more skewed towards Programmers and Developers).

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Yesterday we rolled out a new feature for GoGrid that should make the creation of Servers and Load Balancers even easier and faster. We call it “IP Suggest” and it is extremely easy to use. As you are creating a new Server or Load Balancer and you come to the IP Address field, just start typing in the beginning digits of your IP addresses. The network “widget” shows you a list of all of your Public IP addresses, used or unused.

For the Application/Web/Database servers, only the UNUSED IP addresses are presented within the IP address field.

The Load Balancer acts a bit differently. For the Virtual IP field, only the UNUSED IP addresses are displayed, however on the Real IPs field (these would be the IP addresses of the application/web/database server where you want the Load Balancer to direct traffic), ALL IP addresses are displayed.

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