GoGrid Blog

Perhaps that subject was not strong enough. The Financial Sector is currently weathering a hurricane, recently suffering the largest drop since 9/11. Merrill Lynch fell into the hands of Bank of America. Lehman Brothers is in bankruptcy and looking for a buyer with Barclays buying some of their assets. The Airline industry is failing. AIG and other financial companies are looking for some sort of an economic bailout. HP is eliminating 24,600 jobs. And this was all over just a few days. If one extends the look a bit further, the perspective is just a grim: gas prices going up, the dollar losing value and housing going down. One simply cannot be surprised by any of this.

The Tech Sector is getting hammered as well, but this time, it isn’t “our fault.” The Dot Com bust managed to drag down the other sectors last time, but we learned our lesson. Long gone are unproven businesses and their associated models. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors are taking long looks at business, not just getting in the car for a drive but doing a full check under the hood, looking at the road both ahead and behind and fully vetting the drivers and passengers. To get money as a start-up is truly an accomplishment nowadays. You have to have a proven business model, installed user base, and a clear direction of where your company and your industry will go.

I recently attended TechCrunch 50 which showcases 50 startups and allows them to present their business or service to a panel of experts. I saw about 1/2 of the companies’ presentations and I noticed that the companies where they couldn’t articulate or prove their monetization strategy, these companies got an earful of criticism from the experts. Similarly, at a meetup in San Francisco, the question asked every presenter is “How are you making or going to make money?” It’s a very simple question, but one that must be answered or the company loses credibility.

Perhaps we should apply these same simple questions to the Financial, Housing and Airline Industries? I guess the markets are already doing that.

It will take a long time before all of these markets start to recover, and corporations and businesses are currently challenged to prevent the hemorrhage of money and capital expenditures within their IT infrastructure. I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Cutting Tech’s Energy Bill” by William M. Bulkeley that discusses how large companies are looking at ways to cut electricity usage within the Enterprise. With energy costs directly and indirectly rising, it’s critical for the embattled IT manager or director to make fiscally sound and environmentally responsible decisions to keep their business moving forward will simultaneously ensuring that their technology progresses.

Bulkeley gives several examples:

• IBM has launched a “Green Data-Center Services” business line to help customer redesign their datacenters
• HP purchased a company that specializes in designing datacenters with a focus on energy-efficiency
• EMC has worked to eliminate unneeded equipment and use their cooling infrastructure more efficiently
• Hartford Financial Services Group has shut down 6 of 7 datacenters and host within a “green” IBM facility
• IBM and HP has introduced water-cooled servers and others are hard-selling blade computers that use significantly less power than traditional servers

Outsourcing one’s infrastructure is a core way to tighten your belt of your IT Budget. If you can allow for a managed hosting provider to run your IT infrastructure, you save on capital expenditures as well as human capital running it. Colocation and dedicated hosting were all the rage a few years ago and, while it may be losing its sex appeal nowadays, there are still plenty of IT traditionalists who demand it.

Towards the end of the WSJ article, Bulkeley starts to discuss virtualization as a Green technology that can help cut costs. This is where I pick up the thread and run with it. Virtualization is a key component to helping Corporations reduce their IT expenditures significantly. The ability to consolidate multiple low-end servers onto one or handful of higher-end servers is an obvious and logical cost and energy-savings option. The heavier adoption of virtualization technologies such as Xen or VMware or even Hyper-V is giving corporations or even those self-same outsourced data center and dedicated hosting providers a way to stretch their money and efficiencies even further. To over simplify, reduce the number of servers through virtualization and your datacenter space demands go down, your dependency on IT staff to manage those locations reduces and your CapEx shrinks, giving you efficiencies immediately.

This is where the Technology Sector is starting to get “Cloudy.” I’ve used this metric before to illustrate my point, simply look at the Google (Insights for Search) chart comparing “cloud computing” against “dedicated hosting” keyword searches:

Dedicated hosting will not go away. It’s a viable outsourced technology option that companies depend on. It makes fare more sense (cents?) than doing it yourself within your corporation. There are only a niche of companies that can afford to make the technology and capital investment to support large-scale IT infrastructures, and even those (as exemplified in the WSJ article) are looking to re-architect their infrastructure.

Could “Cloud Computing” be the silver bullet to help corporations survive the financial hurricane? I think so. But there are challenges ahead for both the providers of the Clouds (and even traditional dedicated hosting providers) as well as corporations.

• For Cloud Providers, education of the “Cloud” concept and overcoming the “this technology is only for early adopters” status will be critical. However this can be achieved through collaboration with other Cloud Providers and Enablers as well as standardization of protocols and APIs, for starters.
• For the Enterprise to view the Cloud as a viable alternative to traditional or even self-hosted infrastructures and datacenters, the challenge is larger. While Cloud Computing may be obvious to many  in terms of “green-ness” and cost savings through zero CapEx, IT managers of the Enterprise tend to not quickly jump on board with the latest technology. Some might say they are a bit gun-shy and would rather someone else test the waters and learn from their mistakes. This wait-and-see attitude will be the end of many. Given the current financial weather and outlook, the Enterprise should be looking at the non-traditional and emerging technologies just as hard as within traditional practices.

While I may be sticking my head in the sand by saying that this financial storm will pass soon, I also  have my head in the “clouds” by stating that dedicated/outsourced hosting and Cloud Computing are viable alternatives to “doing it yourself” that all businesses should seriously consider and get on their short term strategic plans. To jump back into the car metaphor, it’s time to dump the old 1970’s gas-guzzler and get the 2008 Hybrid!

I spent some time analyzing search trends of different computing keywords to try to put everything in perspective. Google trends is a nice too that gives insight into broad search patterns.

We all know that the term “Cloud Computing” is relatively new to the Technology buzz. But just how new is it? For starters, I ran a quick comparison of “Cloud Computing,” “Grid Computing” and “Utility Computing”.

The term Grid Computing has been around for a while (even before Google Trends tracking shows it). But as you can see from the graphic above, it is trending downwards. Utility Computing has pretty much remained below the radar in comparison. But, the newcomer Cloud Computing, which made its full entrance into this trend analysis around 2007 is rapidly gaining momentum. 2008 seems to be a pivotal time where it surpassed Grid Computing (and continues to grow).

Cloud computing is relatively new as a server hosting term. People are starting to loosely associate it with traditional hosted server solutions. So to put this all in perspective as well as add some other “hot” keywords in to the mix, I trended the following:

• Cloud computing
• Grid computing
• Dedicated server
• Colocation
• Virtualization

The results were quite interesting:

My read on this is as follows:

• Cloud Computing and Virtualization are the next hot hosting platforms. It is important to keep in mind that the term “Virtualization” can apply to many things, not simply hosting, in fact, Virtualization within the hosting environment is comparable to Cloud Computing. Virtualization has existed for some time, but mainly within a host’s computer (e.g., a desktop). But as Parallels, VMWare, Xen and even Microsoft’s Hyper-V gain momentum as virtualized servers within a hosted environment, this term will continue to grow. See the chart below for further details (VMware is the clear leader but Hyper-V is clearly going to gain market-share quickly).
  
• The Dedicated server term is slowly starting to lose ground vs. Virtualization and Cloud Computing, but it is fairly obvious that it is still a term that people know and look for. There are always developers or companies who will ONLY go with a dedicated server for one reason or another. I predict, though, that as they start getting on the virtualization and cloud bandwagons, that this term will continue to erode. Another term “VPS” (Virtual Private Server) is fairly common among hosting solutions but differs from Virtualization in many ways. With a VPS, you share resources with the other clients on a particular server, whereas Virtualized servers (like GoGrid which is built on top of Xen) dedicate RAM and CPU usage to the predefined server instances running on a particular node. To again put it all into perspective, see the chart below. VPS is one of the terms that seems to be remaining steady as a searched term. This is most likely due to the fact that most of the main-stream hosting providers offer VPS hosting as their “bread & butter.”
  

In general, these terms all seem to be converging, which means only one thing, confusion and clutter within the marketplace. With so many options now available, potential server customers are presented with even more choices, and these choices frequently can’t be directly compared. One can look at RAM allocation, Hard Drive sizes and CPU speeds as sort of a rudimentary measure, but that is where the simple comparisons end. Now one is forced to choose between scalability options, server and data persistence, operating system images, peripherals (like firewalling and load-balancing), data storage, clone-ability…the list goes on. Attempts are being made to standardize these comparisons with check-lists, but since the market is so new and mutating with new entrants and updated feature sets, the IT Professional may be challenged when making decisions.

Lastly to put things all in perspective a bit, I ran a couple of other search terms, comparing “Twitter”  against Cloud, Grid and Utility Computing…the results aren’t surprising (the green line is Twitter):

And put the iPhone into the mix and everything drops off the map (note, this graph is just for Cloud, Grid, Twitter and iPhone - iPhone is the green line below):

Also, the Cloud just got another potential injection of PR from Apple as well with their announcement of MobileMe. To take directly from the source:

“MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on a secure online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others.”

Apple has brought a new technology term, the “Cloud”, previously reserved for developers, IT managers and the like to the main-stream public. Watch the cloud continue to grow now almost exponentially, I predict, even down to common-place iconography:

So, how can you “keep your head out of the clouds” with all of this clutter? I can offer the following points to help:

• Look beyond the hardware - it’s becoming virtualized and virtually upgraded constantly; some companies will tout just one piece of the mix, look at Support, the company’s history, their Terms of Service or Service Level Agreements as other non-tangible measures
• Don’t just jump on the bandwagon - a solution for one company or competitor may not be the solution for you; shop carefully
• Get involved with the community - the fact that you are reading this article means that you are doing the right thing in doing your research first. Read blogs and forums as well as attend meetings to talk to end users
• Don’t over-extend your resources - IT budgets are tight so make your decision based on that. Dedicated servers are frequently premium monthly payments; virtualized hosting can even be price by usage
• Follow the K.I.S.S. rule - keep things simple; over-engineered network topologies can actually hurt your presence.

Where does GoGrid come into play? For starters, it offers “control in the cloud” by crystallizing real, on-demand servers into an experience that is simple, scaleable and powerful. If you want to visit Cloud Computing in a way that is both understandable and attainable, look no further than GoGrid.

Our second round of new GoGrid templates have been released today, bringing some great new functionality: Ruby-on-Rails and Facebook! As mentioned previously, we are rapidly compiling and releasing new server OS templates with pre-configured useful application sets.

Today we released the following 3 new templates:

Web/Application Servers:

• CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) - Facebook-ready
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) - Facebook-ready
• CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with Ruby on Rails

We have some other templates queued up for release early next week:

Web/Application Servers:

• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) - Facebook-ready
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with Ruby on Rails

Next week we will be explaining what exactly we mean by “Facebook-ready” and “Facebook Accelerators” but essentially, if are a Facebook developer and have an application that you want to quickly get on the Facebook network, just get a Facebook-enabled GoGrid server. These servers come pre-configured in order get your application in front of Facebook users with little configuration. While you have been suffering through the application development part, we have been taking all of the pain out of the hosting part! More later about Facebook.

We have made a few changes to the GoGrid website as well including a quick comparison between GoGrid, Dedicated Hosting and Amazon’s EC2. But don’t just take our word for it, give GoGrid a try by signing up for a Trial (Pay-as-you-go) account.

For those of you who have already signed up for a Trial or Paid GoGrid account, WELCOME! For those who have not, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? As many of you have already started using GoGrid for a variety of purposes, I felt that it might make some sense to provide some more information and clarification about your new service.

As always, please feel free to contact us should we need to clarify anything, to simply suggest some new or improved feature or to just RAVE about GoGrid in general.

For starters, I definitely recommend reading through the FAQ section of the GoGrid site as there are some answers to your questions there. You can get information on:

• How to access and update your account
• Change your billing information
• Learn about the fundamentals of administering your account and servers
• …And much more!

However, if you are like me, frequently you pass over all of the “Welcome” emails that you receive when you sign up for things. So, for those of you who have GoGrid accounts, here is a refresher; for those of you who do not, here is what you are missing.

What is the fastest way to get up and running?

While we don’t always recommend diving in head first, you are welcome to do so. It is actually extremely easy! Here are 5 fast steps to set up a simple account consisting of :

• 1 Load Balancer
• 2 Web/Application Servers
• 1 Database Server

All within 10 minutes! Ready? Hold on to your hats!

1. Review your External IP addresses in the Network Widget. This way you know what IP addresses you have allocated to your account and which ones you can use.

2. Create 2 Web/Application Servers using the green ADD button
   
   

   Be sure to use the Public IP addresses for this so that you can connect to these servers once they are active.

   
   
   Do this again with a different IP address for the second Web/Application Server.

3. Create a Database Server using the same process as in #2
   
   
   
   Fill in the server information:

   

4. Create a Load Balancer.

   

   
   Be sure you have the IP addresses of the two Web/Application servers that you want to balance (e.g., the ones you just set up).

   

5. Access your servers. Use either RDC (Remote Desktop Connection - for Windows) or SSH (Secure Shell - for Linux). Once you have access, set up FTP or install the applications you desire to get yourself going. That’s it!

If you have questions about this, that is completely understandable. Just comment on this article or contact GoGrid Support. What are listed below are some helpful tips on understanding the GoGrid environment.

How many IP addresses do you get?

With your new GoGrid account, you are immediately provisioned 16 static IP addresses as well as both private and public VLAN support. Should you need more than 16 IP external addresses, you need to fill out a “Justification Form” which is handily included within the GoGrid UI.

If you would like to set up a Private Network, you have a block of 256 IP addresses that can be used. Using a Private Network is recommended for ensuring that certain servers, like a Database, are not accessible to the Public Network or only by pre-defined Application or Web Servers.

Also included within the Network Widget are Gateway and Net Mask of the subnets which are used to configure your public and private NICs (Network Interfaces). This widget will soon also include information about which IPs are in use and which are available.

Viewing Server Information

Currently the RAM amount is not displayed within the GoGrid interface after a server is created. We understand that this could be confusing, so we will be adding this data field to the display in an upcoming release shortly. In the meantime, we recommend that you simply put the RAM configuration that you chose in the name field (e.g., “My Win2003 Server - 1 GB RAM”). The External IP address is displayed under the Server Name:

The colored dot in the top right corner illustrates the server state. Green means the the server is currently on. Yellow means that the server is changing states (from start to stop or visa versa). Red indicates that the server is in a stopped state. When a server is created, it will come up in a Stopped (Red) state. You will need to start it in order to access it.

When a server is newly created within GoGrid, a unique Administrator or Root password is created automatically and stored within the GoGrid web interface. To access the password list, simply right click on a server and choose “passwords” from the menu (or single-click on a server and select “passwords” from the left-hand menu).

When the passwords menu item is selected, the Passwords section of the Support tab is automatically opened, listing all of your servers and the Administrator/Root users and associated passwords. Your passwords are never transmitted insecurely via email, but rather contained within this secured sections of the site (all of https://my.gogrid.com is secured with 128-bit encryption via SSL). This section of the site can be used as a notepad to store other users and their passwords by simply clicking on the “Add a Password” menu item on the left. If you modify a password on an actual server, it is recommended that you update the password on this list since it is NOT updated automatically. Also, changing a password here does NOT update the password on your server.

Network Interfaces for your Servers

Each Application/Web or Database Server that you create within GoGrid comes with 3 network interfaces (NICs). Two NICs are automatically physically attached to the public-facing network and the third NIC is connected to a private switch fabric. These two networks are completely separate and supported by different switching and routing infrastructures.

It is very important that all GoGrid users understand the configuration and setup of these three NICs. For simplicity, the table below outlines how they are configured, named and their use;

So that you can access your GoGrid server when it is first added, the Public_1 NIC is configured with DHCP and the MAC address of that NIC is automatically associated with the IP that you chose when you initially configured your server. That means that if you try to “renew” your IP address on that NIC, you will always get the same IP address; it is bound to the MAC address. Note that if you disable or shut down the Public_1 NIC, you run the risk of not being able to access your GoGrid server.

You do also have the option of binding or assigning other IP addresses (public or private) to the Public_2 or Private interfaces at your convenience should you want to create a private network, for example.

Creating and Editing Load Balancers

Load Balancers can easily be created on-the-fly and are extremely easy to configure. Once created, the virtual IP address of the Load Balancer is displayed next to the icon. Currently, the GoGrid web interface limits the possible actions for Load Balancer to Create and Delete only, which means that if you need to make changes (add/remove IP addresses) you will need to delete the existing Load Balancer and create a new one with the correct or updated information.

Any additional questions?

Please feel free to post a comment to this article with any questions or comments that you may have. We understand that while extremely easy to use, GoGrid takes some getting used to. With each new software iteration, new or enhanced functionality will be added so if you add a feature request, most likely it is already on our road map. Any new or improved features will be highlighted within this blog.

I guess I could have jumped on the bandwagon and started criticizing Amazon for the issues that it had on Friday with their S3 offering. But part of me wanted to see how it all shook out, what the cause was, what would change, if anything, and how their customers would take it. According to the blogosphere, the Amazon service was down for over 2 hours (which seems to be accurate after reading through this forum thread on the Amazon developer forum).

This official Amazon AWS response clip from the forum seems to explain the outage:

Early this morning, at 3:30am PST, we started seeing elevated levels of authenticated requests from multiple users in one of our locations. While we carefully monitor our overall request volumes and these remained within normal ranges, we had not been monitoring the proportion of authenticated requests. Importantly, these cryptographic requests consume more resources per call than other request types.

Shortly before 4:00am PST, we began to see several other users significantly increase their volume of authenticated calls. The last of these pushed the authentication service over its maximum capacity before we could complete putting new capacity in place. In addition to processing authenticated requests, the authentication service also performs account validation on every request Amazon S3 handles. This caused Amazon S3 to be unable to process any requests in that location, beginning at 4:31am PST. By 6:48am PST, we had moved enough capacity online to resolve the issue.

As we said earlier today, though we’re proud of our uptime track record over the past two years with this service, any amount of downtime is unacceptable. As part of the post mortem for this event, we have identified a set of short-term actions as well as longer term improvements. We are taking immediate action on the following: (a) improving our monitoring of the proportion of authenticated requests; (b) further increasing our authentication service capacity; and (c) adding additional defensive measures around the authenticated calls. Additionally, we’ve begun work on a service health dashboard, and expect to release that shortly.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team

What this boils down to was that is seems like Amazon was hit by an intentional (or not?) DoS (Denial of Service) attack using these authentication protocols. Good for Amazon for coming right out (albeit only on the developer forum initially) and admitting the issue as well as listing out some actionable solutions. This is an important move, by them, with the admission of mistakes.

I have mentioned this before, it’s tough being a hosting provider (as Joyent and Twitter experienced recently). But then I remember that we (all of the ISPs and hosting providers) who are working on providing grid/virtualized/cloud computing, or any new product offering, are breaking new ground. That means, like any new or innovative product, that there will be issues, bugs, downtime and other problems. That is the price you pay with emerging technology. Software is developed by humans, to err is human, so therefore, applying simple high school logic, software will have errors.

S3 is an incredible product and might be a good match for many companies. Just remember to have a back-up strategy. Amazon’s core competency is selling books and other products, not necessarily hosting. They are making a good run at it though. My thought is that S3 spun out of a glut of extra computing power and resources being available during non-holiday times. If so, what a great idea of off loading extra server capacity during non-holiday shopping crunch times. But again, hosting is not their core business.

So I ask you, the reader and customer/potential customer of any new, bleeding edge technology, to be forgiving when things don’t work as expected. Being an early adopter of technology means that you accept the risks associated with that. Your rewards may be great (new product & better pricing), but also the potential for “disaster” is also much higher compared to more traditional routes.Some points to make sure you don’t get caught by surprise:

• Develop a backup solution
• Use your backup solutions regularly
• Understand your SLA (Service Level Agreement)
• Look for ways to set up redundancy. Set up a High Availability Network.
• If you can afford it, diversify your network; set up various mirrored POPs (points of presence) with different service providers
• Develop a contingency plan: if your network goes down, can you:
  • easily inform your clients
  • get a temporary site up quickly
  • get timely and informative information from your ISP
• Put it all down in writing
• Do a disaster recovery dry run to work out the kinks
• Do cross-training of core skills

The most important suggestion I can make is one that Douglas Adams articulated so clearly in his book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Glaxay. The two words “Don’t Panic” are boldly inscribed on the cover of The Guide. You might want to follow the same lead and put those word on your IT strategy and contingency plans. And be sure to do some research on a variety hosting providers. They can make or break your business!

Today I read an article on TechCrunch which was positioned as a poll eliciting responses on a generalized area of development. The framework, as outlined by Erick Schonfeld, was this: “come up with a killer Web app in 45 minutes” for the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami. I guess the goal is to actually build the app within the timeframe specified. The categories for the poll were:

• A Webwide Reputation System
• Cloud Computing
• Social Finance
• Webmail - An Alternative to Gmail
• Search
• Life Streaming
• Video Messaging/Publishing

Below are the stats taken @ 2:10pm on 2/12/08 from the TechCrunch site.

The thing that really grabbed me about this TechCrunch poll was not what was in the original post, but the 50+ comments that followed, many with several other ideas on the “killer app.” In fact, yours truly tried to jump into the comment thread as well. I figured that I should keep my comments short, but still the topic and inferred topics kept me thinking and spawned some other ones in the process.

Many other ideas

The fact that so many readers had so many ideas leads me to believe that this is truly a loaded topic. (Well, isn’t that what web development is all about and why we have so many new services springing up?) Regardless, here are some of the other “killer apps” that caught my attention and deserve a bit more press:

• Real-time video conferencing
• Online web-app creator (multiple comments about this)
• App that creates Apps
• Time-Waste monitor that pulls in all social network tools and finds out how much time you are distracted using social networking tools (I really DON’T need to know that)
• Workflow Application
• News personalization, localization and syndication
• Mini-apps to “make your offline lives easier”
• Video equivalent of RSS widget
• Single ID system

I obviously didn’t include some of the tongue-in-cheek ideas but the ones above have some viability, in my opinion. The one that caught my eye, though, was that of “Cloud Computing” since I had recently posted some thoughts on that topic as well. But part of my comment to Erick was to get some clarification around that. Was it related to integrations with other “cloud” or “virtualized” hosting solutions? That is what I asked.

Erick’s response:

“It is open ended, but I was thinking more along the lines of what’s the next step after S3/EC2/etc. We have Web-based computation, storage, querying, and databases. What’s next. Could be built on top of Amazon or standalone.”

My Answer to “…What’s Next?”

My brain churned on this idea and then fractured in a couple of directions.

First, hooking in and/or building on top of clustered, cloud or virtualized computing definitely makes sense to me. That is part of the reason why GoGrid was developed, to provide rapidly scalable alternatives to standardized hosting to host these apps. As I have said before, integration will be key, not only to Web 3.0, but also to the success of these mini-apps, mashups, and new companies developing these products and services in general. I was encouraged to see that “Cloud Computing” was receiving a large number of votes.

The other direction my thoughts took was trying to figure what to do with these “killer apps” once they had been developed. Developing the application in 45 minutes is definitely an achievement in itself. Getting them “out to market” in an hour, is record-worthy!

I would almost extend this challenge to just that: build and deploy a killer app in an hour. The details: build the app in 45 minutes and then get it on the Internet in the remaining 15. GoGrid could do the later part of the challenge without “breaking a sweat.” As a side note, I have been able to deploy 2 servers (1 web/application server and 1 database server) in under 10 minutes combined, from server creation to RDC-ing/SSH-ing in to those servers, without any human intervention (e.g., a sysadmin) aside from my own.

My comment on the TechCrunch article of “build it and they will come” stills stands. Yes, you can build in 45 minutes, but NO, they won’t come if you don’t have a place to put it easily and quickly.

2008 will be all about getting your product developed AND out to market ahead of your competitors. Has that every really changed? Just the tools to do so have. Just be sure that when you hit that final stretch, you have planned on a sprint and your customers have a place to go to watch you finish.

Author’s Note: This post was revised on 6/23/08. The nature of computing is under going a revolution and rather than fully remove this post, I elected to refresh it so as to provide a better framework for readers.

There seems to be a lot of debate around different types of Computing Terms being used to describe server and hosting solutions. In fact, in the past, the blogosphere seemed to throw around terms like Grid, Cloud, Utility, Distributed and Cluster computing almost interchangeably. But, as of this revision, one term is rising to the top: Cloud Computing. (See recent trend analysis here.)

The definitions vary from source to source, author to author. While I cannot (and will not) attempt to articulate the end-all definition, I can write about how I view these terms and how they apply to the products that we offer, namely GoGrid. But before I dive into MY interpretation, providing what others view on these subjects may shed some light on our framework.

Terms as defined by Wikipedia

Many people view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information but that is always subject to debate. Wikipedia defines some of these terms as follows (not the end-all definitions though) and I have taken some liberties of removing non-relevant information for argument’s sake:

• Grid Computing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing
  • Multiple independent computing clusters which act like a “grid” because they are composed of resource nodes not located within a single administrative domain. (formal)
  • Offering online computation or storage as a metered commercial service, known as utility computing, computing on demand, or cloud computing.
  • The creation of a “virtual supercomputer” by using spare computing resources within an organization.
• Cloud Computing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
  • Cloud computing is a computing paradigm shift where computing is moved away from personal computers or an individual application server to a “cloud” of computers. Users of the cloud only need to be concerned with the computing service being asked for, as the underlying details of how it is achieved are hidden. This method of distributed computing is done through pooling all computer resources together and being managed by software rather than a human.
  • The services being requested of a cloud are not limited to using web applications, but can also be IT management tasks such as requesting of systems, a software stack or a specific web appliance.
• Utility Computing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing :
  • Conventional Internet hosting services have the capability to quickly arrange for the rental of individual servers, for example to provision a bank of web servers to accommodate a sudden surge in traffic to a web site.
  • “Utility computing” usually envisions some form of virtualization so that the amount of storage or computing power available is considerably larger than that of a single time-sharing computer. Multiple servers are used on the “back end” to make this possible. These might be a dedicated computer cluster specifically built for the purpose of being rented out, or even an under-utilized supercomputer. The technique of running a single calculation on multiple computers is known as distributed computing.
• Distributed Computing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing
  • A method of computer processing in which different parts of a program are run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network. Distributed computing is a type of segmented or parallel computing, but the latter term is most commonly used to refer to processing in which different parts of a program run simultaneously on two or more processors that are part of the same computer. While both types of processing require that a program be segmented—divided into sections that can run simultaneously, distributed computing also requires that the division of the program take into account the different environments on which the different sections of the program will be running. For example, two computers are likely to have different file systems and different hardware components.

Upon initial read, Wikipedia seems to be fairly close to my definitions but still not exact. Of note, “metered commercial service” rings true within both the Grid Computing and Cloud Computing definitions. However, it also seems to spill into the Utility Computing mantra. As a side note, our newest product, GoGrid, utilizes a metered service similar to how an energy company would charge you for electricity or gas, basing charges simply on what you use.

Traditional “Clouds” vs. Modern “Clouds”

Grid Computing seems to also have some origins in the idea of harnessing multiple computer resources to gain a more powerful source of shared power and computational resources. However, I would like to suggest that this definition is showing some age and, in my opinion, falls more under Distributed Computing. When I think about Distributed Computing, SETI@Home or Folding@Home come to mind, which is definitely very different from where things are moving now. So, let’s put Distributed Computing aside for this discussion.

Traditionally, the “cloud” was loosely defined as anything outside of a controlled network. When we, as Hosting Providers, discussed “the cloud” in the past with our customers, it was about the nebulous network that is known as the Internet. The cloud is loosely managed and traditionally unreliable. To that end, we do not refer to anything within our control or our networks as “the cloud” as it is too vague and un-manageable. It is outside of our Service Level Agreement and nothing that we can guarantee or deem reliable. However, once traffic enters our network, we manage it. That is where the modern interpretation of the “Cloud” comes into play. Products like Amazon’s EC2 and ServePath’s GoGrid have internalized Cloud Computing by building a reliable infrastructure around it. While the Internet remains as a Cloud of coupled servers and networks, GoGrid, for example, extends this by creating an infrastructure that offers “control in the cloud.”

Originally, I wrote that “Cloud Computing does not necessarily equate to reliable service.” This, obviously, is a contradiction in itself if you apply both the historic and modern definitions at the same time. If one views the Internet as “Cloud Computing,” there are obvious weaknesses within this vast network. With the Internet, you are at the whim of various service providers, Internet backbones and routers managing the traffic within the Cloud. But if one applies the more modern interpretations of this, Cloud Computing now offers robust infrastructure, features and services that were previously unavailable.

Tying the Grid to the Cloud

In order to provide “modern” Cloud Computing, a provider must have some sort of an organized and controlled network infrastructure and topology. What any particular service provider chooses is up to them. For GoGrid, we elected to build our Cloud offering on top of a Grid of servers as well as utilize a Utility-based billing model to only charge the end-user for what they use within our “Cloud.” The end-result is a tightly controlled Grid infrastructure that provides a Cloud Computing experience, more so than most if not all of the other hosting providers out there.

However, what is important here is looking at Cloud, Grid and/or Utility Computing from the perspective of a Hosting Provider. Definitely this is where things get contentious. As I mentioned before, GoGrid offers a traditional utility billing process where you simply pay for what you uses. This breaks from many “old school” hosting billing processes of paying up-front for server(s) and bandwidth, month or year-long contracts and then paying for overages. Does this mean that it is Utility Computing? Not really. One has to dig into this a bit more. GoGrid uses a network of similarly-configured servers bound together by management and administrative servers and virtualization tools to provide a very unique Cloud offering that is distinct from traditional hosting.

Dedicated, Managed and Cloud Servers offered by ServePath guarantee hardware resources like RAM and Load Balancing and full root and administrator access but these paths rapidly diverge at this point. Once one steps into the virtualization arena, or dare I say “the cloud,” new features are available including rapid deployments, cloning, snapshots, fault tolerance, and on-demand scalability.

ServePath chose Grid Computing to power GoGrid and provide the flexibility, scalability and robust infrastructure as the fundamental foundation of an award-winning Cloud Infrastructure product, GoGrid. The end results is a Cloud Hosting Provider offering that delivers better environmental properties, faster vertical and horizontal scalability and ultimately better fits for cost, performance and energy-concerned customers.

Sometimes it is really difficult being a Hosting Provider.

As Mark Hendrickson points out in this recent article in TechCrunch, Twitter has stopped hosting with Joyent. After “frequent outage problems that have plagued Twitter,” it seems that Twitter has elected to host somewhere else. While I’m not sure if that is a result of issues at Joyent, Hosting always seems to be the “scapegoat” in situations like these.

As the TechCrunch article states, “both companies were showing strong support for each other on their respective blogs,” which I feel is rare in this age where people jump ship at the smallest issue. But the two companies still seem to be committed to each other, even if in a lesser degree:

“Both wrote posts (here and here) describing how they were working together to prepare for the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.”

Twitter’s main blog was updated today to state that they had chosen NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services as their new hosting provider.

I use Twitter frequently to relay personal and professional information daily (tweets coming from this and the ServePath blog when a new post is delivered, for example), as well as notifying contacts of my whereabouts when I’m at networking events, and will continue to use it. Twitter is an excellent service, imitated by many but still remaining a true leader within the space. (GoGrid is on Twitter here. And ServePath is on Twitter here.)

Anyway, best of luck to Twitter with their new hosting choice. And to Joyent, I just wanted to say that “I feel your pain.” And I commend your efforts at “standing ready with excess free infrastructure,” especially for the crazy amount of Twitter activity expected for the Super Bowl!

There have been several articles and predictions written recently related to grid computing, virtualization and virtualized hosting, cloud computing and “green” hosting over the past few weeks. I have read through a number of these and thought that it might be of interested to highlight some that caught my attention. While by no means are these the de facto authorities of what will come, the commentaries do spark my interest and hopefully yours.

In his article titled: “2007: The year in green,” Ted Sampson, senior analyst at InfoWorld, wrote:

Speaking of which, virtualization was the poster child of sustainable technology in 2007. Leveraging wares from the likes of VMware and XenSource, companies found they could reduce dramatically reduce the number of servers they needed to deliver their applications and services.

This rings true to me. Green computing is hot and will continue to be so. Companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint are well advised to start looking for alternatives to traditional server computing and hosting. The fact that one is now able to “virtualize” several servers on a smaller set of “noded” servers make this trend a hot one to watch.

Similarly, Jeff Kaplan, author of THINK IT Services mentions in his blog post called “Top Ten Reasons Why On-Demand Services Will Soar in 2008”:

2. Everyone’s Going Virtual: Most industry pundits and participants view virtualization as a technology trend, but it is also a business trend. Employees are increasingly working outside the four walls of a traditional office. Gen Y workers are always on the move and online. Traditional, on-premise applications and centralized servers sitting behind a firewall can’t effectively serve today’s mobile workers. SaaS and managed services are perfectly suited for these new, virtual business requirements.

3. Amazon, IBM and Google Bet on Utility Computing. After experimenting with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for the past year, Amazon has found plenty of demand for its computing power on-demand platform from startups, as well as established companies seeking a ‘sandbox’ for their new initiatives. Amazon is now confident it can deliver its computing power in a reliable and cost-effective fashion to a broader market of business users. So, expect more aggressive PR and marketing efforts to promote and sell this powerful utility computing service.

I thought it appropriate to comment on this post, given the direction of our Grid product lines and others from different providers. It is my belief that the combination of Virtualization and Cloud/Utility computing will give many companies more cost-effective and dynamic solutions to their hosting requirements. GoGrid and Grid Series are two of our products that can resolve the business dilemmas of how to rapidly deploy and scale vertically and horizontally, “green” and robust virtualized server and network environments.

Another article that I found of interest was that of Phil Wainewright who wrote “Eight reasons SaaS will surge in 2008” in ZDNet. Phil’s focus of this article was how SaaS (software-as-a-service) will become even more “pivotal” in 2008. Specific ideas that struck me as important:

Virtualization makes it easy to go SaaS. One of the factors making it much easier for independent software vendors (ISVs) to adopt SaaS is the emergence of virtualization technology. Late last year I described how people management vendor WorkStream uses VMWare, for example, and I reported on how some SaaS vendors are using Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform. There are many other examples out there, including Joyent’s astonishing giveaway of application hosting accounts to 3,500 Facebook developers. Virtualization will be a big factor this year in helping many ISVs, large and small, get their first experience of delivering software in a service model.

Do you see a common thread here, capitalized by the above blurb by Phil? Key to everything, in my opinion, is Grid and Virtualized hosting. (To understand what a Grid Server is, watch this Flash Guide.) For several years, I worked at a few ASP (Application Service Provider) companies that transformed/morphed into SaaS offerings. The buzzword “ASP” has been replaced as of recent with On-Demand Software and now Software-as-a-Service. With the “advent” of Web 2.0 companies, SaaS has grown and will be blooming in the years to come. If your SaaS offering takes off due to it being a quality product, being “Dugg” or getting a write-up on LifeHacker, TechCrunch or the likes, scalability does come in to play, and, as Phil says, virtualization helps to combat some of the pains associated with vertical/horizontal scaling.

Just some food for thought and discussion here. I would like to know of other articles or blog posts that people have found that are particularly compelling or insightful around this topic. Like these authors, I too think that it will be a big year for “the cloud” and “the grid.”

With much anticipation, I would like to announce the launch of the GoGrid blog! What’s a blog? Well, if you don’t know by now, you probably should start taking some basic Internet 101 courses (Wikipedia is your friend). What is GoGrid? It’s the latest product offering by ServePath. More about ServePath later. The focus here is on what YOU a GoGrid user or potential user can find here. First, if you haven’t taken a tour of the GoGrid site, I heartily recommend that you take a peak at the “coming soon” site so that you can immerse yourself in the newest, ground-breaking hosting technology available to you (well, full immersion is only available currently to our exclusive private beta members). Our Creative team is hard a work on a new, enhanced version of the GoGrid site so be sure to bookmark it!

available beta blog coming communication competitor create deep discussions email gogrid going hope idea immerse later manager market months networking nurturing offering pertinent plan posts powers private product provide recommend servepath service site social start subscribe success sure taken technology throwing tied tools twitter unique user virtualized waters web work

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My goal in creating and managing the GoGrid blog is to provide you with pertinent and timely information about GoGrid, about Server and Hardware Virtualization, and about other technologies within this arena. In the coming months, I will be conducting interviews with some of our private beta users, offering tips and tricks on using the revolutionary GoGrid User Interface, and hopefully providing more insight into the magic that powers the service.

However, I will not be limiting articles to this alone. Far from it. And nor will I be the only voice here on the blog (Who am I anyway? More about me later). And this will not be the only “Web 2.0″ offering that I bring to the table; other tools and communication methods will be available. Also, I plan on throwing in some classic “Web 1.0″ offerings (like forums) and some other unique service that should make your experience more memorable, helpful and useful.

Setting up the blog is the first of many ways that I hope to begin communicating with you. But who are you? I want to know. In my mind you can be any (or all) of these:

• a sysadmin
• an IT manager
• a prospect
• a blogger
• an end user
• a curious passer-by
• an early adopter
• a competitor
• a press professional
• a research scientist
• an entrepreneur
• Who Are You?

You see where I’m going? The whole idea about Web 2.0 and the “Social Networking” thing is about communication and getting to know people, their thoughts, their ideas, their likes and dislikes. Sure, I’m going to do plenty of product discussions, many of them focused around GoGrid. But truly, to make this market (that of virtualized or grid-hosting) successful, you have to create a community. Communication is multi-directional (not just me spewing product specs and marketing mumbo-jumbo), and developing and nurturing a community through various means of communication is critical to the success of any social network. I want to hear from you!

Over the next few weeks, I will be enabling other social networking tools designed to help you test the waters of this community. If you like it, you can dive in the deep end, or, you can just stay in the shallow end. I just want you to get WET! You can immediately start tracking posts to this blog using Twitter. There is now a Twitter account tied to this blog (Twitter name is “GoGrid“). Also, it’s easy to subscribe to RSS news feeds as well as email digests of posts and comments (if you are an “old school” email-person).

Again, welcome to GoGrid, the GoGrid blog and my efforts to create an engaging environment where discussions, idea exchanges and learning can take place!