GoGrid Blog

NOTE: We are currently revising this article. Please bear with us as we modify the content below for improvement.

Content Management Systems (CMS’s) are all the rage these days because of their unique ability to manage and deliver so many different types of media. The ability to create community-based websites with permission-based access and the ability to dynamically deliver different media formats and content can allow users to easily develop websites, online communities or internal intranets in a matter of minutes. Drupal, winner of dozens of open-source application awards, is one of the best and most popular Content Management Systems available today. The basic installation allows users to create online blogs, forums, wikis, books and newsletters, all of which can be privately managed by individuals or groups depending on how you set up the available permissions levels.

Of course, Drupal installs are fully supported on GoGrid. So, before you jump in and install Drupal, be sure that you have a GoGrid account set up. If you simply want to give Drupal a try within a Cloud Hosting environment, then with the automatic $50 credit that users receive with a new GoGrid account, you could create a GoGrid server in a few minutes and then spend the rest of your time (after the 15 minutes of setup) getting to know Drupal. Once you get your Drupal install dialed in, you might want to keep it so GoGrid makes it easy with pay-as-you-go billing and volume pricing as well. If you just wanted to test out your install skills and simply play around with Drupal on GoGrid, you can delete your cloud server(s) and use GoGrid for something else. It’s your call.

To start, simply deploy a GoGrid server through the http://my.gogrid.com customer portal. In this example, we’ll use a RHEL 4.5-based LAMP stack since it has all the software packages needed for a Drupal installation already installed.

1. Click on the “+” button once you’ve logged in, then select “Web/App Server”. Enter a friendly name for your server, such as “Drupal” or the domain name you’ll use once your server is configured. Enter a quick description of the server and select an IP address (our new IP suggest function will suggest one automatically for you). If you already have a GoGrid server instance that runs your website and you want to install Drupal in a sub-directory or sub-domain, skip down to the second half of this article.
2. Next, select the operating system to run your Drupal installation on. Drupal can run on either Windows or Linux machines, but in this example we’ll use a Linux-based RHEL 4.5 server image. Please note that Drupal will not run on MSSQL, so using a Linux-based distribution is easier to manage out of the box. If you wish to run Drupal on a Windows server, you will have to manually install PHP 4 or 5 with MySQL or PostgreSQL to run alongside IIS.
3. Select the amount of RAM dedicated to your server. Depending on the amount of traffic you’re expecting, you may want to allocate a good amount of RAM to your server. I’m choosing to go with a 1GB server.
4. Select the server image you want to deploy. In this case, I’ll be using a LAMP stack. (For Windows servers, you may want to select a Windows 2003-based operating systems with IIS and MSSQL Express installed on the server image, then install PHP and MySQL or PostgreSQL.)
5. Click on “Save” and your server will be deployed within a matter of minutes.
6. Once your server’s light turns green, click on the new Drupal server and then select the “Passwords” button at the left. This will take you to the login information for your server.

Now that a server has been deployed, you can go ahead and connect to it remotely via SSH. If you work on a Windows machine, you can download the PuTTY client to connect to a Linux Server. If you’re on a Mac or a Linux machine, you can open your terminal and SSH directly to the IP address of the new GoGrid server.

1. SSH to the new server and log in using the username and password credentials located on the “Passwords” page in the GoGrid portal. In my examples, I will use the IP address 208.113.93.249. Replace this IP address throughout this document with the IP of the server you just deployed:

   ssh 208.113.93.249

   Enter your username and password to log in.

2. Navigate to the folder where you want the Drupal installation to live. In a Linux server, this is usually in /var/www/html. If you want to install this as a subdirectory of your website, create the directory and change directories to that folder (/var/www/html/your.subdirectory).

   cd /var/www/html

3. Now you need to download the Drupal package from drupal.org:

   wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.3.tar.gz

4. Once the package has finished installing, you’ll need to un-archive it:

   tar -xzf drupal-6.3.tar.gz

5. A new directory called “drupal-6.3” should appear when you enter the command ls to show the contents of your current directory. Now we’ll need to create the MySQL database associated with Drupal. Enter the MySQL prompt and create a new database and user for the Drupal installation. Note that you should create more securely named username, password and databases than I have below. These are just examples:

   mysql -u drupaladmin -p
   Enter password:
   Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
   Your MySQL connection id is 21
   Server version: 5.0.58 Source distribution

   Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

   mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupal;
   Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

   mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO "drupaladmin"@"localhost"
   -> IDENTIFIED BY "abcd1234";
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

   mysql> EXIT
   Bye

6. You will need to modify a few files on the standard Drupal installation before proceeding with the installation. Change directories to the /sites/default directory from the root Drupal installation:

   cd sites/default/

   Now create a copy of the default.settings.php file to settings.php:

   cp default.settings.php settings.php

   Modify the file so that it is writeable from the Drupal installation:

   chmod 766 settings.php

   Create a directory called files and modify it so that it is writeable by the Drupal installation:

   mkdir files
   chmod 766 files/

7. Now, the rest is quite simple. Open a web browser and navigate to the directory where you installed Drupal. In this example, the directory is in the root web directory, so all I have to do is navigate to my IP address (or host name if DNS records have been properly set up), and presto! The install page should appear. If it does not appear, append the URL with /install.php.
8. Follow the on-screen instructions by selecting your language and entering your database credentials. After clicking on “Save and Continue”, you should see a progress bar for only a few moments before being brought to the following screen:
   
9. At this point, you will need to change the permissions on the files directory and on settings.php so that they are not writeable any more. You may also want to delete the file default.settings.php or move it out of your web directory entirely for security reasons:

   chmod 644 settings.php
   chmod 644 files/
   rm –rf default.settings.php

   Also make sure to move or rename the install.php file in the root Drupal installation directory. Refresh the page and all the red warning box will turn to green.

10. Click “Save and Continue” and you will be brought to the site configuration screen. Here you can enter the name of your website and create your admin user account. Be sure to pick a secure password with at least one number, one upper-case letter and at least 7 characters long. Random passwords are always the most secure and there are several random password generators all over the web. Configure you time and date settings and follow the remainder of the on-screen instructions before hitting “Save and Continue”. It may take a few minutes for the installation to complete, so be sure not to refresh during the installation process.

That’s it! You should be brought to the welcome page where you can click on links to the admin page or online docs. You can login and start posting content immediately. Download, modify and design your own skins (Drupal even has a skin API!), add extensions and plugins from http://drupal.org and setup users and permissions. There are literally hundreds of extensions and plugins you can install to host MP3’s, Flash movies or anything else imaginable.

Drupal is one of the best community portals available and is a great PHP-based option for beginners to get their hands dirty in PHP. The user-interface is intuitive and robust, allowing admins to set up user-roles and permissions for nearly every function that can be performed by the software. This is especially useful as a company intranet or as a community page for your customers to access support materials. And installing on a GoGrid Cloud server allows you to simply delete your server if you make a mistake and start over within minutes or just give Drupal a test run.

Also be sure to check out our “How to Install WordPress on a GoGrid Server in Less Than 10 Minutes” and “How to Install phpBB on a GoGrid Cloud Server in Less Than 10 Minutes“. You could have a Drupal CMS, a WordPress Blog and a phpBB forum up and running in less than an hour!

If you’re running software applications or services in your GoGrid cloud, then there’s a good chance that you need a way for your customers to communicate with one another. Forums and bulletin boards are great tools for companies to allow their customers to help each other out with your products. Using these tools also alleviates some of the load on your support teams, saving you labor expenses and time. One of the best bulletin boards is the open-source phpBB software. This is a simple-to-install, feature-rich, PHP-based web application that takes only minutes to configure on a GoGrid server.

The latest version of phpBB (version 3.0) does have some specific server requirements, namely: Windows or Linux, an SQL database system (e.g., mySQL 3.23 or above, MS SQL Server 2000 or above, or PostgreSQL 7.x or above) and PHP 4.3.3 or above. GoGrid has you covered with those requirements so you don’t have to monkey around with doing any changes (with the exception of Windows, you will have to install PHP for that).

To start, simply deploy a GoGrid server through the http://my.gogrid.com customer portal. In this example, we’ll use a CentOS 4.5-based LAMP stack since it has all the software packages needed for a phpBB installation already installed.

1. Click on the “+” button once you’ve logged in, then select “Web/App Server”. Enter a friendly name for your server, such as “phpBB” or the domain name you’ll use once your server is configured. Enter a quick description of the server and select an IP address (our new IP suggest function will suggest one automatically for you). If you already have a GoGrid server instance that runs your website and you want to install phpBB in a sub-directory or sub-domain, skip down to the second half of this article.
2. Next, select the operating system to run your phpBB installation on. phpBB can run on either Windows or Linux machines, but in this example we’ll use a Linux-based CentOS 4.5 server image.
3. Select the amount of RAM dedicated to your server. Depending on the amount of traffic you’re expecting, you may want to allocate a good amount of RAM to your server. I’m choosing to go with a 2GB server.
4. Select the server image you want to deploy. In this case, I’ll be using a LAMP stack. (For Windows servers, you may want to select a Windows 2003-based operating systems with IIS and MSSQL Express installed on the server image.)
5. Click on “Save” and your server will be deployed within a matter of minutes.
6. Once your server’s light turns green, click on the new phpBB server and then select the “Passwords” button at the left. This will take you to the login information for your server.

Now that a server has been deployed, you can go ahead and connect to it remotely via SSH. If you work on a Windows machine, you can download the PuTTY client to connect to a Linux Server. If you’re on a Mac or a Linux machine, you can open your terminal and SSH directly to the IP address of the new GoGrid server.

1. SSH to the new server and log in using the username and password credentials located on the “Passwords” page in the GoGrid portal. In my examples, I will use the IP address 208.113.93.242. Replace this IP address throughout this document with the IP of the server you just deployed:

   ssh 208.113.93.242

   Enter your username and password to log in.

2. Navigate to the folder where you want the phpBB installation to live. In a Linux server, this is usually in /var/www/html. If you want to install this as a subdirectory of your website, create the directory and change directories to that folder (/var/www/html/your.subdirectory).

   cd /var/www/html

3. Now you need to download the phpBB package from phbb.com (note: this is for the 3.0.2 version of phpBB. There may be subsequent versions so you should check and change the path below as appropriate):

   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/phpbb/phpBB-3.0.2.zip?download

4. Once the package has finished installing, you’ll need to unzip it:

   unzip phpBB-3.0.2.zip

5. A new directory called “phpBB3″ should appear when you enter the command ls to show the contents of your current directory. Now we’ll need to create the MySQL database associated with phpBB. Enter the MySQL prompt and create a new database and user for the phpBB installation. Note that you should create more securely named username, password and databases than I have below. These are just examples:

   mysql -u phpbb3admin -p
   Enter password:
   Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
   Your MySQL connection id is 21
   Server version: 5.0.58 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE phpbb3;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON phpbb3.* TO "phpbb3admin"@"localhost"
 -> IDENTIFIED BY "abcd1234";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> EXIT
Bye

6. Now, the rest is quite simple. Open a web browser and navigate to the directory where you installed phpBB. In this example, the directory is in the root web directory, so all I have to do is navigate to my IP address (or host name if DNS records have been properly set up), and presto! The install page should appear. If it does not appear, append the URL with /install/index.php.
7. Read through all the docs on the initial page. This provides information about the GNU public license, provides links to the install guide and gives details on how to get support from phpBB.
8. Next, click on the “Install” tab at the top of the page. This will provide a web-interface to pass parameters to the configuration files:
   
9. Follow the on-screen instructions that will guide you through the installation. Since this server has all the requirements necessary for a LAMP environment, there should be no issues with the requirements page at all.
10. Follow the on screen instructions to the “Database Settings” page. The “Database server hostname or DNS” field will be localhost. Fill in the “Database Name” and “Database Username” fields according to the database name and database user you created in step 5. Don’t worry about the “Database Server Port” field unless you have manually changed the port that MySQL runs on. In my case, I would enter phpbb3 in the “Database name” field and phpbb3admin in the “Database User” field. Enter the “Database Password”; in my case, this is abcd1234. You should receive the “successful connection” message. Now you can click on the “Proceed to next step” button.
11. This is where you set your phpBB admin user details. Choose any name and password combination that you like. It is always best to use a random password generator; just make sure you write it down! Enter your email address as well. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button and you should receive the “test passed” message. Click the button again.
12. This page will write your configurations to the config.php file. You may receive an error message saying that config.php is not writeable. If this happens, change permissions on the file and refresh the page, but be sure to restore security to it after the install is complete:

    chmod 777 config.php

13. You should be prompted with a message that says the configuration file was written. You can then click the “Proceed to next step” button again to move on. You should be at the “Advanced Settings” page. Fill in all of the information in the “Email Settings” section if you want to be able to send and receive emails through the phpBB software. You can also choose to use an external server to handle your email from this page. Next is the “Server URL Settings” section. If you are running this installation locally and haven’t changed any default settings in Apache, leave this information as is. If you are running an SSL cert, you will need to follow the on screen instruction in the first three fields of this section. If you have already set up DNS records and have www address, you can note this in the “Domain Name” field. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button when finished.
14. You should receive a message that says that the database tables have been written successfully. Click on the “Proceed to next step” button again. This may take several minutes as the installation finishes according to all your configurations.
15. Move or rename the install directory on the server so that it is not accessible by the outside world. This command will move it up into the /www directory if the phpBB install was done in the root web directory:

    mv install/ ..

That’s it! You should be brought to the admin control panel where you can configure your new bulletin board to your liking. Download, modify and design your own skins, add extensions from http://phpbb.com and setup users and permissions.

phpBB is an excellent community tool that developers, customers and support agents can all use to communicate with one another. It allows businesses to save support and developer labor, provide an elevated level of customer service and get feedback from their users all in one centralized and easy-to-use place! Set up moderators and administrators to keep your forums organized and reply to your users as you see fit.

Be sure to check the GoGrid blog regularly for more How-To’s. GoGrid Cloud Servers truly give you “control in the cloud” and can help you quick build and scale community services like phpBB or WordPress.

WordPress is the most popular blogging content management system software in use today with over 4 million downloads in its existence. It can be seen on hundreds of thousands of websites, most notably on Ebay.com, CNN.com, People.com and the NewYorkTimes.com. Millions of readers view WordPress -based websites every day and get near real-time RSS feeds from their favorite authors. Blogging is a great way to promote your company (hence your visit here), review your current obsessions or talk about your hobbies in a community-oriented fashion.

That being said, this article will show you how to do a quick WordPress installation in less than 10 minutes on GoGrid. You will be up and running, ready to post content about what you ate for lunch or the newest tech gadget you saw on the streets, all with the clean aesthetics and easy, feature-rich navigation of a WordPress website.

To start, simply deploy a GoGrid server through the http://my.gogrid.com customer portal. In this example, we’ll use a CentOS 4.5-based LAMP stack since it has all the software packages needed for a WordPress installation already installed.

1. Click on the “+” button once you’ve logged in, then select “Web/App Server”. Enter a friendly name for your server, such as “WordPress” or the domain name you’ll use once your server is configured. Enter a quick description of the server and select an IP address (our new IP suggest function will suggest one automatically for you).
2. Next, select the operating system to run your WordPress installation on. WordPress can run on either Windows or Linux machines, but in this example we’ll use a Linux-based CentOS 4.5 server image.
3. Select the amount of RAM dedicated to your server. Depending on the amount of traffic you’re expecting, you may want to allocate a good amount of RAM to your server. I’m choosing to go with a 2GB server.
4. Select the server image you want to deploy. In this case, I’ll be using a LAMP stack. (For Windows servers, you may want to select a Windows 2003-based operating systems with IIS and MSSQL Express installed on the server image.)
5. Click on “Save” and your server will be deployed within a matter of minutes.
6. Once your server’s light turns green, click on the new WordPress server and then select the “Passwords” button at the left. This will take you to the login information for your server.

Now that a server has been deployed, you can go ahead and connect to it remotely via SSH. If you work on a Windows machine, you can download the PuTTY client to connect to a Linux Server. If you’re on a Mac or a Linux machine, you can open your terminal and SSH directly to the IP address of the new GoGrid server.

1. SSH to the new server and log in using the username and password credentials located on the “Passwords” page in the GoGrid portal. In my examples, I will use the IP address 208.113.93.243. Replace this IP address throughout this document with the IP of the server you just deployed:

   ssh 208.113.93.243

   Enter your username and password to log in.

2. Navigate to the folder where you want the WordPress installation to live. In a Linux server, this is usually in /var/www/html.

   cd /var/www/html

3. Now you need to download the WordPress package from wordpress.org:

   wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

4. Once the package has finished installing, you’ll need to unzip it:

   tar –xzf latest.tar.gz

5. A new directory called “WordPress” should appear when you enter the command “ls” to show the contents of your current directory. Now we’ll need to create the MySQL database associated with WordPress. Enter the MySQL prompt and create a new database and user for the WordPress installation. Note that you should create more securely named username, password and databases than I have below. These are just examples:

   mysql -u wordpressadmin -p

   Enter password:

   Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.

   Your MySQL connection id is 21

   Server version: 5.0.58 Source distribution

   Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

   mysql> CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

   Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

   mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO "wordpressadmin"@"localhost"

    -> IDENTIFIED BY "abcd1234";

   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

   mysql> EXIT

   Bye

6. In the wordpress directory, change the name of the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php:

   mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

7. Open the wp-config.php file in a text editor and enter your database details. I’ll be using vi for this, but you may use something different:

   vi wp-config.php

   Under the ** MySQL settings ** section, enter in the appropriate information regarding your database that you just created. Again, these are examples taken from the steps above:

   // ** MySQL settings ** //

   define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database

   define('DB_USER', 'wordpressadmin'); // Your MySQL username

   define('DB_PASSWORD', 'abcd1234'); // ...and password

   define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');    // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

   define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

   define('DB_COLLATE', '');

8. Move all of the WordPress files into the desired location on the server. Currently, they are one level below the root domain directory, so we’ll have to move all of the files up one level. If you wish to keep them where they are, you will have to access your WordPress installation via the web at your IP address/ wordpress, i.e. 208.113.93.243/wordpress. You can move the files to wherever you see fit dependent on where you want them to appear on your website. In this example, the WordPress files will be moved to the root domain directory, /var/www/html:

   cd ..

   mv wordpress/* /var/www/html

9. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing the file wp-admin/install.php in a web browser. This will be the IP address/wp-admin/install.php or your hostname/wp-admin/install.php. If you installed WordPress in the root directory as I did above, go to http://208.113.93.243/wp-admin/install.php, but replace my IP address with yours. If you installed WordPress in a sub-directory, go that URL in your browser. You should see the following login prompt page:

Once your WordPress installation is configured properly, you can join the ranks of the thousands of bloggers out there in the blogosphere. Remember to set up your RSS feeds so that people can get notified when you update your site. The only problem you should have now is deciding what to post. What is going to make your blog stand out in the crowd? Hmm, sounds like a good topic for a blog entry…

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.