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

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

New Major Versions

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

New Minor Versions

• CentOS 5.6
• RHEL 5.7

Updated Versions

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

End of Life-d (EOL) Versions

• CentOS 5.3
• RHEL 5.4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have 3 exciting features, specifically:

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

East Coast Load Balancers

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

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

New GoGrid Dedicated Server Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then choose the Configuration you would like:

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

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

16 GBs of RAM on GoGrid Cloud Servers

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

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

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

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

Last week, we released a new version of GoGrid which includes new RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans, included larger volume discounts. Further details of this released covered in this post are:

• New RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans
• New Linux & Windows Base Images
• Behind-the-scenes Performance Improvements

Read on for more details.

New RAM Hour and Bandwidth Pricing Plans

With this release, we are also making some changes (for the better) on our pricing plans. Coupled with this, we have now made it even easier to upgrade (or downgrade) your plans from within the GoGrid portal.

These new plans are listed below:

Server RAM Hours

* Annual pre-payment are still billed overage at the standard rate on a monthly basis.

Transfer

To access this new section of the portal, simply go to the My Account tab and select the Billing Tab.

Within that page, you now have the ability to view all of the pricing options available for changing:

Within that section, you will see you current RAM and Data Transfer Plans, which include the monthly charge and details of that plan.

To change either plan, simply click on the green Select button next to the plan that you want. After that, you will be walked through a series of screens to finalize your selection:

As you can see above, there are two options available when you upgrade to a Pre-Paid plan, paying Monthly or paying Yearly. Do note that doing a Yearly plan will save you about 33% over a monthly plan.

Once you agree to the new Terms of Service and click the Confirm button, your upgrade will be sent to our team. Note that orders are reviewed and processed quickly, however, it is not an immediate process and could take 1 business day to complete.

The process for Data Transfer Plan upgrades (or downgrades) are the same as with the RAM Upgrade/Downgrade process. If you have questions about which plan or combination of plans works best for you, please contact a GoGrid Sales Representative.

New Windows and Linux Base Images

With this release we have also added support for the following new base images:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (32 & 64-bit images)
• CentOS 5.3 Linux (32 & 64-bit images)
• Windows 2003 SP2-R2 (32 & 64-bit images)
• Windows 2008 SP2 (32 & 64-bit images)

Another change that you may see as you view the currently available images is the fact that there are fewer overall images. We have made the decision to focus our image support on root operating systems, and less on “stacks” that are essentially add-ons to the base system. So, you will see that various images that had stacks have been End of Lifed (EOL).

But, since you have full administrative and root access to any image that you deploy within GoGrid, you can install these stacks or any applications or code that you see fit. We believe that by focusing on root operating systems, we can provide a richer base infrastructure and leave the customizations to you. However, as our Partner program continues to grow, you will see many more images appear with a variety of great functions and features.

Other Improvements

We have made other “under the hood” improvements to GoGrid in general. Most important of these, multiple server deployment speeds have dramatically increased, allowing you to quickly scale out multiple servers in sequence.

If you have any questions about this release or other GoGrid features, please contact a member of our Sales organization or leave a comment on this post.

Last week, we quietly released some new larger GoGrid Cloud server instances. Today we are making that announcement a bit louder. What does this mean to you? Well, your GoGrid cloudcenter just got a bit broader and more powerful. For a year now, we have been offering 0.5, 1 and 2 Gigabyte RAM options in both Windows and Linux, now we have 4 and 8 GB RAM instances available. These larger instances, available on all 64-bit operating systems, allow for new types of higher-end environments to be spun up using all of the characteristics of Cloud Computing.

The lower size RAM instances (0.5, 1 & 2 GB) are perfect for a web front-end, where either Apache or IIS are running. For extremely high-performance and high I/O instances, we have been offering Cloud Connect as a way to create a dedicated hybrid infrastructure where Cloud Web Servers running on GoGrid can be linked via private dedicated network connections to dedicated and managed servers within the ServePath network.

With the new 4 and 8 GB RAM options, you can now set up a infrastructure with a robust set of high-performance application servers within the Cloud. These types of high RAM instances are perfect for users who want to take advantage of the increased RAM, CPU cores and persistent storage, especially when used in conjunction with specific applications (e.g., Microsoft SQL server or other Enterprise applications) that require more larger amounts of resources like RAM or CPU.

The 4 GB RAM server images can be deployed via the GoGrid web portal and API. The 8 GB RAM server images currently may only be deployed via the GoGrid API. I recommend reading the API section of the GoGrid wiki in order to fully understand how to deploy 8 GB RAM instances.

The 4 and 8 GB RAM images, available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, CentOS 5.1, and Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 64-bit operating systems bring a new level of performance to the GoGrid line. 4 GB Cloud Servers have 3 CPU Cores and 8 GB have 6 CPU Cores, ensuring dedicated CPU allocations and high performance.

All GoGrid Cloud Servers come with persistent storage. The new larger RAM allocations announced today, are delivered with increased persistent storage: 4 GB Cloud Servers have 240 GB of hard drive space and 8 GB have 480 GB of storage allocated at boot time. Additional storage can be added using GoGrid’s dynamically scalable Cloud Storage offering which includes a 10 GB free allotment to start with. Each 1 GB thereafter costs $0.15/GB/month.

Our current breakdown of GoGrid Cloud Servers and associated RAM/CPU/Persistent Storage is as follows:

Further information on the new 4 and 8 GB RAM GoGrid Cloud Servers can be found on the GoGrid site. Server Release Information on these new images can be found on the GoGrid wiki. We have also posted a Server Compatibility Matrix that graphically shows what server instances are available with the associated RAM allocations.

If you are a Windows user, we ask that you please our Release and Errata pages as there are some known issues specific to 8 GB Windows Servers which may require a workaround and that they should be aware of before using 8 GB GoGrid Servers with Windows.

Our full Press Release on this information can be viewed here as well as on the GoGrid site.

As always, please leave any questions or comments here on this blog post, or open a Support case via the GoGrid portal should you need technical assistance.