In our efforts to continually improve the GoGrid platform, we have released a new kernel patch for our 64-bit Linux customers which can dramatically improve performance.

NOTE: This update only applies to GoGrid customers. Users of other Linux distributions OUTSIDE of GoGrid should NOT apply this patch.

This kernel patch is relatively trivial to install and under some circumstances will dramatically improve disk drive performance.

To install the kernel patch, log into any 64-bit Linux (RHEL or CentOS) server in your GoGrid cloud that was instantiated before 2/12/09.

From the command line, enter the following command on your 64-bit Linux server:

rm ˆf pviofix.sh ; wget ftp://ftp.gogrid.com/pviofix.sh && bash pviofix.sh

Please note that this will require a reboot of your system. GoGrid strongly recommends you apply this patch to improve your system performance.

If you experience any issues or if you require assistance installing this patch, please contact our Support team at 1.877.946.4743 or log a support case via the GoGrid portal.

We appreciate your cooperation in applying this patch.

Note: The matrix below will be updated shortly in a new post to reflect changes in both EC2 and GoGrid features. (11.11.08)

As GoGrid continues its record breaking sign-ups, we get asked repeatedly how we compare against Amazon’s EC2. While not exactly an apples to apples comparison, there are enough similarities to warrant a few matrices to illustrate the differences.

Feature Comparison Matrix

While not officially sanctioned by our Product Management team, I added this for good measure.

Deployment Time Comparison

**** A bit of humor after watching a long video showing how to deploy EC2 images.

If there is another GoGrid comparison that you would like to see, just leave a comment and we will do our best to post in the future.

A few days ago, I had an interesting conversation with a very excited GoGrid user. So much so, that he was working on getting all of his production websites migrated over to GoGrid, but only after he fully installed cPanel. Using cPanel, he said, would enable him to seamlessly migrate all of his clients’ sites. He kept running into little tweaks that he needed to do here and there, but kept working on it, happy that he could so easily build up and rip down server instances with GoGrid. Eventually, he got it to work. His ultimate suggestion? Get an Operating System image with cPanel installed, or at a minimum, have a bare-bones install of CentOS so that cPanel could be installed easily.

As we continue to build out the GoGrid Operating System images (shortly to roll out some new ones), I thought that it would make sense to ask what Open Source software you might want to see in upcoming template releases.

My list of Open Source apps that I would want on Windows and/or Linux is growing and includes:

• WordPress
• Joomla!
• Bugzilla
• Trac
• Moodle
• Subversion (maybe with Trac)
• SugarCRM
• MediaWiki
• Webmin
• cPanel
• Alfresco
• Twiki
• Community Server

What about actual Operating Systems like Ubuntu or Debian?

How about combinations of the OS and Open Source app?

I realize that these are simple Open Source applications but do you really want to spend hours installing and configuring your server for these to work? The whole goal of GoGrid is “control in the cloud” and make server deployments quick and easy. With these templates, we hope to make the process even easier, turnkey and ready-to-go out of the box! Post a comment with your wish list and we will see what we can do.

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

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

Chart updated on 8/27/08.

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

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

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

As part of our regular updates to GoGrid code and functionality, we have released several new Web/Application and Database Sever Templates to GoGrid. This is part of a two set release with the next round coming tomorrow. (More information on the second set of templates in a subsequent blog post.)

One of the great features of GoGrid is the ability to instantly create new servers based on precompiled and tested templates. Our goal is to provide a significant number of templates to match many different development needs and do so in a timely manner.

Yesterday, we released the following templates:

Web/Application Servers:

• CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with LAMP stack
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with IIS, ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express

Database Servers:

• CentOS 4.5 (32-bit) with PostgreSQL 8.2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with PostgreSQL 8.2
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express

These 6 additional server images now compliment the original list of servers:

Web/Application Servers:

• CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with IIS 6.0

Database Servers:

• CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) with MySQL 5.0
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit) with MySQL 5.0
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Workgroup (additional charge of $99.99/month)
• Windows 2003 Server (32-bit) with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard (additional charge of $249.99/month)

With 13 templates and growing, GoGrid is rapidly becoming the de facto source for scalable, on-demand servers. Also, remember that we are the first to bring FREE web-based load balancing into the mix, as well as an allotment of static IPs, free inbound bandwidth and a “utility” type of pricing model (pay as you go). So what are you waiting for? Sign up for GoGrid and get your development or production environment running in minutes.