On Friday, February 26, one of our GoGrid Partners, ANX eBusiness will be hosting a webinar titled “Disaster Recovery in the Cloud“.

The description of the Webinar is as follows:

With the increasing importance of information technology for the continuation of business critical functions, combined with a transition to an around-the-clock economy, the importance of protecting an organization’s data and IT infrastructure in the event of a disruptive situation has become an increasing and more visible business priority in recent years. It is estimated that most large companies spend between 2% and 4% of their IT budget on disaster recovery planning.  Recent technological advancements, primarily with cloud computing, allow more companies to afford and be better prepared for the day disaster strikes.  This webinar demonstrates new approaches for implementing a powerful yet cost effective disaster recovery program in the cloud.

Webinar details:

DATE: Friday, February 26, 2010
TIME: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST (11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST)
HOST: ANX eBusiness
REGISTRATION: To register, please visit this page

More Information about ANX eBusiness

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As you probably know by now, GoGrid released a series of new enhancements to our Cloud Computing Infrastructure Hosting service. You can read more about what was included in this latest release in this blog post. Some of the highlighted new features and improvements include:

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

We also sent out a newsletter highlighting some of the changes in the January/February 2010 timeframe.

As with previous releases, I wanted to spend some time with our VP of Products, Mario Olivarez, and discuss some of these items and what they mean to GoGrid customers. (YouTube direct link.)

This video is also available on the GoGrid Facebook page as well as our GoGrid YouTube Channel.

As always, if you have any questions about any of the items you heard in this video or about GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos.

Gear6, the leading provider of commercial Memcached solutions, and GoGrid today announced the availability of Gear6 Cloud Cache, an on-demand service offering designed to speed up, scale out and ensure uptime of web services and applications built within servers deployed within the GoGrid cloud. Memcached is a popular, open source distributed memory system used to scale dynamic content for busy web sites. As dynamic content gets pushed to cloud applications, Memcached provides an ideal mechanism for accelerating performance.

By choosing the Gear6 GoGrid Partner Server Image (GSI), GoGrid users will receive a 100% Memcached compatible server that delivers dramatically better memory efficiency. GoGrid users who deploy a Gear6 optimized server within GoGrid benefit from:

• A more efficient cache
• Cache depth amplification
• An easy to use web GUI & REST interface
• Commercial support
• …and more

Using Gear6’s Memcached server images on GoGrid means that those servers will have optimized memory management which translates to a much higher speed of cached data and up to a 50% increase in DRAM efficiency without any noticeable performance degradation. There are currently a couple of Gear6 images available within GoGrid, including: (more…)

Today, MuleSoft, who specializes in enterprise-class software, and GoGrid announced the availability of the industry’s first commercially-supported cloud-based Apache Tomcat offering known as Cloudcat as a GoGrid Partner Server Image (GSI). The Partner GSI by MuleSoft contains their product Cloudcat which allows developers and QA personnel to build and test web applications easily in the cloud using a pre-installed & configured Apache Tomcat application server. Having Cloudcat contained within a Partner GSI is important to GoGrid users because it eliminates the need of having to do a manual Tomcat download, installation or configuration. Apache Tomcat is the world’s most widely used application server, with over 1 million downloads per month and over 70% penetration in the enterprise datacenter.

More information about MuleSoft and Cloudcat can be found within the GoGrid Exchange on the MuleSoft Partner Page. There are currently two MuleSoft/Cloudcat images available on GoGrid:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (32-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 (64-bit)

These images have a monthly (recurring) cost of $29/server (in addition to standard GoGrid RAM and Bandwidth charges).

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Another GoGrid partner, CohesiveFT, has made 2 Partner GSIs available for GoGrid customers to use. VPN-Cubed is a overlay network which provides control of addressing, protocols, topology and encrypted communications for devices within the public cloud, specifically GoGrid. By utilizing a GoGrid VPN-Cubed server image, enterprise customers are ensured a greater control over their computing infrastructure and security therein.

Their offering, called VPN-Cubed, comes in two free versions currently on GoGrid (with a paid version coming soon):

• VPN-Cubed for GoGrid SSL Free Edition – Users launch one or two VPN-Cubed Manager GSI(s) and “plug” up to 10 server instances into the resulting encrypted network inside of GoGrid. Users can specify subnet address each connected instance and all communication between the connected devices and the Manager is encrypted.
• VPN-Cubed for GoGrid IPsec Free Edition – Users launch a single VPN-Cubed Manger/IPsec Gateway GSI and “plug” up to 5 server instances into the resulting encrypted network inside of GoGrid. In addition to subnet control and communication encryption inside of GoGrid, users can connect the overlay network to their existing in-house infrastructure via a secure IPsec Tunnel. There is support for a wide range of IPsec extranet devices.

These Partner Images are now available within GoGrid:

Through the use of VPN-Cubed, GoGrid users get: (more…)

The following press release went out today surrounding the new technology partnership between GoGrid and Objectivity, Inc. Objectivity provides flexible, scalable high performance, distributed persistent object and database management solutions. Objectivity/DB, which now runs on GoGrid, is termed the “cloud-ready database” in that it is a fully distributed and federated database platform with benefits including:

• Distributed Architecture
• Single Logical View
• Real-time performance
• Automatic data replication
• Handling Data Complexity
• Virtualization
• Security
• Low Maintenance

More information on Objectivity/DB is available here.

The full press release is available online as well as below:

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Introduction to Partner Server Images

A few months ago, we introduced MyGSIs (personal server images) which allow users to create custom personal GSI (GoGrid Server Images) with all of their code, applications and data. These personal server images are then compressed and stored in GoGrid’s Cloud Storage for use later instantiating copies of those MyGSIs within a user’s GoGrid cloud. Building upon that framework, backend structure and concept, we have released Partner GSIs and the GoGrid Exchange.

A Partner GSI appears in the same list of servers or sandboxes available for deployment. GoGrid has a growing number of partners, each of which specialize in a variety of capabilities including internet security, backup, monitoring, web applications, compliance and application scaling. New partners are being added regularly so be sure to check the GoGrid Partner page for additions. Also, a new “microsite”, called the GoGrid Exchange, will be launching shortly where you can get detailed information about Partners and the images they are providing.

To use a Partner GSI, simply select it from the server list as you are creating a new GoGrid cloud server. Do note that some partners charge an additional amount for using their pre-packaged GSI. If you use a Partner GSI that has some sort of “token based billing” attached to it, you will receive a charge for the use of that server in your next billing statement. Also, even if you use a Partner GSI that has a billing token assigned to it for an hour (or more), you are charged the full amount associated with that image. There is no partial or fractional billing for Partner GSIs. Partner images will show a different “owner” (see the screenshot below).

GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP)

GigaSpaces (XAP) is now available as a PartnerGSI. This high-end application server is designed to meet the most demanding business requirements in a cost-effective manner and is the only product that provides a complete middleware solution on a single, scalable platform. XAP is trusted by Fortune 100 companies, which leverage it as a strategic solution that enhances efficiency and agility across the IT organization. Look for it in the GoGrid catalog. Below is a screenshot that shows the available GigaSpaces images currently available on GoGrid:

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A few months ago, we introduced MyGSIs (personal server images) which allow users to create custom personal GSI (GoGrid Server Images) with all of their code, applications and data. These personal server images are then compressed and stored in GoGrid’s Cloud Storage for use later instantiating copies of those MyGSIs within a user’s GoGrid cloud. Building upon that framework, backend structure and concept, we have released Partner GSIs and the GoGrid Exchange.

A Partner GSI appears in the same list of servers or sandboxes available for deployment. GoGrid has a growing number of partners, each of which specialize in a variety of capabilities including internet security, backup, monitoring, web applications, compliance and application scaling. New partners are being added regularly so be sure to check the GoGrid Partner page for additions. Also, a new “microsite”, called the GoGrid Exchange, will be launching shortly where you can get detailed information about Partners and the images they are providing.

To use a Partner GSI, simply select it from the server list as you are creating a new GoGrid cloud server. Do note that some partners charge an additional amount for using their pre-packaged GSI. If you use a Partner GSI that has some sort of “token based billing” attached to it, you will receive a charge for the use of that server in your next billing statement. Also, even if you use a Partner GSI that has a billing token assigned to it for an hour (or more), you are charged the full amount associated with that image. There is no partial or fractional billing for Partner GSIs. Partner images will show a different “owner” (see the screenshot below).

BitNami Open Source Web Applications

GoGrid and BitNami have partnered to make open source web applications easy to deploy on GoGrid. The BitNami GSIs make it fast and easy to run web applications for evaluation, development or production purposes. They are fully configured, so you can start using the application immediately after loading the GSI to your GoGrid account.

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Last week, I published the November 2009 GoGrid Customer Update newsletter on the GoGrid blog. In it, I highlighted the important changes that were included in the recent deployment of GoGrid, including our new GoGrid CDN, the GoGrid Exchange, new RAM Hour & Bandwidth plans, new Windows Server base images and some other items.

To follow up with that newsletter, which was sent to GoGrid customers by Mario Olivarez (VP of Products), I thought that it would be useful for those interested in GoGrid to learn a bit more. So, I spent a few minutes interviewing Mario about these recent changes and what they mean to our customers.

This video is also available on the GoGrid Facebook page as well as our GoGrid YouTube Channel.

If you have any questions about what you heard or saw on the video or GoGrid in general, please leave a comment on this post or ask us on Twitter (@GoGrid). Stay tuned for more updates and videos coming your way.

A few days ago, the GoGrid newsletter was delivered to our customers. As with the past newsletters, we want to be sure that all interested parties, whether you are a customer or not, are informed of our important updates. We have a wide variety of items that are covered in this November 2009 newsletter so be sure to read on. If you want to get these updates and others regularly, I encourage you to subscribe to the GoGrid RSS feed, follow us on Twitter (@GoGrid) and become a fan of us on the GoGrid Facebook Fanpage.

Below is the entire GoGrid Newsletter (November 2009):

Hello Michael, (more…)