Don't worry, I'm pretty thick-skinned. You have some valid questions that others probably have so I'm glad to help in what little way I can.
Currently you can't make your own images, but that is a feature request that is a common one. We do have other Linux distros, specifically, CentOS. We are working on Ubuntu among others as well.
Obviously, we are slightly smaller in terms of infrastructure compared to Amazon. However, we do have a 20,000 sq ft data center and understand hosting. Other products of our have multiple POPs around the world so things similar to "availability zones" is an obvious extension. Ok, I won't talk about the SLA with the exception of we do pro-actively issue credits. Did Amazon do that with S3 when it went down earlier?
You are right about competition. It's good for Cloud Computing in general and helps to drive standards and maintain good pricepoints. We encourage it. Hopefully we can move a bit more rapidly than the likes of Amazon or Google, but we don't have the vast resources as they do. We are 100+ and growing company (hiring as well!). I love your ideas.
In terms of failover for EC2, we whole heartedly agree in this stragegy. It makes sense. Currently, our persistent storage is tied to machine images but stay tuned on that as well.
Don't forget that $100 trial promo code I'm offering. Just enter "GGMS" in the signup page. Test it out and let me know what you think.
Good points. Hope I can address them to your satisfaction. First, as I wrote it the blog post, it is difficult to make a true apples to apples comparison. The services are different in many ways. I simply bill GoGrid as an "alternative" to EC2 with some additional features.
The $0.19/hr pricing on GoGrid is for the Pay-as-you-go plan. The comparison chart (as it is footnoted) shows pricing based on the Advanced Cloud pre-paid plan. There are other plans available as well. See Pre-Paid Plans.
Outbound transfer rates, again, this is based on a pre-paid plan (Transfer 200GB). Inbound transfer is free at all levels on GoGrid.
I guess you could set up Windows using an emulated environment (like QEMU) within an EC2 instance. But that sounds a bit complicated to me. We offer turnkey Windows deployments within the cloud. Simply put, we want users to be able to spend just a few minutes on configuring a cloud infrastructure and spending the majority of their time on their own stuff.
I personally have not benchmarked the startup times on EC2 but I'm sure that they are somewhat equal to GoGrid. I did step through the EC2 video tutorial on how to create an EC2 instance for the first time and it was an 18 minute video, but that is just a side note. No need to set up private keys or authentications. Just point and click. Oh, and we do have an API as well.
All companies will make marketing claims - even (gasp) Amazon -. My point was just to point out that there are differences. We get compared against Amazon daily and people need a framework to better evaluate the differences. Other product features that you didn't mention that are true: free hardware-based load balancing, free support, 10 free public static IPs, free VLANs via 2 NIC (WAN/LAN). EC2 might be perfect for many developers out there and I'm not arguing that. Google App Engine is great too as a "container-like" service.
And for all of you following this thread, here is a promo code for GoGrid that will get you $100 off your first GoGrid account - "GGMS". Give GoGrid a spin and see if it meets your needs. I'm not trying to be salesy here, just hoping to further explain about the product and clear up any "clouds" about it (grin - sorry).
While this may over-simplify the Cloud Computing definition, I tried to explain and categorize the different segments within with the idea of the "Cloud Pyramid." You essentially have 3 segments: Cloud Applications, Cloud Platforms and Cloud Infrastructure. It's all broken down here.
Well, credit card transactions are a slippery slope to travel. On one side, you could allow all cards to be processed and run the risk of a spammer spawning a bunch of spam servers using a fraudulent credit card, or, on the other side you could have some sort of fraud check that may bounce some credit cards out of the acceptable threshold and then process those manually with a verbal confirmation later. We elected to do the later to ensure as much integrity as possible for GoGrid users.
In terms of GoGrid vs. EC2 comparisons, there are, obviously, some differences between the services. More info here.
Also, we recently released a REST-like API for programmatically controlling your GoGrid environment. Info here.
Sorry for the salesy-esque post but I want to be sure the record is straight here.
Actually, the Grid Series product is completely different infrastructure and technology (even a different cage environment within our 20k sq ft data center). GoGrid is different entirely and has been in development for 2 years, long before the whole "cloud computing" buzz started. Much of the features and functionality are based on what we learned from 7 years of being a managed service provider of internet hosting. Thanks for the comment.
on Go Grid...they bill you repeatedly for grid you have not used, then refuse to refund your money. They have a "pay as you go" plan, you pay, you pay, you pay, but nothing goes!!
Would love to talk to you about your billing experience. Can you drop me an email ( michael [at] gogrid [dot] com )? I want to be sure that your issue was resolved and if it wasn't, I can make sure it is and then some.
The reason it might have failed is because of anti-fraud checks (e.g., were you traveling?). Lots of online fraud checks looks at a variety of things like IP address vs. credit card address and if there is a big distance difference, it may be flagged as potential fraud.
I am the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid (just to put it out there). I would think you would feel a bit more comfortable knowing that it was rejected because of a fraud check flag than just scooping up credit cards.
LMK if I can help you get through the registration and get you going.
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Don't worry, I'm pretty thick-skinned. You have some valid questions that others probably have so I'm glad to help in what little way I can.
Currently you can't make your own images, but that is a feature request that is a common one. We do have other Linux distros, specifically, CentOS. We are working on Ubuntu among others as well.
Obviously, we are slightly smaller in terms of infrastructure compared to Amazon. However, we do have a 20,000 sq ft data center and understand hosting. Other products of our have multiple POPs around the world so things similar to "availability zones" is an obvious extension. Ok, I won't talk about the SLA with the exception of we do pro-actively issue credits. Did Amazon do that with S3 when it went down earlier?
You are right about competition. It's good for Cloud Computing in general and helps to drive standards and maintain good pricepoints. We encourage it. Hopefully we can move a bit more rapidly than the likes of Amazon or Google, but we don't have the vast resources as they do. We are 100+ and growing company (hiring as well!). I love your ideas.
In terms of failover for EC2, we whole heartedly agree in this stragegy. It makes sense. Currently, our persistent storage is tied to machine images but stay tuned on that as well.
Don't forget that $100 trial promo code I'm offering. Just enter "GGMS" in the signup page. Test it out and let me know what you think.
Good points. Hope I can address them to your satisfaction. First, as I wrote it the blog post, it is difficult to make a true apples to apples comparison. The services are different in many ways. I simply bill GoGrid as an "alternative" to EC2 with some additional features.
The $0.19/hr pricing on GoGrid is for the Pay-as-you-go plan. The comparison chart (as it is footnoted) shows pricing based on the Advanced Cloud pre-paid plan. There are other plans available as well. See Pre-Paid Plans.
Outbound transfer rates, again, this is based on a pre-paid plan (Transfer 200GB). Inbound transfer is free at all levels on GoGrid.
I guess you could set up Windows using an emulated environment (like QEMU) within an EC2 instance. But that sounds a bit complicated to me. We offer turnkey Windows deployments within the cloud. Simply put, we want users to be able to spend just a few minutes on configuring a cloud infrastructure and spending the majority of their time on their own stuff.
I personally have not benchmarked the startup times on EC2 but I'm sure that they are somewhat equal to GoGrid. I did step through the EC2 video tutorial on how to create an EC2 instance for the first time and it was an 18 minute video, but that is just a side note. No need to set up private keys or authentications. Just point and click. Oh, and we do have an API as well.
All companies will make marketing claims - even (gasp) Amazon -. My point was just to point out that there are differences. We get compared against Amazon daily and people need a framework to better evaluate the differences. Other product features that you didn't mention that are true: free hardware-based load balancing, free support, 10 free public static IPs, free VLANs via 2 NIC (WAN/LAN). EC2 might be perfect for many developers out there and I'm not arguing that. Google App Engine is great too as a "container-like" service.
And for all of you following this thread, here is a promo code for GoGrid that will get you $100 off your first GoGrid account - "GGMS". Give GoGrid a spin and see if it meets your needs. I'm not trying to be salesy here, just hoping to further explain about the product and clear up any "clouds" about it (grin - sorry).
While this may over-simplify the Cloud Computing definition, I tried to explain and categorize the different segments within with the idea of the "Cloud Pyramid." You essentially have 3 segments: Cloud Applications, Cloud Platforms and Cloud Infrastructure. It's all broken down here.
Well, credit card transactions are a slippery slope to travel. On one side, you could allow all cards to be processed and run the risk of a spammer spawning a bunch of spam servers using a fraudulent credit card, or, on the other side you could have some sort of fraud check that may bounce some credit cards out of the acceptable threshold and then process those manually with a verbal confirmation later. We elected to do the later to ensure as much integrity as possible for GoGrid users.
In terms of GoGrid vs. EC2 comparisons, there are, obviously, some differences between the services. More info here.
Also, we recently released a REST-like API for programmatically controlling your GoGrid environment. Info here.
Sorry for the salesy-esque post but I want to be sure the record is straight here.
Actually, the Grid Series product is completely different infrastructure and technology (even a different cage environment within our 20k sq ft data center).
GoGrid is different entirely and has been in development for 2 years, long before the whole "cloud computing" buzz started. Much of the features and functionality are based on what we learned from 7 years of being a managed service provider of internet hosting.
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks Aaron,
I have sent you an email so we can continue discussions offline.
-Michael
on Go Grid...they bill you repeatedly for grid you have not used, then refuse to refund your money. They have a "pay as you go" plan, you pay, you pay, you pay, but nothing goes!!
Would love to talk to you about your billing experience. Can you drop me an email ( michael [at] gogrid [dot] com )? I want to be sure that your issue was resolved and if it wasn't, I can make sure it is and then some.
-Michael
(tech evangelist for GoGrid.com)
The reason it might have failed is because of anti-fraud checks (e.g., were you traveling?). Lots of online fraud checks looks at a variety of things like IP address vs. credit card address and if there is a big distance difference, it may be flagged as potential fraud.
I am the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid (just to put it out there). I would think you would feel a bit more comfortable knowing that it was rejected because of a fraud check flag than just scooping up credit cards.
LMK if I can help you get through the registration and get you going.
-Michael