We Make Email Delivery Easy | SendGrid

SendGrid replaces your outbound email infrastructure.

via We Make Email Delivery Easy | SendGrid.

CloudClimate watches Cloud Computing Performance

www.cloudclimate.com monitors the performance of cloud hosting services Amazon EC2, GoGrid CloudServers, and NewServers. Plus CDN hosting services Amazon CloudFront and Mosso CloudFiles and the Amazon S3 file storage service.

Some more cloud computing links

Cloud computing is getting more and more attractive and we also work with this stuff anf follow the development. Here are a few more URLs I came across recently:

Interesting fact: GoGrid accounced that over 2/3’s of GoGrid’s cloud servers deployed are running Windows.

Rackspace has restructured and enhanced cloud offerings now:

• Cloud Sites: more or less a rebrand of their Mosso offering (cloud web hosting, similar to google apps, I’d say)
• Cloud Files: A mixture of CDN and S3 (you can save files into it and a global network with edge servers enables quick retrieval worldwide). They work together with the CDN company Limelight Networks.
• Cloud Servers: Rackspace enters the low-cost VPS hosting arena (Linux only yet). Similar features here compared to EC2 and GoGrid.

Very nice also: GoGrid’s CEO about Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009.

Oh, and UK-based cloud provider ElasticHosts Ltd. (I had mentioned them here) has switched from “announcement” to “beta test” mode. You can order and run servers, but you have to install the OS yourself, even bring your own installation ISA. No preconfigured images yet. And no Windows.

A few Cloud Computing Bookmarks

• Layered Technologies: Another Grid/Cloud computing service company
• Cohesive Flexible Technologies: Offers a “factory-as-a-service” where you can build virtual machines for various platforms (VMware, XEN, Amazon EC2 etc) on demand. As soon as the virtual machine image has been created you can download and use it
• Skytap: You can create and run virtual test networks of a few or many servers on their grid
• RightScale: Offers a nice cross-vendor interface for management of virtual machines in grids.
• Kaavo: provides a simple and easy to use web interface to Cloud Computing (similar to rightscale)
• Enomaly‘s Elastic Computing Platform (ECP) is a programmable virtual cloud computing infrastructure for small, medium and large businesses.
• Scalr is a fully redundant, self-curing and self-scaling hosting environment utilizing Amazon’s EC2.

Comparison: GoGrid Cloud versus Amazon EC2 | GoGrid Blog

I found this nice comparison of GoGrid vs. Amazon EC2 on the GoGrid Blog:

Feature Comparison Matrix

Feature	GoGrid	Amazon EC2
Instant server deployment	YES	YES
Instant server network scaling	YES	YES
Linux	YES	YES
Static IP address	YES	YES
Windows Server 2003	YES	NO
Microsoft SQL Server	YES	NO
FREE 24/7 phone support	YES	NO
FREE persistent storage	YES	NO
FREE inbound data transfer	YES	NO
FREE hardware f5 load balancing	YES	NO
FREE managed DNS	YES	NO
FREE DoS protection	YES	NO
Service Level Agreement	YES	NO
Graphical User Interface (GUI)	YES	NO
Hardware VLAN segmentation	YES	NO
Multiple IP addresses per server	YES	NO
Standard server images	YES	NO
Volume discounts	YES	NO
Private IP addresses on separate VLAN	YES	NO

There are more comparisons tables on the blog entry linked above.

A short Cloud Hosting Link List

Amazon EC2

• The “mother of all clouds” (Amazon was the first to offer these services and apparently has the most servers)
• Barely usable without an interface like http://www.rightscale.com
• No monthly minimum
• Cloud hosting of specialized Linuxes (no native Windows)
• More: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011
• First Impression after setting up a system: Looks like the best solution for Linux hosting, great control panel (I mean rightscale, of course), easy to use, virtual server runs solid

GoGrid (US, San Francisco, servepath subsidiary)

• Cloud Hosting of Linux and Windows
• No monthly minimum
• More: http://www.gogrid.com/
• First Impression after setting up a system: Looks like the best solution for Windows hosting, great control panel, easy to use, virtual server runs solid

Flexiscale (UK)

• Cloud Hosting of Linux and Windows
• No monthly minimum
• More: http://www.flexiscale.com
• First Impression after setting up a system: Webinterface looks and feels “old style” and sluggish. Starting my first server failed. My support ticket was solved 17h later with the manual start by their team.

ElasticHosts (UK)

• Will start in August
• Minimum Pound 29 per month
• Linux, Windows
• More: http://www.elastichosts.com

Mosso (US, Rackspace subsidiary)

• Cloud hosting of various web based platforms (php, ASP etc)
• No “real” virtual machines, no non-web custom software
• More: http://www.mosso.com

Joyent (US)

• Cloud hosting focused on Rails (running on Solaris)
• More: http://joyent.com

[ added July 30th 2008 ]

AppNexus (US)

• Cloud hosting focused on larger customers (Linux and Windows)
• Quote from an email from AppNexus: “We are focused on larger customers than GoGrid and flexiscale. We do have some small customers that only have a few servers in our cloud, but most of our customers spend $5 to $10,000 with us each month.“
• First Impression: None yet.
• More: http://www.appnexus.com

GoGrid :: Scalable Load-Balanced Windows and Linux Cloud-Server Hosting

GoGrid is the world’s first multi-server control panel that enables you to deploy and manage load-balanced cloud servers in just minutes.

It took me less than 15 minutes to create a Windows 2003 Server and install our PRTG Network Monitor software on it to create an offsite monitoring system for our company. Daily costs seems to be between a dollar or two for our app (a permanently running monitoring system).

Create scalable web applications on Amazon EC2 — RightScale

RightScale‘s automated cloud computing management system helps you create scalable web applications that run on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. The RightScale Dashboard makes it easy to setup, launch, and monitor all of your EC2 and AWS activities.