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We had a scheduled down time on 01 Oct 2008 to do some testing and maintance on our grid.

It was simply fantastic as we just move 3 gVS from old grid to a new grid in under 3 hours with 1 command , most of the time i was just sleeping and waiting it to complete its migration

oh did i mention we don’t even have to be at the datacenter to do this as the server will just migrate to new grid and auto startup without any human intervention. Cool!!

This is all we needed  > app migrate gvs.ourgrid.sg GVS_1 –debug

After which we proceed to do some testing to see how good Applogic is, we shutdown the grid, added more ram and boot it up. Voila we have just upgraded our grid with more ram juice!

We also tried doing snapshot of our gVS and similarily, it is just as easy as shutdown and export it. Taadaa we have now a current consistent snapshot that can be boot from the grid too

The grid is also capable of auto restart any virtual server automatically once detection of dead server, yipeeee no more wee hours call from clients to reboot server :p

In summary, our maintance of the grid was a breeze and we are sleeping while waiting. We are just paraniod thats why we stay around to check everything was ok

Great software 3Tera !!!!!! Now Sys Admin have more time to sleep.

Cleargrid is proud to be a part of 3Tera’s global cloud infrastructure.

“3Tera, which makes the AppLogic grid operating software, has lined up partners in seven countries, which allows customers to choose the location of their data center and easily move hosted applications between regions. This geographic mobility lets developers move online applications closer to customers to improve latency. It also offers the ability to duplicate and migrate apps globally in a matter of minutes” - http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/09/05/global-expansion-for-3tera-cloud-services/

With a cloud infrastructure that span across multiple countries around the world, we can truely offer high redundency and failover of application to anywhere in the world.  We are also bring your application closer to where your business is operating and provide better disaster recovery than any single datacenter can offer.

Cleargrid shares the same vision as our partner, 3Tera, of such a global cloud infrastructure that we plan to launch a initiative to pool together resource owner around the region into our AppCloud.

Our partner had announced the support for Windows 2003 on their applogic grid OS.

Now the cloud service is truly OS-agnostic with its support of Linux, Open Solaris, Solaris 10 and now Windows 2003.

More businesses can benefit from cloud computing now and it is no longer restricted to the web 2.0, web applications and SaaS people.

Businesses and enterprises that had made Windows a intergral part of their IT, communication and collaboration infrastructure, and the large number of enterprise solutions and applications. like .NET, IIS, SQL Server and Exchange, etc, can now work in the cloud.

It has been more than a week after our GridAsia 2008 outing.

We’ve been busy the past week following up with all those that showed interest in our grid service and applogic. We’ve added a few new customer and are in talks to a couple more that we think are sold on the benefits of going grid.

We have surely made grid services and cloud computing’s presense felt in Singapore but its just the begining. Grid service and cloud computing still very new and I believe we have quite a bit of education work on our hand.

Our next step will be a mix of brand building and targeting direct marketing to specific sector that we want to engage first, making our way through the different target market.

So see everyone around!

Upcoming release
For customer with heavy investment on Microsoft technology, fret not. Our windows grid based on Microsoft 2008 server technology is in the works and will be announce in due time. With a windows grid, you will have the benefit a grid infrastructure brings about and the familiarity of a Windows environment. So stay tune.
appCloud - preview
appCloud will be Asia’s premier cloud and utility computing services with a community of SaaS provider for all your web services needs. Below is a sample of SaaS and Web 2.0 vendors.

y.bo (www.ybo.com.sg) – online business tool
ClickaTeeOnline (www.clickateeonline.com) - Golf portal to find and book tee-times

Promotion – (promo code 022917)
Enjoy a special GridAsia 2008 only promotional offer when you sign up for our grid server from now till October 2008.

Get a free 50% resource upgrade to our grid server resource with any basic gVS service.

gVS Grid Server - $90
Usual resource allocation -> GridAsia promo resource
20% CPU Core                  -> 50% CPU Core
256 MB Ram                    -> 512 MB Ram
20 GB                              -> 40 GB
500 GB Transfer              -> 1 TB Transfer
Pls quote the above promo code when enquiring about our service, you can contact us via the contact form or call +65 6491 1194.

Hmmn, it is suppose to be a goodie bag but i think its more of the exhibitior goodie bag as its filled with brochure but no goodies or candies

Oh well, at least i can give them to the kachiam puteh man at selegie complex when i am done scrutinse them.

Below is the promotion material for cleargrid.sg

Transcript of Alex’s presentation at GridAsia 2008

>>>Next slide – slide 1

My name is Alex from clearmanage, we are a partner of 3Tera, our grid OS partner from US. I had actually invited them to GridAsia to make the presentation more interesting. But unfortunately, they are tied up with 4 other concurrent event and could not make it.

Thank you for joining us at the GridAsia 08. I am glad to have this opportunity to share about Infrastructure 2.0.  In the next couple of slide I will attempt to tell you more that term and how IT management can be made easy with hardware as a service.

>>>Next slide – slide 2

Lets take a closer look at what is this Infrastructure 2.0, how it actually simplify IT management, its’ benefits and what it means to the business operations and your bottom line.

>>>Next slide – slide 3

Infrastructure 2.0 is not a new term; it is a term first coin by Luke Kanies some time back. It may refer to a different thing according to him so here is my take on Infrastructure 2.0.  The concept of infrastructure 2.0 is that of a different approach of acquiring and provisioning computing resources into your enterprise IT infrastructure. There are people that equate Infrastructure 2.0 to cloud computing and I believe it is but I will define it a little more specific. There is of course links between HaaS, Grid computing and Cloud computing.  Let me first elaborate these 3 terms after which we will be able to see how they are associated to Infrastructure 2.0.

Haas, as the name suggest, is all about subscribing the hardware instead of buying and provisioning those hardware. Synonymous to SaaS where you subscribe to business application rather than buy or lease it. Businesses no longer need to consider the drawback of owning these assets, with a pay as you use only when you need it model.  Let the professionals care of the maintenance, repair and hardware asset refresh while businesses focus on their business. To become a true Haas and ultimately Infrastructure 2.0 thought, all the different part of the puzzle and a little extra has to come together.   Let me continue…

Grid computing, which traditionally means a form of distributed computing, or similar to cluster computing. The benefits of a grid computing environment will be its scalable / reliable / HA characteristic. How can grid be HaaS is again the way it is utilised? Subscribed.

What about Cloud computing? Is it not to a certain extend, grid computing, and a form of HaaS. The concept is where you get computing resources from a very large distributed pool, the Internet.  Sometime describe as utility computing where the computing resources are billed on usage while being drawn from the cloud.

To a certain extend, cloud computing is also powered by grid computing technologies and enjoys the grid computing benefits.

All the technologies surrounding grid, cloud and HaaS already exist and are maturing. They are all components and building blocks of infrastructure 2.0 that we describe. Think of web 2.0 but you are getting infrastructure services, instead of software. I will have more details on this in a later slide.

Can you invest, build, deploy and manage a grid in your business or can it be HaaS? The answer to both is yes. Large enterprises certainly can build a large cloud network but they can adopt HaaS and choose to rent some these capabilities.

But it is still not Infrastructure 2.0 or HaaS

>>>Next slide – slide 4

Large enterprise like Amazon, Google and Ebay make use of cloud and grid technology to improve performance and resource utilisation. They own and operate these large enterprise grid/cloud computing platforms globally and they expose part of their infrastructure to benefit the public as cloud or grid computing service. You can buy computing and storage resource from them or use one of their web services. But you have to work around them.

The rest of us our either subscribes to their computing capabilities or we build a small internal enterprise grid.

Cleargrid concept of Haas and ultimately i2.0, is that of a grid and cloud computing service and beyond. An infrastructure cloud if you would. It will be a tool to simplify engineers and IT manager’s job.

Our vision is that you can have both, an internal grid working with an external I2.0 to reap the full benefit of both approaches. For example, automated multi-site failover, handle demand spike and control on infrastructure spending. Just to name a few.

>>>Next slide – slide 5

Then, what is this infrastructure 2.0 and HaaS I am talking about and how does it simplify IT management, and what are its benefits?

Let me first ask. How does a typical IT department deploy or manage their infrastructure? E.g for a new project department that require a new set of computing resource? Or maintenance of existing equipment?

First, you decide to use a colo facility or house it internally. You then go about purchasing hardware, firewall, switches, load balancer, servers, storage devices, softwares, etc. You have to factor in all the necessary redundancy, security measure and backup requirement. You have to cater for spike in resource utilisation requirement. All these means costly assets to the business out there.

Then you spend weeks setting them up, configuring it, setting up all the redundancy and backup policies, etc. In the maintenance stage, if any hardware fails, you have to order new hardware, get it setup and restore all your backup data. Every few year, you have to write off these asset and do it all over again as the business grow. This means quite a bit of down time and lots of effort for the IT team.

Imagine if you could deploy those infrastructures I described earlier in ½ hr to 1 hour of work in front of a computer using nothing but a browser? I am not taking about only deploying a server or storage resource; I am taking about the entire infrastructure.

HaaS and Infrastructure 2.0 is when you deploy, provision and manage your entire infrastructure, firewall, switch, load balancer, server and storage, within a browser. Not just computing or storage resource. Not just web services.

Now how does it simplify management other than the already obvious deployment, time and cost benefit? Easy snapshot of a server, on-demand scaling of resources, and automated fail over should any physical hardware within the grid fails. Engineers do not have to wake up in the middle of the night to restore a failed server anymore. Recovery from major failure can happen in a few min, not hours. IT resources are better utilised, no more provisioning extra capability for just 2 days of spikes.

It doesn’t negate the need for good IT management, such as regular patch, update, security measures and backups. But doesn’t it make it so much easier?

>>>Next slide – slide 6

With all that discussion of infrastructure 2.0, how does it affect you? How is it affecting the IT managers and what does it translate to your bottom line for some of us business owners? To answer that, let’s examine the forces that affect our business and creates challenges that you and I face.

All businesses, whether big or small, are constantly shaped and challenged by all these factors. To be a step ahead of the local and global competitor, economic cycle and staying prepare for any unexpected event, business needs to harness IT either to make their operation more efficient, people better equip to do their job better or innovate to open new market for themselves.

IT sure can help but don’t forget, IT is never their core business but to support them. So how IT is being procure and managed becomes a crucial decision.

>>>Next slide – slide 7

Typically, IT manager or even business manager/owner have to struggle with balancing the need to grow and maintenance their business and an increasingly thigh budget when it comes to meeting these business challenges. Having a good IT infrastructure and simplifying its management for their application can bring significant advantage and cost saving to their business.

Infrastructure 2.0 takes care of your scalability need both in computing needs in processing capacity and geographical location needs, 2 of the key strength in Grid technology and cloud computing.

By adopting I2.0, you also let the provider take care of the service level desired by your clients. You focus on your core strength and let the others support you in providing that service level your client expects from you.

Infrastructure 2.0 also improves your time to market. These infrastructures are all build and ready to be deployed across borders and into new region to meet your need to scale to these new markets in the timeliest fashion.

And finally, adopting infrastructure 2.0, business doesn’t need to stock pile spare infrastructure you do not need today. HaaS simply means you buy when you need and Gird technology slips in smoothly by allowing you to grow your computing needs without the hassles of downtime.

>>>Next slide – slide 8

Business in the past focus on building the next generation solution / platform / ideas / application and the cost associated with them are growing at a staggering rates and invest in hardware, software, and manpower to develop and maintain applications all with the hope to edge up against the competitor next door. The combine effort is monumental yet the ironical part is very often these are not their core business. CIO and IT manager of such companies being the brains and the central nervous systems of these enterprises usually has a thankless job.  They are also the most taken for granted of all executives.  They represent cost centers who get no credit for their corporations’ profits, while keeping the corporation alive.  If they achieve 99.99% availability of their services, an iota of kudos is given for that 99.99%, but a mountain of wrath is doled out for the other 0.01%.

>>>Next slide – slide 9

In the future, business will adopt and embrace infrastructure 2.0. The reason is simple; Applications are maturing and very accessible. The advantage of using a customised or proprietary system is narrowing. Infrastructure 2.0 is that edge for the businesses of tomorrow. Infrastructure 2.0 is the tool CIO and IT manager need to take back control of their system and their live.
During the next couple of years three things may occur.
First, enterprises knowing that the hardest things to plan for with regard to capacity, performance, etc., are on line applications.  They really have no control over who, how many and when they may use the system.  The step to mitigate this is to run those applications on massively scalable infrastructure that scales up and down dynamically as needed, using resources on demand, always there when needed and only paying for what is used.
The mission critical data and systems of records residing in their data centers need to be isolated from these on line applications exposed to the internet can be accomplished using secure virtual gateways in infrastructure 2.0. They may be SOA gateways using XML and virtual XML firewalls, virtual messaging systems such as MQ, virtual EAI appliances, etc. for reliably and securely communicating among systems.
Second, cloud platforms will enter enterprise data centers.  A Cloud infrastructure done right, behind corporate firewall, enables the enterprise to run their data centers as metered utilities.  It enables them to use their hardware resources efficiently by provisioning what is needed for each application on demand and releasing those resources when no longer needed for other applications.  It allows them to use intellectual capital more efficiently by shifting IT administrators from managing machines to managing applications. Most importantly, it greatly decreases time to market because the lengthy provisioning, configuring, etc., of hardware and infrastructure resources mostly eliminated.  Cloud computing in the enterprise has the potential to greatly increase revenue and beat the heck out of competitors implementing like products using traditional data center deployment methods.
Finally, enterprises are growing comfortable with applications in Clouds and realize the upside of dynamic provisioning and scaling, they will be developing new applications and replacing/changing existing ones that will function within an internal cloud and external cloud or I 2.0. This will afford them the advantages of much faster times to market, the ability to run applications on demand in multiple data centers, globally, creating their first truly complete disaster recovery abilities.

>>>Next slide – slide 10

The news is, businesses don’t have to wait till tomorrow to benefit from grid service and HaaS

Clearmanage launched our Cleargrid 1.0 in Aug this year to offer grid base services and we are working on our Cleargrid 2.0 – true infrastructure 2.0 cloud service.

Cleargrid is affordable and well positioned for the businesses of tomorrow as we move from grid base hosting to cloud computing.  SaaS, Web 2.0, hosting reseller, SME and enterprise IT will find these services especially interesting. Some distinct advantage Cleargrid has to offer;

•    Runs standard LAMP application unmodified
•    Solaris and windows support in the work
•    Universal HA
•    on-demand scaling
•    rapid deployment
•    easy snapshot, etc  - on demand

>>>Next slide – slide 11

With that I like to give you a live demo of our Applogic Infrastrucutre 2.0 user interface to show you exactly what I have meant earlier.

Thanks to our excellent partner for grid, 3Tera, for sponsoring part of the effort to this exhibition.

We are in the counting down stage to GridAsia 2008 with some final preparation work. Very excited about the event and looking forward to having a good time at the event. 

We have been invited by IDA to give a presentation and our topic of choice is on how grid or cloud technology can greatly simplfy IT management in most organisation. This topic is very close to us as we have to deal with maintaining and managing server and IT infrastructure in our course of work on a daily basis and we have first hand experience how grid technology had greatly simplfied out job. I shall reserve that as another post to elaborate further.

See you at GridAsia 2008!

Welcome to cleargrid.

This will be our official blog for any news, updates and articles related to cleargrid, grid hosting service, cloud computing service and other rant.

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Cheers