GoGrid MyGSI First Thoughts – follow up

I recently embarked an creating my first GoGrid MyGSI and in my previous post I mentioned that I had an open support case to resolve the fact that I could not create an instance from the image that I saved.

After five long days of waiting for some sort of resolution finally the Engineers decide that the image is “unclean” and they can’t debug the issue any further.

They did suggest however that I create another MyGSI from scratch. 

I wasn’t happy to accept this as a one off problem as I still needed to move an instance over from EC2 so I decided to test the system myself.

I created another instance without installing any application files or additional components and connected to the Cloud Storage then ran the prep script.

Again I got the same result. It booted me out of RDP but did not change to the status which allows saving the image.

I submitted another support request and the finally the cause was identified.

Assigning an Internal IP Address (which is required for Cloud Storage)was the culprit.

Admittedly this does make sense from a technical perspective, however as an end-user it would be nice if this was detailed in the documentation or if there was some sort of error or log message.

I’m pleased to say that after the cause of the problem was identified I was able to successfully migrate from EC2 to GoGrid albeit 2 weeks later than anticipated.

After becoming confident that service did in fact work it came time to create images for my running instances that were created before MyGSI was available.

The requirements for the machine are:

1. Windows Server 2008
2. SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services SP1
3. IIS7.0
4. SMTP Server
5. FTP Server
6. MSMQ
7. .NET 3.5 SP1

I created my instance and set about installing all of the required components. I then came to installing SQL Server and to my dismay found that there wasn’t enough room left on the sandbox.

This is before even installing any application files or databases.

Again another waste of time. In a world where data is cheap why put unnecessary restrictions? My guess is they are aiming at start-ups with very small databases, but not allowing enough space to do a standard web server install is pretty weak. 

This whole experience has been nothing short of frustrating but I guess that’s the price you pay for being an early adopter and working with Beta software. It should be said that the support is really good and you can always get quick responses on Twitter.

GoGrid MyGSI shows good potential but there are a few thing’s you need to be aware of before diving in.

• 20GB Limits on the Image Sandboxes.                           Actual limit of 6.18 GB on Win2008 after OS footprint.
• No way to create an image from a running instance.
• No Windows Server 2008 Pre-Installed Images at present
• No equivalent EBS solution
• Light documentation
• Setting up the Private network for Cloud Storage causes the Image shutdown to fail. Remember to remove any routes and disable the LAN2 before running the prep script.