What's even more exciting is that there's a Vagrant provider for DigitalOcean! I tried it yesterday and it seems to actually work: <a href="https://github.com/smdahlen/vagrant-digitalocean" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/smdahlen/vagrant-digitalocean</a><p>Basically you put your DO api key in your Vagrant file, and then running "vagrant up --provider=digital_ocean" spins up a new ubuntu VM and runs your chef/puppet provisioner code on them. It's awesome!<p>It uses rsync to mirror your vagrant project directory to /vagrant, which is a actually better workflow for some use cases (eg hosting) than virtualbox shared folders.
NewsBlur is mentioned in the article, but I cannot overstate how positive my experience with DigitalOcean has been. I'm stressing their biggest machines and spinning up dozens of differently configured boxes and they've handled it swimmingly well. Between the price and the performance differences, I'm glad I switched.<p>I also have a shadow site running in parallel on EC2, so I get to compare dollar for dollar. EC2 is strictly an apocalypse host at this point.
Is anyone else bothered by the vague, overbroad restrictions in DigitalOcean's terms of service? Particularly:<p>"2.5 You agree that you will NOT use DigitalOcean's services to: [..] Transmit, distribute, post, store, link, or otherwise traffic in information, software, or materials that is offensive, abusive, inappropriate, malicious, or detrimental"<p>Almost anything can be offensive to someone. I compared the Linode and AWS terms of service and neither has anything like this. While none of my own content is by any means extreme, the presence of this provision seems like a red flag and has kept me from switching to DO.
Given how cheap the price is, I don't think they have a sustainable business model. As far as I can see, there is nothing technically different from their model that allows their service to benefit from any type of economies (of scale/scope) in order to stay competitive. So then my overall question is - how can they offer better service and better hardware (i.e. more expensive) at a cheaper rate? I'm genuinely curious.<p>I'll stick with Linode until the company is more established.
I've been using DigitalOcean to host a GitLab instance for a while now (20GB Droplet) and it's been working great.<p>I ran into two small issues so far.<p>First of all, for some reason the traffic from my home connection is routed through New York (I'm in Europe using a Droplet in Amsterdam), resulting in a ~150ms RTT (I usually get 30-40ms to Amsterdam). Since this only happens with my home connection and it's fine in the office, my ISP might be the one to blame for this. Anyway, I've opened a ticket, so maybe they can fix it.<p>The other weird thing is how they hande kernels/kernel versions. You can't simply update your kernel through apt (or anything like that) - you have to select the kernel version from a gigantic drop-down (containing multiple kernel versions for every distribution you can run) in their UI. Plus, adding new kernels seems to be a manual process for them, since it takes a while until updated kernels become available.<p>I'm sure they're working on a better solution for that though. All in all, they offer great service for an even better price, so I'm happy with my choice.
Just received the following email from DigitalOcean:<p>Thank You!
Today is a very special day for us. As you may or may not have heard, Netcraft released a recent report that details the history of our rapid growth in comparison to other cloud hosting providers. We are extremely humbled by this recognition and cannot thank our customers enough!<p>As we have grown over the past two years, we are continually indebted to our customers for your amazing support and feedback. Without you, DigitalOcean would not even dream of being where it is today.<p>According to Netcraft, over the past six months we've grown 5,084.64% in web-facing computers (instances) and are responsible for 10% of the total growth worldwide. DigitalOcean's more than 50-fold growth makes it the 72nd largest hosting provider in the world by web-facing computers. Last December, we were number 549; even last month we were still 102nd.<p>As your projects and endeavours scale, we will be there with amazing and reliable service, new features, and an unrestrained drive to create the simplest, strongest cloud that you can be proud to call home.<p>Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!<p>You have brought us to this point. We cannot wait to keep rising together!
I moved everything I had at Linode over to DigitalOcean as well and performance has been excellent. I loved Linode's stability but their response to the recent security incident really pissed me off. On DigitalOcean, I have seen briefly the network issues mentioned by others, but things have been more stable the last month or so.<p>That said, one production server I work with on RackSpace was completely unavailable yesterday for nearly 5 hours, so paying more money doesn't necessarily give you better uptime. Just that one outage put DigitalOcean ahead in availability for my systems over the last 6 months.<p>Is there any reasonably simple framework for replicating across cloud providers?
I switched my personal projects from linode to digital ocean, for pricing but the performance is out of this world. The pricing allows me to run 4-5 of my projects for the same cost where I was at times maxing out the low-grade linode box that I had.<p>I later switched all my office's projects there from AWS and cut costs by over 85%. I also saw a significant performance bump allowing me to reduce the number of machines that I had active.<p>I cannot overstate how pleased I have been, their APIs compete with EC2, their performance is better than what I have seen on any competitor.<p>I am one very pleased customer. My _only_ complaint is that they aren't delivering on features at the rate they previously were. Though, after reading this article, I can understand a little better as to why.
I have been using Digital Ocean as a sandbox for playing with Docker, and it has been great. I can spin up a server in less then 1 minute, install the Docker dependencies, and be up in running in no time. I do what I need to do, and then I spin it down if I don't need it anymore.<p>I wrote down my notes on how to get Docker running on Digital Ocean, if anyone wants to play with it. There is even a promo code for a $10 credit for new signups.<p><a href="http://kencochrane.net/blog/2013/06/running-docker-on-digital-ocean/" rel="nofollow">http://kencochrane.net/blog/2013/06/running-docker-on-digita...</a><p>I had a couple of issues when I first tried using them, but I was able to get help pretty quickly on a Saturday morning no less. I haven't used them for anything production quality yet, I have most of that stuff on EC2 and Rackspace right now, but I hope to start moving some smaller projects to DO as they come up.<p>Someone else mentioned this already as well, but the SSD is so nice compared to EC2's EBS, so if you are doing anything with lots of I/O then it is a must have.
The performance/price is good but the server is not reliable at all. Pingdom tracks many 1-minute downtime during the week. I think they have problems in the network, maybe because of the growth? Their support is very good though, I once got $50 credit because the machine/cluster that hosts my VPS was broken...
About 4 months ago I moved a mail server from a 2GB Linode instance (london) to a 4GB DO instance (amsterdam) and overall I've been very happy with them. No major outages, the cost saving is huge and I/O performance is great.<p>The only negative so far is network reliability. Every once in a while my monitoring stuff fails to establish a connection to the DO box. It's transient though and usually connectivity comes back within 2 to 5 minutes. The box is running a low traffic mail server so it hasn't been a big enough issue for me to worry about yet. Other than that, I'm a happy bunny.
I switched to these guys after my reserved instance ran out at AWS. I was paying $50 a month for EC2 small, which was super slow. Since switching to DigitalOcean, not only am I paying $10 a month, but my site feels much much faster now. DO wins because IO is very fast on the SSDs. By comparison, Amazon's EBS is glacial.
I tried to make the switch, but found the network to be too unstable.<p>I have several servers on Linode, that communicates over the internal network (PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcache, Beanstalk etc.) and a bunch of app-servers. If their line of communication is broken, nothing works.<p>Now I only use my server at DigitalOcean as routing traffic when I am travelling.
Just an anecdote, but I recently launched a little side project and DigitalOcean crushed EC2 and Rackspace Cloud when I did some benchmarking. The low cost is appreciated but was NOT a factor in my decision.
I've played with DigitalOcean some. But I've kept my main VPS on Linode, and also recently recommended Linode for a group that I'm peripherally involved with.<p>Using SSDs for multi-tenant virtualized servers seems like a good idea to me. My intuition on this may be wrong, but it seems to me that the lack of variable seek time ought to lessen the variability in I/O performance that one hears so much about.<p>However, I have the following reservations about DigitalOcean:<p>1. No IPv6 yet AFAIK. I figured that would be a priority given the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, particularly in Amsterdam.<p>2. Not all resource allocations are proportional to the price or amount of RAM. On Linode, a 4 GB VPS is 4 times as much as a 1 GB VPS in every way. On DigitalOcean, a 2 GB VPS only has 2x as much CPU, 2x as much storage, and 3x as much bandwidth as a 512 MB VPS. Don't get me wrong; the prices are great. It just doesn't seem like a logical way to allocate resources from a pool.
Here are a few benchmarks I ran against DO, Linode, and Hot Drupal (another provider I've used in the past): <a href="http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/2013-vps-benchmarks-linode" rel="nofollow">http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/2013-vps-be...</a><p>I've been very happy with my testing on Digital Ocean; the servers are fast, they remain up as much as any other provider, and the interface/service is great, and is improving every month.<p>The only sore spot is that two times I've had intermittent dropouts—once caused by someone DDoSing another DO site, and the other time for unexplained reasons. (And I know that the dropouts weren't just me, since I was monitoring things with <a href="https://servercheck.in/" rel="nofollow">https://servercheck.in/</a>, which runs partly on Digital Ocean VPSes).
I've switched all my stuff from Linode and previous other hosting providers all to DIgitalOcean about 6 months ago and haven't been happier. Great group of guys there too.
I used digital ocean to setup a mirror test environment.<p>How is their reliability? I noticed once or twice it I would lose connectivity.<p>I have quite a few boxes on linode and thinking about switching over production infrastructure.<p><i></i>EDIT --- And today damn linode decides to go down.
I switched from prgmr.com to DO recently simply because of the additional RAM (double) for the same price. I really like prgmr.com, and have been a customer of theirs for years, but the new machine is simply much faster (and the network latency is also much better).<p>Of course, this would probably be true switching to a new VPS provider after a few years of being on the same box.<p>One thing that's unique to DO in this regard, though, is that their onboarding process is super smooth. I was up and running very quickly.
I've been on DO for several months now and love them. And as far as reliability, I've had binarycanary pointed at my sites for about a month now with one outage that lasted about a minute and then resolved itself. To me, for the price/benefits, that's amazing.<p>One other thing people rarely mention with hosting, that's SUPER important to me, are the FAQs/Docs, and DO really comes through in that area imo.
Recently tried out DigitalOcean for a couple of small projects and already noticed some network reliability issues. My droplet was un-accessible for a couple of hours (at least) yesterday. Fortunately, it was for a non-production project and they were able to restore it within about a 1/2 hour. Verdict is still out for me, although I suspect that reliability will improve with time. I'm keeping production at Linode.
I want to like DigitalOcean but it seems their attitude to security is rather lax, see e.g. <a href="http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/3667114-generate-ssh-host-keys-for-new-droplet" rel="nofollow">http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...</a> which they said they'd look at in February but haven't addressed.
We have started with using DO for our test machines / intrusion detection boxes and were so happy with price/performance/ease of use that we ended up migrating most of our infrastructure over. We now have 45 boxes hosted on DO and couldn't be happier. The network reliability has been phenomenal so far compared to some of the other providers we've dealt with - Rackspace, SoftLayer, VPS.NET, etc.
My one gripe with DigitalOcean is that their customer support leaves a great deal to be desired. For days I've been unable to replicate images across regions (any droplet I try to create gets in a permanent stuck state and can't be killed). I filed a service ticket days ago and was told I'd receive a response shortly but have still heard nothing. I've even sent replies pleading for some recognition that my issue is being worked on, but have received no response and no indication that they are working on my ticket. This does not bode well considering that creating a droplet from an existing image is a major feature of their product, and is not properly working.<p>While I have liked DO when it works and their prices are great, it comes at a cost. In my case that cost is their product not properly functioning and their team seemingly having no intention of fixing my issue.
I am curious if there are any IOPS comparisons between DigitalOcean and real hardware (spinning disks)? Currently we run our Postgres instances on EC2, but are looking to move to get better IOPS. The question is: SSD-based VMs or real hardware? Cost is also a factor which is why DigitalOcean is a contender.
I made a thorough analysis recently and discovered that catalysthost.com would give me the best value for money. I am using a "Trenta" OpenVZ Ubuntu 12.04 machine for $15.99 per month and I am quite happy with the performance, including network performance. This is the spec of the vm:<p>4 CPU Cores 2GB RAM 512MB vSwap 60GB Storage 2TB Bandwidth @ 1Gbps<p>You can compare similar plans here:<p><a href="http://serverbear.com/1826-trenta-catalysthost#benchmarks" rel="nofollow">http://serverbear.com/1826-trenta-catalysthost#benchmarks</a>
<a href="http://serverbear.com/1990-2gb-ssd--2-cpu-digitalocean" rel="nofollow">http://serverbear.com/1990-2gb-ssd--2-cpu-digitalocean</a>
Is there a SKU for more disk-heavy workloads like a box running Postgres?<p>I'd love to be able to get more disk space (especially since you guys have SSDs, this will make PG very happy) without the extra CPU and memory. Is that currently possible with Digital Ocean?
It's a shame that they don't offer Windows as an OS and don't plan to.<p><a href="http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/2536799-can-i-deploy-windows-" rel="nofollow">http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...</a><p>I did some testing of .NET on Windows vs mono on Linux and unfortunately mono is just too slow. For the money saved on licenses more would have to be spent on hardware. Licensing is a pain though. Working out what you need and how to pay is non-trivial.
I like the idea and concept of DO, but they don't support non-Linux which is pretty lame considering they are using KVM which can run a bunch of different stuff. I'm also curious how they do volume management, but these are just technical details :)<p>I'll also point out that a regular FreeBSD/NetBSD network install can be done in under 55 seconds, so thats not really a major feat to do when you're just copying images around.<p>But, they've productized it all very well so I'm happy to see someone taking a chunk out of EC2.
I'm currently using EC2 with RDS primarily because RDS provides major benefits to a non-DBA like me.<p>Given that I would prefer to keep using RDS, and the network latency etc., any thoughts/advise on how DO-RDS would perform compared to EC2-RDS, with everything being in N.CA/SF Zone and using comparable EC2/DO instances for running my app server?<p>Alternately, is there an easy way to benchmark RDS i/o from EC2 and DO, both running Linux which can help in making this decision.
I first found digital ocean on lowendbox when they were opening and even though I only host side projects on there, I've never had a problem with them.<p>I was never aware of their performance when compared to Linode and Rackspace until that one comparison on HN several months ago. With that being said, from their expansion from 10,000 instances when I first signed up to over 200,000 today, I have been, thoroughly, impressed with their servers and overall operation.
My experience has also been great so far, superb performance and great pricing.<p>It's also very nice to see them roll out new features on a pretty quick phase.
Happy Do customer, really nothing bad to say about them (yet). Been with them for couple of months now. Reminds me of slicehost, but with much much better price.
I love DO, favorite hosting environment ever. Still use Linode for some stuff, but only because I don't want to go through the headache of moving it.
I'm about to ditch DigitalOcean because I keep experiencing long lags in the ssh terminals. Sometimes when doing things that stress the terminal, like tail-ing a busy log file or running a full-screen app like top or vim, it will hang for minutes.
Inspired by the article I signed up and spun up a 512 mb droplet. It eventually came up(although took alot longer than the advertised 55 secs). Felt very sluggish, or maybe they run alot of startup scripts on boot? I tried running "top" and it ran a whole bunch of unfamiliar looking commands using 96% CPU. So I destroyed the droplet and wanted to try a 8gb/4core droplet. In the interface it says it was created in 173 seconds. But now 10 mins later I still cant ssh or ping the given IP. So while the pricing is definately good, and I like the idea of SSD-only storage, my first half-hour impression of the service was that it seems a bit rough around the edges and not something I would want to bet my company's hosting on.
I think Kahneman has a name for this common fallacy in this book -- it's the one wherein small samples always appear to change radically because they are... uhm... small.
They are certainly generous with promos. Just today I got an unsolicited $5 credit and I haven't even burned through the original credit I got for signing up via Twitter.
Does anybody know if they offer anything equivalent to HOSTNAME.herokuapp.com?<p>I'm just testing them now, and I'm not ready to point a real domain at them yet.
Could you publish non-anonymized SSD reliability data?<p>When Google did publish their extensive HDD reliability study they removed all brand/model names, so it's pretty useless for consumers.
I believe "meteoric" implies a quick fall. A light that burns brightly, but disappears quickly. Not sure the data warrants the use of that adjective in this context.