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$250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#61

Post by andrewsomething »

tshtf wrote: post #2

Enjoy your free service, but I would avoid paying for Digital Ocean for any serious project. No custom kernel support 1. Digital Ocean does not allow you to run your own kernel natively. 2. Digital Ocean droplet kernels are infrequently updated. 3. These kernels often contain relevant security vulnerabilities. 4. This has been a known issue since 2013. 5. You can kexec a kernel, but this is an annoying workaround. ht…

There seems to be a bit of confusion about how we handle kernels at DO. Hopefully I can clear things up a bit. On newer distro versions (e.g. Ubuntu >= 15.04, Debian 8, Fedora, CoreOS, FreeBSD) we no longer use "external" kernels. You are free to compile and use custom kernels. We're happy with what we've seen, and with Ubuntu 16.04 around the corner our default distribution will have support for this as well. After that point, we'll be backporting the change to older releases.

For Droplets still running with external kernels, we import new ones on a regular basis as they are released. If you happen to need one that hasn't been imported yet, just open a support ticket and the team will do so.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#63

Post by viraptor »

jorgecurio wrote: post #13
tshtf wrote: post #2

Enjoy your free service, but I would avoid paying for Digital Ocean for any serious project. No custom kernel support 1. Digital Ocean does not allow you to run your own kernel natively. 2. Digital Ocean droplet kernels are infrequently updated. 3. These kernels often contain relevant security vulnerabilities. 4. This has been a known issue since 2013. 5. You can kexec a kernel, but this is an annoying workaround. ht…

Most people don't consider custom kernel as a requirement for serious projects. I don't see why this is a joke.

It's less about customised kernel and more about an up-to-date one. You may want to patch at your own schedule (faster, or slower than DO). Any serious project will take updates (especially security updates) seriously.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#64

Post by robertcope »

joering2 wrote: post #52
DanielDent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IPv6 support 1. Took forever to implement, and the timetable broke promises to customers. 2. Inferior. Digital Ocean still won't give you a /64 per standards." Far more egregious is that they silently drop port 25 on IPv6. This means that enabling IPv6 will cause mail problems for some destinations (destinations that support IPv6, like Google). When asked they say it's because a /64 is too much address space in the…

I can't talk about port 25, but we have 15 mailservers hosted on $5/per pop with DigitalOcean and with properly setup rDNS and SPF including our IPv6 address, we don't see any problems with deliveribility to gmail via subscription port. That is on circa 600,000 emails per month sent to gmail.

It sounds like you're talking about sending mail, not receiving it. Port 25 is only an issue if you're trying to receive email.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#66

Post by andrewsomething »

wineisfine wrote: post #12
aioprisan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? For a growing company, the lightweight set of tools and services. And Linode doesn't offer any startup plan discounts.

Well just look at the quality difference of the documentation. That's huge. Or what you can do with the Linode manager vs the DO one. That's pro vs beginner. I'm not saying anything about the Droplets itself, but everything seems a bit Linode inspired, but cheaper executed.

Hi! I'd love to hear your feedback about our documentation. I work with the team that produces our tutorials. Are there areas you don't think we cover well, or is it something else? With 1,200+ tutorials, our docs are actually something I'm extremely proud of, but we're always looking to improve.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#67

Post by geoka9 »

iolothebard wrote: post #45
curun1r wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, all of these require that you be part of some accelerator or receive VC funding before you can take advantage of the discounts. Founders trying to bootstrap a company without external funding are SOL. It strikes me that these cloud hosting companies are really interested in businesses that value growth above profits and are willing to ignore startups who try to manage costs to get to profitability more…

BizSpark requires a 5 minute write up. It's comically easy to get accepted as an individual if you can string together a few sentences. Azure is so inexpensive even without BizSpark it's kind of amazing to me. Having done startups in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, what people have available now is incredible IMO.

"Deploy a Linux VM on Azure. Azure supports a wide range of Linux distributions including Ubuntu, CentOS, Oracle Linux, Chef and Puppet."

Doesn't sound very reassuring. Do they have a good track record with non-MS stacks?

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#68

Post by danellis »

rdtsc wrote: post #41
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's specific to VM images. "Custom" here means "not baked into Xen," since your filesystem is not considered when spawning a domU kernel except in limited circumstances. In the Xen world, your kernel is provided by your hosting provider. You can apt-get all day and nothing will happen. That is what custom means in this context. "Not yours." Read accordingly; you've made the same flawed point at several spots in this…

Ah, I understand now, thanks for explaining. I thought they used KVM for some reason... But I guess if they use Xen they yeah, they are stuck with whatever kernel they get.

DO uses KVM.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#69

Post by Sephr »

tshtf wrote: post #2

Enjoy your free service, but I would avoid paying for Digital Ocean for any serious project. No custom kernel support 1. Digital Ocean does not allow you to run your own kernel natively. 2. Digital Ocean droplet kernels are infrequently updated. 3. These kernels often contain relevant security vulnerabilities. 4. This has been a known issue since 2013. 5. You can kexec a kernel, but this is an annoying workaround. ht…

> 2. Inferior. Digital Ocean still won't give you a /64 per standards.

Huh? I made a droplet just a week ago and it was assigned a whole /64. Maybe this is only a recent change, but you should know that it's here now.

Re: $250k of DigitalOcean credits for YC startups

#70

Post by x5n1 »

lugg wrote: post #57
andrewstuart wrote: post #3

Aren't there a bunch of offers of free cloud hosting for Startups? We should list them here. And you don't need to be a YC company...... Microsoft Azure gives hosting to startups under their Bizspark program - get over your prejudice - it's a great way to run Linux machines. Softlayer and Rackspace I think also have programs for startups. Any other companies offer free hosting to startups?

It isn't a prejudice if you don't want to support a company with such a history. Azure could be the best cloud host for all I care, I still wouldn't use them. In any case, I have no issue with listing them as an option, not everyone feels the same way I do.

Prejudice against people might be something which is contemptible. Prejudice against corporations is not something to be ashamed or concerned about. It means their brand sucks (as in the perceptions of customer), probably because of past behavior.
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