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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#31

Post by bifrost »

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 :)

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.

But, they've productized it all very well so I'm happy to see someone taking a chunk out of EC2.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#32

Post by mbesto »

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.

I'll stick with Linode until the company is more established.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#33

Post by raiyu »

dgl wrote: post #15

I want to like DigitalOcean but it seems their attitude to security is rather lax, see e.g. http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea... which they said they'd look at in February but haven't addressed.

This was resolved, thanks for highlighting it, need to get this uservoice entry updated.

Also we launched two factor auth recently.

We take security very seriously.

Thanks

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#34

Post by conesus »

mbesto wrote: post #32

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 curiou…

Modern machines is my guess. Many other cloud providers and hosting companies are running machines from a few years ago. I don't believe the price has stayed competitive to the power, so DO is effectively arbitraging the price difference between 2010 machines and 2013 machines. That and their API makes it really easy to spin up more machines than you need, leading to some dead weight that doesn't harm your neighbors.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#35

Post by raiyu »

mdesq wrote: post #13

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. That said, one production server I work with on RackSpace was completely unavailable yes…

Have you integrated something like Puppet or Chef into your workflow to ease the pain of spinning up specific servers such as app, db, workers, etc.?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#36

Post by rpedela »

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.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#37

Post by wmf »

conesus wrote: post #34
mbesto wrote: post #32

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 curiou…

Modern machines is my guess. Many other cloud providers and hosting companies are running machines from a few years ago. I don't believe the price has stayed competitive to the power, so DO is effectively arbitraging the price difference between 2010 machines and 2013 machines. That and their API makes it really easy to spin up more machines than you need, leading to some dead weight that doesn't harm your neighbors.

This doesn't sound sustainable. Four years from now, DigitalOcean will have a mix of machines just like the other hosting providers.

(Google Compute Engine is in the same position because right now they only run on Sandy Bridge.)

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#39

Post by masonhensley »

rpedela wrote: post #36

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.

Check these out:

http://stevenyue.com/2013/04/15/linode-vs-digital-ocean-perf...

http://bigjocker.com/wordpress/?p=121

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#40

Post by conesus »

wmf wrote: post #37
conesus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern machines is my guess. Many other cloud providers and hosting companies are running machines from a few years ago. I don't believe the price has stayed competitive to the power, so DO is effectively arbitraging the price difference between 2010 machines and 2013 machines. That and their API makes it really easy to spin up more machines than you need, leading to some dead weight that doesn't harm your neighbors.

This doesn't sound sustainable. Four years from now, DigitalOcean will have a mix of machines just like the other hosting providers. (Google Compute Engine is in the same position because right now they only run on Sandy Bridge.)

DigitalOcean is my fourth host in four years. I just spent two years with a company inexplicably named Reliable Hosting Services before I switched. Switching hosting providers is surprisingly easy, since I just replicate out my DBs and then eventually switch the primaries over to the new host.

My gut tells me that DigitalOcean has at least a couple years until I have to even think about comparing to other hosts again.

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