DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS • Hacker News Board

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#41

Post by talkingquickly » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

bananas wrote: post #14

Adding to the commentary on here with something not so gushing: * kernels lag terribly behind the distributions meaning you're wide open sometimes. * can't resize or add storage * no freebsd support or custom kernels * VM availability problems. If you want to have another box, you aren't guaranteed to get one. * no IPv6 * somewhat shonky security reputation. * cant deliver to yahoo mail from their AMS2 IPs I've been…

I also use them and in general like them but would add to this list;

* Can't add backups to an already provisioned node

* Undocumented "droplet limits" e.g. one day you'll click "Add Droplet" and it will say "You've reached your droplet limit, please contact support". They'll generally raise it after some basic security verification but it's a nasty shock since you don't find out about it until you need to provision a new Droplet, especially if you're in a hurry.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#42

Post by pdq » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

timdorr wrote: post #10

$37.2m on a $153m post? That's a pretty big chunk of the company to give up. Looks like A16Z is going big on these guys. They're awesome, so that's great news!

Most VC's want 20%-25% ownership. And DigitalOcean is a very capital intensive tech company, needing to buy/build machines, pay for electricity, rent rack space, and pay for bandwidth. Virtually all tech startups on the other hand just need to pay for writing software and renting said machines/hosting.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#43

Post by aroch » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

bananas wrote: post #37

eli wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a little unfair... Your server needs to be hardened against drive-by SSH password guessing and similar nonsense regardless of how or where it's connected to the internet.

That is true but as per the poster above, I've seen 10x the attack traffic on a DO IP address so any zero-days and you're already herded into a predictable net block ready to be poked.

This is true for pretty much any VPS-only hoster, they all have well defined ranges and tons of targets to attack. I see thousands of attempts a day at Linode and hundreds at Leaseweb (dedi and VPSes) and DO. It's just part of doing business.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#44

Post by balladeer » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

HorizonXP wrote: post #2

I really like these guys. It's really no-nonsense hosting, which as a developer, is exactly what I need. I've been (stupidly) running my website, VPN, and e-mail servers all on a single EC2 instance, mostly because I had a bunch of AWS credits. I got some Google Cloud credits, so decided to move it there. I then realized that I'm spending $60 a month on a single instance, which despite having "free" money, is stupid.…

That's right.

The reason I finally settled with DigitalOcean after trying AWS, GC, RackSpace and WebFaction etc, is it's stupidly simple interface. I start things with just a few clicks and few words typed and then it's just like I am in my good old Ubuntu terminal.

Though I run my low volume email server, VPN, proxy, ownCloud on one droplet and it works just fine - no load, no issues.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#45

Post by bhouston » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

bananas wrote: post #14

Adding to the commentary on here with something not so gushing: * kernels lag terribly behind the distributions meaning you're wide open sometimes. * can't resize or add storage * no freebsd support or custom kernels * VM availability problems. If you want to have another box, you aren't guaranteed to get one. * no IPv6 * somewhat shonky security reputation. * cant deliver to yahoo mail from their AMS2 IPs I've been…

> * can't resize or add storage

This is a huge issue for us and we've wasted time with this.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#46

Post by kyrra » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

zerop wrote: post #27

I use linode and was drawing comparisons between two: 1. 8 cores on linode is what binds me to it. Linode rules here 2. Digital ocean is cheaper than linode 3. More Network transfer in linode (minimum 2TB) 4. Digital ocean offers more RAM 5. Private network - Does not exist on Linode. Shame. DO Rules.. What else...

5) huh? DO added this in 2013[0], Linode has had it since 2008[1].

To add another. 6) Linode offers IPv6, while DO says it's coming "soon"[2] (and has been saying that for well over a year).

[0] https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/introducing-privat...

[1] https://blog.linode.com/2008/03/14/private-back-end-network-...

[2] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/is-ipv6-ava...

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#47

Post by 4ad » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:23 PM UTC

flavor8 wrote: post #19

hiphopyo wrote: post #6

Love DigitalOcean. Sorta sad they still don't offer OpenBSD though. OpenBSD -- the world's simplest and most secure Unix-like OS. Creator of the world's most used SSH implementation OpenSSH, the world's most elegant firewall PF, and the world's most elegant mail server OpenSMTPD. OpenBSD -- the cleanest kernel, the cleanest userland and the cleanest configuration syntax. https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/1365…

Saw your OpenBSD spam yesterday too. Do you develop for the project?

The thought of OpenBSD developers doing any kind of marketing, honest or otherwise is amusing. These are the last people that would do anything other than simply letting the work speak for itself.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#48

Post by jcampbell1 » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #18

ddorian43 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

restart your aws server = goodbye data or hello network hdd

That's true in the same way that double taxation is a concern when setting up a corporation. It kind of is, but it's really not. Due to downvotes, I guess I better explain what I mean: Basically, EC2 provides instances where "if you restart your server you lose your data". You don't use those when that would be a problem for you, you use EBS backed instances which do not have this problem. Or you do it some other way…

I don't get the analogy. With EC2 you either lose your data when rebooting, or you have to use network storage (iSCSI) which has advantages and disadvantages.

BTW, when I invest in a corporation, I do get double taxed. The profits are taxed at the highest possible income tax rate, then I pay 15% tax on the distribution of profits.

Of course if I work for that corporation, I opt to take the "profits" as a bonus. I pay all the taxes in that case, but at least there isn't double taxation.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#49

Post by oijaf888 » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

dave_sullivan wrote: post #18

ddorian43 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

restart your aws server = goodbye data or hello network hdd

That's true in the same way that double taxation is a concern when setting up a corporation. It kind of is, but it's really not. Due to downvotes, I guess I better explain what I mean: Basically, EC2 provides instances where "if you restart your server you lose your data". You don't use those when that would be a problem for you, you use EBS backed instances which do not have this problem. Or you do it some other way…

Double taxation isn't related to the salary you get paid but the dividends that a corporation pays out. A corporation pays taxes on income then when it pays it out as dividends you pay taxes on it again, hence double taxation. As far as I'm aware you are unable to deduct dividend payments from corporate income for the purposes of taxation.

So no, its not FUD in that case at all.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#50

Post by z92 » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

I am running these services in a $5/month DO droplet: dns [named], ntpd, httpd [apache], smtp [postfix], imap [dovecot], webmail [roundcube], vpn [pptpd]. It's taking 350MB off 500MB RAM.

Now after adding getmail to back up gmail I am now wondering what more I can do with it.