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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#101

Post by zubi »

threeseed wrote: post #86
zubi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share exactly the same feelings and experience with the person who replied to your comment previously. I have a server in each and I like them both. However; - Linode support is second to none. DO is not bad either but much slower and less responsive. You feel the difference when you really need it. - I had a CC payment issue with DO since the beginning. I mentioned it to the support twice but unsolved as of yet, u…

Why would you choose Linode for a serious/critical project ? Do you not know about their major security incidents ?

I am aware of them and yours is a valid point. I, however, was referring to relying on the infrastructure, expandability, customer support etc. Aside, a fair comparison in terms of security can only be made in the long run as it is natural to think that Linode has been around much longer and it is much bigger meaning it has a greater window of opportunities to be targeted by attacks.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#102

Post by singingcheese »

mgkimsal wrote: post #68
mikeash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using DO for a few months. I recently set up an AWS instance to use as a proxy, as I wanted something cheap in East Asia temporarily, and AWS's Tokyo region fit the bill. Holy crap is AWS bizarre to set up. I got it done without too much trouble in the end, but man, the UI is just atrocious. It took way too long just to find the right place to go to get started with the process.

heaven help you if you manage to start an instance that has n permanent storage then reboot it. apparently that's the default, and you need to (imo) go out of your way to get permanent storage. I understand the use case for the former, but the UI and docs for the latter use case were, last I looked, pretty difficult to grok. Yeah, AWS has some functionality/scaling features that DO and Linode don't , but it's a small…

Rebooting an EC2 instance never causes you to lose your data (no matter what type of storage you pick).

EC2 has two types of storage: local disk "ephemeral/instance storage" and network storage "EBS". Digital Ocean only provides local disk. In EC2 you can mix and match, but EBS is the most convenient.

If you do a stop and start on EC2 (very different to picking "reboot"). You will lose what's on local disk because stop/start is basically requested that you be moved to a different physical box. Data stored on EBS is not affected. On Digital Ocean if you "power off" you remain on the same host, but get billed at full rate whereas on EC2 you don't get billed for the time it's stopped. Rebooting on EC2 is the same as rebooting on DO.

If you use EBS for storing everything your data survives even if the hardware your instance is running on breaks. If the hardware breaks on Digital Ocean or on EC2 if you only use ephemeral (local) storage you lose your data. It's the same story on DO as it is on EC2. The only difference is that EC2 gives you the option of storage which can survive the physical box you are on dying (EBS).

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#103

Post by genwin »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #95

If you are writing a Python, PHP, Go, or Java web app, I think using Google App Engine is the easiest way to get your app live. DigitalOcean is easy, but it still requires you to know a bare minimum of Linux-Fu. App Engine is just brain-dead easy. You literally execute a deploy script locally. And as an added bonus, if you use the Google datastore instead of their RDBS it should scale smoothly too.

I ruled out GAE due to the vendor lock-in issue and reports they raised their prices 3X+ on short notice.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#104

Post by vacri »

reqres wrote: post #31
crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

I think in a nutshell you're describing Clayton Christensen process of disruptive innovation (or more specifically low end disruption). AWS is catering more and more to its most demanding users. This exposes them at the lower end to developers who aren't as demanding but prefer something simpler that better fits their needs. The way this narrative ends is that DO eats up AWS from below

I think you mean "DO gobbles up the fruit that fell from the AWS tree". Why on earth would AWS be particularly concerned that DO gets all the people who want to spend $5/server and have a handful of servers, when AWS get all the people with four-figure-plus spends? One $1000 spender is worth 20 people who rave over $5 boxes. And there are plenty of $1k spenders.

AWS does have some cheap offerings - some micro instances for your first year are free, which is less than "$5/month, good for tinkering", but for the most part they're not interested in folks who have only a couple bottom-end boxes, because that market doesn't have a lot of money in it.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#105

Post by vacri »

yock wrote: post #27
mberning wrote: post #14

I tried them out a few months ago looking to move my infrastructure from AWS to DO. I was experiencing terrible IO performance on a fairly expensive instance. Submitted a support ticket about it. Their response was 'this is normal'. Killed all my droplets and canceled my account the next day. To me they are running a pretty transparent pump and dump scheme. Promise a great service, sell it at a loss, get a ton of use…

That's a pretty serious accusation. Do you have any other evidence beyond "This one instance I had performed badly"?

The evidence supplied is supports response "This is normal", not "one instance was bad".

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#106

Post by gregf »

bndr wrote: post #30
crazygringo wrote: post #11

To people wondering if this is a temporary thing, or what Digital Ocean's competitive advantage is (since someone else can come along with the same price point): It's that the web interface, and process for starting a "droplet", is dead-simple and super-elegant, their support docs are comprehensive and easy to use, and they even do things like let you manage your own DNS records. And it all just works. Digital Ocean…

Isn't Linode exactly the same? Easy to use web interface, a lot of documentation on getting the things up and going and the ability to resize linode on the web.

Linode doesn't do hourly billing either. They will credit your account for what you don't use, but you get charged for the month upfront.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#107

Post by vacri »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #88
freehunter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any server you have running in any kind of environment where reliability is a factor should have some kind of monitoring system. Maybe DO should offer this feature like others do, but it's not out of the question to have another droplet running a heartbeat monitor. That'd be akin to them charging another $5/mo for the same service.

I would of course do that before I migrated. I did have munin running, but without alerts. The problem is that is crashed at all. My production server has been up for 668 days, and the temporary DO server didn't last 30. On the production server, I do ping the server every five minutes, but the customer complaints always reach me before that system.

You can do what nagios does: ping more frequently, but not send an alert until several pings have failed. It guards against a packet lost to the ethers, but still picks up a failed service. Maybe ping every 30 secs, four missed pings = raise alert?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#108

Post by avenger123 »

derefr wrote: post #92
mikeash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using DO for a few months. I recently set up an AWS instance to use as a proxy, as I wanted something cheap in East Asia temporarily, and AWS's Tokyo region fit the bill. Holy crap is AWS bizarre to set up. I got it done without too much trouble in the end, but man, the UI is just atrocious. It took way too long just to find the right place to go to get started with the process.

I felt the same way for a while, but eventually, while working on a large cloud-based project, I had an epiphany: the GUI is basically the phpMyAdmin interface of AWS. phpMyAdmin is great when you're first learning to work with the LAMP stack; it lets you fiddle with values, manually create databases, munge columns, etc. But. If there are multiple instances of your system running "in the wild" (even just within your…

I would suspect AWS makes most of their money from clients that manage instances that are in the mid to high double digits and beyond. For these clients its likely that at some point automation has kicked in and the APIs get the job done much better versus having someone spend time clicking away in a browser.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#110

Post by nathancahill »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #88
freehunter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any server you have running in any kind of environment where reliability is a factor should have some kind of monitoring system. Maybe DO should offer this feature like others do, but it's not out of the question to have another droplet running a heartbeat monitor. That'd be akin to them charging another $5/mo for the same service.

I would of course do that before I migrated. I did have munin running, but without alerts. The problem is that is crashed at all. My production server has been up for 668 days, and the temporary DO server didn't last 30. On the production server, I do ping the server every five minutes, but the customer complaints always reach me before that system.

Even better than vacri's suggestion: set up load balancing so that you always have a server to fall back on if one goes down. Once you get the alert, you can fix the down server without the pressure of getting a down website back up.
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