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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#111

Post by singlow »

gregf wrote: post #106
bndr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe they now offer hourly billing. If you choose it, you are billed hourly, not monthly, but the hourly rate maxes out at the monthly rate. I got an email about it a month or two ago but haven't tried it.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#112

Post by matwood »

loumf wrote: post #17
andrewflnr wrote: post #13

Serious question: is it really worth it for a company like DO to support Windows? It seems like they maintain their edge by avoiding the kind of complexity that Windows would entail.

It's a significant market, not just in size, but in willingness to spend money. I didn't find Windows complex -- One nice thing about the MS world is the homogeneity of the stack, which makes a lot of things easier if it works for you. If you want to run something else, you probably don't want to run it on Windows anyway.

One nice thing about the MS world is the homogeneity of the stack, which makes a lot of things easier if it works for you.

Yeah, one of things I miss about the MS stack. The whole freedom is slavery thing. If the MS stack has what you need it usually has a 'this is how to do X' and it works well together.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#113

Post by api »

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…

There's a few smaller ones out there like vultr.com that match DO's price. Not sure about their reliability. I've had good luck with DO in that department.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#114

Post by bluedino »

unethical_ban wrote: post #28

Seems no one here so far has mentioned Rackspace. Let's start by saying that DO has fewer features for a complex deployment: No load balancing, no private subnets, (IIRC) no IPv6 at the moment. No "cloud files" or S3 equivalent, the scaling isn't as automatic as RAX or AWS can provide. DO can't host Windows (which still matters for many existing operations, don't fool yourself). RAX gives more information and granula…

I moved some servers from Linode to Rackspace, mainly to consolidate billing since we already had regular dedicated servers there.

I imagine the change was a lot like going from DO to AWS - much more complicated, but at the time Rackspace had only owned Slicehost for a few years and the interface was awful and the setup was confusing with 1st gen and 2nd gen cloud servers and it was just a mess.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#115

Post by bluedino »

andrewflnr wrote: post #13

Serious question: is it really worth it for a company like DO to support Windows? It seems like they maintain their edge by avoiding the kind of complexity that Windows would entail.

You can't do a Windows VM for $5 between the facts that you need more RAM, more HD, and a Windows license.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#116

Post by api »

eli wrote: post #87
digitalsushi wrote: post #54

I'm trying to find a VPS provider that can do IPv6 and multiple IPv4. Digital Ocean really surprised me in having no IPv6 offering. What really surprised me is that you can't get IPv6 on Amazon's EC2. You can get a v6 address for a load balancer, but that's surely not the same thing. Linode does actually almost fit the bill, except that they require manual authorization for an additional IPv4 addresses. So there's no…

Dumb question: what do you use IPv6 for? What am I missing by not having it?

Unfortunately not much yet, but you're helping make way for the future.

I say unfortunately because IPv4's limitations are going to hurt more and more as the Internet gets more hosts online.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#117

Post by aragot »

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…

But DigitalOcean also puts their APIs forward. It made me feel like: Wow, it's nice to use and they're geeks!

So how does DO's api compares to EC2?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#118

Post by snuxoll »

aragot wrote: post #117
derefr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But DigitalOcean also puts their APIs forward. It made me feel like: Wow, it's nice to use and they're geeks! So how does DO's api compares to EC2?

They're a billion times saner, they have a very simple REST API that just takes a couple GET parameters and spits out nice JSON. I built a wrapper in scala using the dispatch http library and json4s in about 15 minutes, most of that was writing a couple functions to handle the difference between the formatting conventions used by DigitalOcean's JSON and scala/java standards ("droplet_id" vs "dropletId").

Meanwhile AWS has this nasty outdated SOAP API that you don't want to touch by hand with a 10-foot pole, you had better have a good AWS library for your existing language of choice or know how to make sense of a WSDL.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#119

Post by enraged_camel »

wiremine wrote: post #37
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…

> Digital Ocean is 100x easier and quicker to use than AWS 100% agree. I really think the markets for DO and AWS are different. DO aims at the "I need a few boxes" sort of user, and AWS aims at the "I boxes and other infrastructure" where other infrastructure is databases, auto-scaling services, etc. DO feels like Linode felt like four years ago: just the basics at a great price point. (I still like Linode, but they…

>> I really think the markets for DO and AWS are different. DO aims at the "I need a few boxes" sort of user, and AWS aims at the "I boxes and other infrastructure" where other infrastructure is databases, auto-scaling services, etc.

This is the typical pattern for market disruption: competitor enters the market at the low-end and moves up-market to eventually dislodge the incumbent.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#120

Post by adestefan »

bduerst wrote: post #69
davexunit wrote: post #46

I currently use digitalocean for my blog, but I was recently pointed towards this article which concerns me greatly: https://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/digital-ocean... If I cannot have freedom of speech on my blog, I will have to find a new provider that respects my freedom.

That's a bit of a stretch, even for equivocation. Did you read the article in question? http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks... It took four comments, out of context, and made it into a slam. Bias of the rant aside, DO says that it was because of a TOS violation on privacy and defamation. It comes pretty close to outing where the person lives, what websites they run, and certainly makes plenty…

I don't care what it said. There is no reason for a provider to take down a blog post short of it being illegal and someone standing on their doorstep with a warrant.
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