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The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

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Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#161

Post by josegonzalez »

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.

I have production servers that have been up 3+ years, and others that died within 30 days. On AWS. So having a similar experience on DO wouldn't worry me unless it was every node.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#162

Post by tomsthumb »

enraged_camel wrote: post #119
wiremine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is that really disruption though? It kinda just sounds like regular ol' business. I only ask because your comment is making me question my understanding of "disruption".

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#163

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

mikeash wrote: post #67
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'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.

Have you tried IBMs Cloud? When you're done with AWS you're still struggling with IBM ridiculous contract papers and aren't even anywhere near launching any servers.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#164

Post by munimkazia »

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…

> * $5 hosting. RAX is a minimum of $16/mo now, for the same VM strength.

You should start with this. How are they even comparable if one is more than thrice the price of the other?

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#166

Post by mark_lee »

showerst wrote: post #16
jjoe wrote: post #8

I feel like DO has no competitive advantage. They sell servers but then anyone with a reasonable infrastructure and programmers on payroll can scale the way they have. So while it's an impressive rise, it can't be taken for granted. Because all could falter over night. That's just the nature of the business and industry.

There are 4 avenues I think you can take in this market - 1) Price 2) Scalability/API (As in AWS style of instant spinup/spindown) 3) User experience for the dashboard and creation process 4) Configurability of your instances DO is currently fighting on 1 and 3 with a dash of two, which I think is very smart. They're not fighting with lowendbox providers for the lowest possible price, but they're competing with linod…

absolutely, I used AWS EC2 for 1 year, and now I only keep linode and DO, and put most of mine at DO

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#167

Post by crassus »

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.

It works until you want to use PIL or LXML and need to compile a python library with native extensions, or if you want to use a datastore other than google's.

At least, you couldn't do those things a few years ago.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#168

Post by matthewmacleod »

threeseed wrote: post #85
dharma1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

competitive advantage compared to Linode - SSD drives, cheaper. That's it. Start process on Linode is just as easy and docs are as good or better, DNS support is there etc.

Linode has a long history of major security incidents and withholding information from their customers. So unless your data is worthless then Linode is a terrible choice.

I'm not concerned about that given the recent disk-scrubbing revalation from DigitalOcean. They're as bad as each other.

Fortunately, my data's not that important.

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#169

Post by frisco »

tomsthumb wrote: post #162
enraged_camel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Is that really disruption though? It kinda just sounds like regular ol' business. I only ask because your comment is making me question my understanding of "disruption".

It's actually the most widely accepted mechanism for "disruptive" innovation. See:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

Re: The Meteoric Rise of DigitalOcean

#170

Post by michaelt »

frisco wrote: post #169
tomsthumb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really disruption though? It kinda just sounds like regular ol' business. I only ask because your comment is making me question my understanding of "disruption".

It's actually the most widely accepted mechanism for "disruptive" innovation. See: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

I thought "disruptive innovation" was things like car vs horse, e-mail vs postal mail etc - things that are fundamentally different, not an evolution of the existing market.

AWS vs DO seems more like Ford vs Toyota than cars vs horses.

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