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DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

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Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#41

Post by ceejayoz »

brianwawok wrote: post #20
vruiz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they implemented IP failover already? I haven't heard anything. Having your own LB without being able to fail over the IP is not HA. If the LB does down so does your business.

What? You use DNS failover and multiple load balancers. FOO.COM A record -> 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, 1.2.3.6 Then at 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, and 1.2.3.6 you put a load balancer that splits loads between all of your clients. Any LB goes down, and DNS client retries will deal with it. If any backend server goes down, your LB will deal with it. Using this pretty successfully at digital ocean right now. What is the downside? I guess…

"Why is DNS failover not recommended?" http://serverfault.com/questions/60553/why-is-dns-failover-n...

Among other things, IE7 will pin IPs for 30 minutes, non-browser clients may have serious issues, etc.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#42

Post by mooreds »

samhoggnz wrote: post #30
seiji wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the simplicity is great. AWS has 80 products and it takes months to figure how how they all work together. DO's click-n-go for $5 month helps just from a mental clarity point of view. At this point AWS is so complicated they should be offering an official Cisco-like series of certifications.

I'm not sure they're at the level of Cisco, but they do have certifications. http://aws.amazon.com/certification/

Awesome, thanks for the pointer.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#43

Post by brianwawok »

ceejayoz wrote: post #41
brianwawok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You use DNS failover and multiple load balancers. FOO.COM A record -> 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, 1.2.3.6 Then at 1.2.3.4, 1.2.3.5, and 1.2.3.6 you put a load balancer that splits loads between all of your clients. Any LB goes down, and DNS client retries will deal with it. If any backend server goes down, your LB will deal with it. Using this pretty successfully at digital ocean right now. What is the downside? I guess…

"Why is DNS failover not recommended?" http://serverfault.com/questions/60553/why-is-dns-failover-n... Among other things, IE7 will pin IPs for 30 minutes, non-browser clients may have serious issues, etc.

Yah for sure, it is not perfect but it is pretty good.

In my use case, I don't support IE7 (won't work at all on my SAAS app), and I only support browser clients.

I have simulated LB failures by killing nginx, and watched traffic flow over to the other LB without a big delay (in 30 seconds everyone was over).

Fancier IP failover is nice for sure, and would let some more enterprisey people in.. but for a lot of apps out there, DNS failover works great. Surprised from above how many people don't realize it exists or works so well (for so little effort).

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#44

Post by astrodust »

dotBen wrote: post #14

DO has really benefitted from Linode stalling over the past few years. I admire Linode for remaining a bootstrapped business but it feels as though the owners lost their fighting spirit and energy... Perhaps because the small pool of Linode owners felt they made enough money already. DOs announment talks about a storage product, which is strategically important and crucially something Linode has sorely needed for a l…

For all the money Linode has on hand, and the size of their technical team, it's absolutely insulting they haven't made any tangible improvement to their management front-end in at least five years, if not more.

The way it's behaving it's as if it was acquired and kept on life-support.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#45

Post by CoachRufus87 »

brianwawok wrote: post #39
CoachRufus87 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is their current private networking offering not 'real'?

Any other digital ocean server in the same datacenter can hit your private IP.

Would you consider that to be a big enough risk to not deploy production apps in their environment? I.e. having your app on 1 droplet and a dedicated db on another. I'm new to ops and trying to learn all that I can :)

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#47

Post by res0nat0r »

seiji wrote: post #32
samhoggnz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they're at the level of Cisco, but they do have certifications. http://aws.amazon.com/certification/

Oh, great to know. They are really cheap too ($150, $300, $75 re-up). Amusingly, that page demonstrates the need for an AWS certification in the first place: the page has over 100 things trying to grab your attention with no focus or clear direction at all. Amazon as a corporate entity seems to go for "maximum information + maximum confusion" in their UX at every turn. Always worth a re-read: https://gist.github.com/…

AWS is an inherently complex product. It has far and away more features than any other competitor, so there is obviously going to be more confusion. I think the AWS dashboard is getting better and better and relatively easy to use if you keep each product isolated. There being 40+ products to choose from is overwhelming if you don't know what you are looking at, but that is the nature of the beast.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#48

Post by lsc »

hm. Interesting. From what I know of the industry, their size and pricing, I would have thought they would be profitable enough that raising this sort of money wouldn't be particularly interesting.

Does this mean that they are operating at a loss?

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#49

Post by gsharma »

proksoup wrote: post #21
seiji wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is unicorn just a billion dollar non-public startup? Isn't there some other magic sauce required like supernormal margins or superfew employees or exploiting toothless regulations? DO seems to be almost a too straight forward business model (buy servers, rent servers in sub-units) to be considered in the modern startup pool of wishful thinking. I mean, it's not like they're an iPhone app for renting other people's id…

DO's UX is a game changer, I personally think is why they have been so successful in what seemed like a crowded market with the "same" business model as the others.

Serious question - What part of their UX do you think is game changer? I use DO and Linode. They both look similar to me. DO does have better UX than AWS, but I think DO is comparable to Linode rather than AWS.

On the other hand, I think DO's content guides as a marketing tool is a great asset for them. I haven't seen any other provider do that. Linode had a few guides, but nothing as DO's scale.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $83M in Series B Funding

#50

Post by tantalic »

talloaktrees wrote: post #24
angersock wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would anybody be interested in esoteric hosting? Think Linode, but specifically for FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Plan9/TempleOS/MinuetOS/etc.?

TempleOS has no networking :)

Which makes it that much cheaper to operate ;)
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