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DigitalOcean - First Impressions
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DigitalOcean - First Impressions

RaymiiRaymii Member
edited March 2013 in General

Having heard some about them and their recent article (root password leaks) I thought, lets try Digital Ocean for a month or so. Here's a little write up about my so far positive first impresssions.


image

It is a nice control panel they have, it is not the usual WHMCS+SolusVM, but all integrated and targeted a bit more at developers. Ticketing, billing, server information, starting stopping and such, all in one.

Ticket response is quite fast, at least for me it was, asked a question regarding kernel support and within three minutes got a reply back.

Benchmarks enough: http://serverbear.com/1988-512mb-ssd--1-cpu-digitalocean

My plan is to run a MySQL slave on it for my Free Hosted Piwik Project Which You Can Find Here, since it has more ram than my current LEB's, and even the LEB piwik itself runs on.

Some more pictures:

Deploying my base config:
image

Plans:
image

Images:
image

After the baseline, the standard login:
image

What is your experience with Digital Ocean?

Comments

  • Looks good. Haven't used them myself, but I may accquire a VPS from them sometime.

    3 minutes? Wow, nice.

  • IvanIvan Member

    Mind if I ask, what SSH client are you using? Looks nice. Sorry if it's a dumb question.

  • @teohkay said: Mind if I ask, what SSH client are you using? Looks nice. Sorry if it's a dumb question.

    @teohkay iTerm2 with the Solarized Dark Colour Scheme.

  • IvanIvan Member
    edited March 2013

    @Raymii said: @teohkay iTerm2 with the Solarized Dark Colour Scheme.

    Thanks. I like the color scheme a lot.

  • ChanChan Member

    DigitalOcean is really good for testing but their network really sucks, I got varied bandwidth between 20Mbyte/s and 1MByte/s (as proven by serverbear). Besides how they just manged somehow to break their snapshot server and lose my backups really put me off from using them for anything serious

  • shovenoseshovenose Member, Host Rep

    Their network is decent, but you'll need to open a ticket for them to fix and also VirtIO helps a lot.

    --2013-03-24 17:25:37-- http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin
    Resolving speedtest.newark.linode.com... 50.116.57.237, 2600:3c03::4b
    Connecting to speedtest.newark.linode.com|50.116.57.237|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
    Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
    Saving to: 100MB-newark.bin' 100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 49.8M/s in 2.0s 2013-03-24 17:25:40 (49.8 MB/s) -100MB-newark.bin' saved [104857600/104857600]
    root@shove:~#

  • xBytezxBytez Member
    edited March 2013

    I used DigitalOcean, the only sad thing is that their Arch image is now gone, support sometimes take ages and no kernel management on KVM. The network is sometimes awesome sometimes real sh*t.

  • ksecksec Member

    I wouldn't call their network sometimes awesome, It is more like sometimes ok and sometimes sh*t. But if you are doing anything serious on it, unstable Network performance is a big NO sign for me.

    I honestly think they should start limiting Port Speed as well with 10Mbps per Plan/1TB Transfer. And Simply allows the option of upgrading Port Speed instead. ( Actually i think instead of moving to limited transfer they should have chosen to move to limited port speed instead. )

  • @ksec said: But if you are doing anything serious on it, unstable Network performance is a big NO sign for me.

       Feb '13      5.70 TiB |    5.87 TiB |   11.57 TiB |   41.09 Mbit/s
       Mar '13      6.50 TiB |    6.67 TiB |   13.17 TiB |   55.20 Mbit/s
    

    Burning through fine.

  • LeeLee Veteran

    It must not like some people then, I have had no performance issues at all, well since I got virtio access.

    I agree thought that for a platform that is all about developers yet no access to Kernel management. Although they have said that is coming soon.

    The only thing that kind of annoys me though is that to properly upgrade the droplet you need to power off, snapshot, destroy and setup a new one. That's ok if it was not for the fact you loose the IP address and get assigned a new one.

    You can upgrade/downgrade from the panel but it is hit and miss depending on whether the droplet needs to be rebuilt on a different node. IF you upgrade without destroying it won't give you the extra disk space.

  • @W1V_Lee said: The only thing that kind of annoys me though is that to properly upgrade the droplet you need to power off, snapshot, destroy and setup a new one. That's ok if it was not for the fact you loose the IP address and get assigned a new one.

    That last thing I find annoying, and is also holding me back from AWS. Just give my an IP and don't change it. It is not that hard...

  • LeeLee Veteran

    @Raymii said: That last thing I find annoying, and is also holding me back from AWS. Just give my an IP and don't change it. It is not that hard...

    Indeed, I totally understand that if I snapshot and destroy then not rebuild a droplet for a month then they won't hold the IP but at least hold the IP for 24 hours so it returns it back to me.

    Either that or just make the upgrade/downgrade option work properly!

  • I tried a vps in Amsterdam last weekend, I wasn't wow'd at all.

    Being in the UK I was expecting really decent download speeds and ping results, for some silly reason traffic goes UK -> USA -> Amsterdam with response times of 150ms +.

  • i have two with them one in US and other at NL .. no issues till now since last dec..

  • YKMYKM Member

    @ghoulnet said: I tried a vps in Amsterdam last weekend, I wasn't wow'd at all.

    Being in the UK I was expecting really decent download speeds and ping results, for some silly reason traffic goes UK -> USA -> Amsterdam with response times of 150ms +.

    I am getting 6-7ms from DO Amsterdam to UK

  • Maybe I was unlucky then, I've got 2 ISPs at home and both routed me through the USA. Perhaps I'll give them another try :)

  • zagizagi Member
    edited March 2013

    Hey Guys,

    Ben from DigitalOcean here, some good constructive feedback in this post.

    We are definitely aware of:

    1. Network Issues: We do not limit the speed of the network, based on the default network drivers in Linux KVM the speeds are not always reliable. All servers are linked via 1Gbps network to our core network which is linked via multiple 10Gbps connections to the net via BGP.
      If you experience network issues, please open a ticket with us and request access to "VirtIO" it is an enhanced network driver and should provide the speed you are looking for. We are in the process of standardizing on this network driver and then all servers will come with fast speed by default.

    2. Custom Kernel and Image Support: Again a lot of community requests have been made to support custom kernels, images and ISOs. We have made good progress on this feature and hope that it will be in beta for everyone to try within the next 30 days. This will mark a significant step forward and allow DigitalOcean to host much more than the standard 4-6 Linux versions that we support today.

    3. Resizing and IP Addresses: There are a lot of challenges to resizing disk, and we're working on updating the control panel so that it will prompt the user on what methods are available for resize. The simplest and fastest method is already supported which resizes CPU and Memory without the disk. The next method would allow disk resizes and the final method allows you to move to a different physical hypervisor.

    We're constantly working on improving the product and what's great about our control panel is that we built it in house. Over the long term we will be able to provide the right amount of customization and features to make everyone happy. Today it's a work in progress and please remember if you experience any issues - we do have a workaround for every situation listed above so just open a support ticket and I'm sure that together we can solve the problem.

  • BK_BK_ Member
    edited March 2013

    @zagi said: Custom Kernel and Image Support

    I'll probably eat up my DO credit (and some) once you release this feature :)

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited March 2013

    @BK_ said: I'll probably eat up my DO credit (and some) once you release this feature :)

    It will be most likely available only for those who pays with credit card but unavailable for those who pay with paypal. Yeah, it sound stupid how payment method affect strictly technical aspect of vps but that's just how things are with this host... (ie. paypal clients don't have VirtIO setup access as reported in other DO thread).

  • zagizagi Member

    Today we have a lot if users who sign up with stolen credit cards, abuse the network, and are malicious. With a credit card we get a lot more information with which to make a decision. PayPal provides a very small amount of information to the merchant, as a result we need to be more careful with PayPal users to ensure they are legitimate.

    As our user base grows, and our abuse detection methods improve we hope to make PayPal identical to credit card users. Keep in mind that you can still verify your account as a PayPal user and receive access to limited features. It is our intention to provide stellar service to all our users and we must protect the safety of the network from abusive accounts. Bear with us, and remember you only need to verify your account once - and you'll enjoy all advanced features going forward!

  • Hopefully you will release virtio for the disk too.
    I've been waiting for this to get a new instance.

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited March 2013

    @zagi can you explain what payment method have to do with something like technically crippling service on purpose? Sorry but once you accept someone as client and pick payment there's no single reason to cripple his VPS on purpose because his method of payment isn't enough "good" but you accept it anyway. It's just freakin VirtIO setup. If you have trouble with clients authentication then solve it with your billing system not technical aspect of your service.
    Verify client in order to provide service not in order to give him non crippled product once you aready accept him as client and pick payment.

    @zagi said: PayPal provides a very small amount of information to the merchant, as a result we need to be more careful with PayPal users to ensure they are legitimate.

    Careful how? Yeah, restricting someone from activating VirtIO is a great way to prevent fraud!

  • ChanChan Member

    Surely abusers will still abuse without VirtIO....

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited March 2013

    @Chan said: Surely abusers will still abuse without VirtIO....

    Exactly! Request to enable VirtIO have nothing to do with this. They have no issue with me being their client, paying for service and use it as long as I want. All this seems fine. But problem for them appear when I (or many other clients) want to set up vps with VirtIO.. and that's just silly.

  • zagizagi Member

    With VirtIO the attacker can send a lot more data in a short amount of time saturating the network, and increasing bandwidth costs.

    By default both credit card and PayPal users have VirtIO disabled. Only after additional verification can the user create VirtIO enabled servers - this applies the same to credit card users as well as PayPal.

    As I mentioned we are working aggressively to standardize these features and ensure that all new users have VirtIO by default - we're getting very close to finalizing that.

  • @zagi Thanks for your first reply. It addressed none of the problems I have, because i still have none. But I do like providers that are active in and working with the community.

  • SpiritSpirit Member
    edited March 2013

    @zagi said: With VirtIO the attacker can send a lot more data in a short amount of time saturating the network, and increasing bandwidth costs.

    @zagi said: As I mentioned we are working aggressively to standardize these features and ensure that all new users have VirtIO by default

    What about old users? Logic would tell me that OLD long term loyal clients are the ones who should not be treated as fraudsters and abusers limited with crippled service... Oh wait, they "grandfathered" free bandwidth accounts. That explains a lot...

  • ChanChan Member

    @zagi said: With VirtIO the attacker can send a lot more data in a short amount of time saturating the network, and increasing bandwidth costs.

    By default both credit card and PayPal users have VirtIO disabled. Only after additional verification can the user create VirtIO enabled servers - this applies the same to credit card users as well as PayPal.

    As I mentioned we are working aggressively to standardize these features and ensure that all new users have VirtIO by default - we're getting very close to finalizing that.

    That doesn't make any logic sense, as you've said yourself those abusers uses fraudulent credit cards/paypal. They would be able to get multiple "droplets" anyway seeing as they'll have multiple fraudulent cards/paypal to sign up for them. Surely they can just spread the spamming/hacking work among those droplets and still saturate the network....

    And also, there's a difference between "broken" and "capped". The current default droplets given to non-verified users are "broken". If you want to cap people then maybe your guys should implement a bandwidth limit or whatever, not giving customers something "broken"

  • @zagi said: Custom Kernel and Image Support: Again a lot of community requests have been made to support custom kernels, images and ISOs. We have made good progress on this feature and hope that it will be in beta for everyone to try within the next 30 days. This will mark a significant step forward and allow DigitalOcean to host much more than the standard 4-6 Linux versions that we support today.

    Does that mean you'll support Windows too?

  • zagizagi Member

    @Spirit: The older the account is with good payment history the easier it is to become verified for VirtIO. It is important to note that many users do not experience problems with their applications using the default driver. Nonetheless we are making progress and will standardize on VirtIO for all users going forward shortly.

    @Chan: I am not sure what you mean by "broken" - as far as I know the problems exhibited by the current network driver deliver slower speeds than expected, however the entire Internet is reachable and all standard applications work. Once again, you can verify your account or wait a bit and VirtIO will come standard for all users.

    @Bogdacutuu: Technically yes Windows will be possible with custom images, we do have plans to release a fully supported Windows server directly from DigitalOcean later this year or early 2014.

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