Any Digital Ocean users?

gaekwad · 2014-04-28 19:07:55

My Media Temple hosting is coming up for renewal and I’m poking around for alternatives. I like the look and pricing of Digital Ocean – have you any good or bad experiences with them? Thanks!

Gocom · 2014-04-28 20:02:51

I use DigitalOcean and they are great. Performance is similar to Linode, and fine for the price. The droplet deployment system works well too, and while they’ve had minimal security issues, they have handled all cases responsible and on time — that’s admirable and a good sign. They are not trying to cover their mess, instead they make every issue known. Due to their paid article contribution model, they have ton of documentation available too.

What you might want to keep in mind is that it’s a 100% unmanaged service and it’s all up to you. If I had any criticism about the service:

They don’t yet have the ability to create multiple accounts to their web-based control panel. I.e. you can’t give finances person access to the billing page, or give multiple admins access to the VNC. You will have to share your credentials.
Their own DNS manager and server doesn’t support all record types; you will have to use old-school TXT for all those extra records.
No option to lock in IP address; IP per droplet, but you can’t pre-reserve addresses to your account. You neither can have multiple IPs per single droplet.
No IPv6 support.

Last edited by Gocom (2014-04-28 20:06:41)

gaekwad · 2014-04-28 20:07:59

Jukka, this is great – thank you very much.

jstubbs · 2014-04-29 01:32:09

Thanks Jukka – helpful to know more about DigitalOcean. Currently I’m with Gandi after migrating away from TextDrive before the doors closed. Gandi is good but quirky and small things are difficult – for example one can’t install an SSL certificate on a Gandi AI VPS, the interface isn’t very intuitive and its a bit difficult to figure out what resources need to applied to the VPS.

Currently, my VPS is costing about 25 Euros a month for 6 TXP sites which seems quite expensive. However, they do have a free email service which is handy.

Has anyone had experience with DigitalOcean, Gandi or perhaps Kaizen Garden for helpful comparisons?

Gocom · 2014-04-29 03:20:32

jstubbs wrote #280472:

one can’t install an SSL certificate on a Gandi AI VPS

You could with Gandi’s non-managed VPS. To be honest, in my opinion there usually isn’t much value in using locked virtual servers. It’s still isolated environment in fixed state (changes are, it’s not kept updated!), you pay more of it, but you have no control over it. Looking at TXPtips’ headers, it seems to be running:

Ubuntu 10.04LTS
PHP/5.3.2-1ubuntu4.22.1~gandi

That PHP update is 5 months old (missing two security updates), if the version number represent the real source package. The version string seems to be modified by Gandi, but who knows what the implied changes are, if any.

the interface isn’t very intuitive and its a bit difficult to figure out what resources need to applied to the VPS

In DigitalOcean you don’t have interface issues — there is no GUI ;p

The web interface is limited to spinning up your image and some mandatory tools, such as billing and VNC access. Each user is responsible for setting things up (a good thing). You would set up things like certificates by copying certificate files to your server and then loading them in your web server’s configuration — once you have installed web server.

Similarly to Gandi Ai, there are some pre-packaged stack images available on DO, but unlike with Ai, those are just a base images and not otherwise different. I wouldn’t use them as you still have to get familiar with managing the server and updating your software packages. Letting someone else to install packages for you is not that helpful; pre-installed packages are not configured for you, nor up-to-date (everything is just from an image created who knows when).

Running your own servers is kind of fun, and gives you freedom, but if you don’t fancy yourself as server administrator or developer, VPS might not be your thing. While fun, running your own servers will take time and to keep things secure, you will be checking and updating your servers once a week.

Last edited by Gocom (2014-04-30 18:14:51)

springworks · 2014-04-29 11:30:06

jstubbs wrote #280472:

Thanks Jukka – helpful to know more about DigitalOcean. Currently I’m with Gandi after migrating away from TextDrive before the doors closed. Gandi is good but quirky and small things are difficult – for example one can’t install an SSL certificate on a Gandi AI VPS, the interface isn’t very intuitive and its a bit difficult to figure out what resources need to applied to the VPS.

Currently, my VPS is costing about 25 Euros a month for 6 TXP sites which seems quite expensive. However, they do have a free email service which is handy.

Has anyone had experience with DigitalOcean, Gandi or perhaps Kaizen Garden for helpful comparisons?

I’ve got accounts on both WebFaction and TSOHost (using their cloud hosting). Both are more than capable of running 6 TXP sites and would be less than you are currently paying with Gandi. (I’ve got around a dozen TXP site on WF and several TXP plus a few ExpressionEngine sites on my TSO account.)

Both have their own control panels, rather than CPanel, which to me is a bonus. They can be a bit quirky (WF in particular) but once you get your head around the terminology, everything works well. Support and performance on both is very good. WebFaction are a virtual host in that they rent servers from another company rather than own their own data centres. TSO have just built their own DC in the UK so own and run the hardware themselves.

jstubbs · 2014-04-29 13:05:43

Gocom wrote #280474:

You could with Gandi’s non-managed VPS.

Not with Gandi AI VPS – as it doesn’t allow root access. If one uses the non-AI it is possible as that features root access. Using Gandi AI there is a way – by adding what they call a “web accelerator” which is easy to setup but costs more money.

To be honest, in my opinion there usually isn’t much value in using locked virtual servers. It’s still isolated environment in fixed state (changes are, it’s not kept updated!), you pay more of it, but you have no control over it.

TextDrive featured managed hosting as does the new Kaizen Garden (properly managed by the looks of things). Gandi AI sits in the middle between a real VPS which I guess DigitalOcean is and managed hosting like KG. And maybe its better to pick one or the other.

That PHP update is 5 months old (missing two security updates), if the version number represent the real source package. The version string seems to be modified by Gandi, but who knows what the implied changes are, if any.

No way to update that on Gandi AI as far as I can see..

In DigitalOcean you don’t have interface issues — there is GUI ;p

I admit to quite liking Webmin! ;) At least its easy to set up a cron job.

Running your own servers is kind of fun, and gives you freedom, but if you don’t fancy yourself as server administrator or developer, VPS might not be your thing. While fun, running your own servers will take time and to keep things secure, you will be checking and updating your servers once a week.

Yes, food for thought..

maruchan · 2014-04-30 00:10:01

I wasn’t very happy with DigitalOcean, but that was coming from a really fast VPS where I had root access and outstanding support. The DO pricing was low but the quality was pretty DIY, and the server wasn’t as responsive as I was expecting.

In general I try to limit the number of NIH hosting control panels I use, too. I run six VPSes on CPanel across four different hosts, and I’m much more comfortable that way. I can immediately tell how much a host has cut back my access if a CPanel-running server happens to be non-root.

In DigitalOcean you don’t have interface issues — there is GUI ;p

Are you saying that GUIs can’t have interface issues? Proprietary NIH GUIs can be really annoying. Dreamhost, WebFaction, DigitalOcean…all require users to acquire plumbing knowledge on a system that’s been done better elsewhere.

jstubbs · 2014-04-30 05:00:53

Hi Marc, who do you host with currently then? You could add Gandi to the list of annoying proprietary GUI’s.

towndock · 2014-04-30 12:35:02

Digital Ocean has been handy for me to try out some code, that I really didn’t want on our core server until I was more comfortable with it. For $10 or $20 a month, presto instant Linux playground… I like it.

That said, our revenue business is on a managed server platform. We use Servint – we have both a dedicated server and a VPS. It costs more than a non-managed service, but the problems they will solve on a quick trouble ticket are worth the freight to me. We’ve used Servint for a decade – they have been a great vendor.

I agree with Marc’s point re CPanel. I know how to make stuff work with CPanel, the learning curve on a new GUI isn’t something I want to add to my list.

Gocom · 2014-04-30 18:10:35

maruchan wrote #280491:

I wasn’t very happy with DigitalOcean, but that was coming from a really fast VPS where I had root access and outstanding support. The DO pricing was low but the quality was pretty DIY, and the server wasn’t as responsive as I was expecting.

It’s unmanaged service meant for developers backed by very small company. There is no one there to give you technical support. For benchmarks, see ServerBear’s listing. It’s on the same level with other similar services — for now. What you actually can expect depends on the server and saturation.

How you configure your installed software plays a big part. The distributions included are just official base images (as they should), but not much will work out-of-the-box on a small VM. For instance, if you install Debian-like’s (Ubuntu’s) official Apache2 packages, on a 512 MB RAM VM it will get very poor performance and ultimately crash under a load (it occurs as random blank pages to HTTP clients or in other words, visitors). The default allowed maximum process number goes over the total available memory, no matter how much you lean Apache size by disabling modules. And as its a base image, there is no swap configured either.

Are you saying that GUIs can’t have interface issues? Proprietary NIH GUIs can be really annoying. Dreamhost, WebFaction, DigitalOcean…all require users to acquire plumbing knowledge on a system that’s been done better elsewhere.

I mean, there is no GUI.

Last edited by Gocom (2014-04-30 18:48:24)

maruchan · 2014-04-30 19:01:42

jstubbs wrote #280498:

Hi Marc, who do you host with currently then? You could add Gandi to the list of annoying proprietary GUI’s.

I also like Servint. Servint and Knownhost are my top two right now. You pay a higher support premium with Servint but that’s fine with me as the uptick in support quality is noticeable. I rely a lot on caching and other optimizations so I feel like I get a lot out of my servers. PHP doesn’t show up in the initial top CPU-usage sort on the busiest VPS I’m running.

It’s also nice to see both of these companies ranked highly for uptime. I’ve never had better responsiveness and uptime with any other providers, and I feel like I’ve tried a lot of them.

With that said, I test out different hosts fairly often just in case this all decides to change.

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#1 2014-04-28 19:07:55