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DigitalOcean review
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DigitalOcean review

ckissickissi Member
edited February 2015 in Reviews

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DigitalOcean review

This is my first review here. I decided to review DigitalOcean in many aspects as I use it for testing purposes and used most of the features they offer. Tried to make it short here. The full DigitalOcean review is available on our blog.
Here I'll mention most interesting parts and results.

DO uses KVM for their VPS, and OpenVZ is not supported there.
There are 9 specifications available ranging from 512MB RAM + 20GB SSD + 1 CPU for $5/month to 64GB RAM + 640GB SSD + 20CPU for $640/month.

That being said, if you choose a cheap plan initially, you can easily upgrade your droplet from the Control Panel.

You can choose from 5 locations for your droplet namely New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Singapore, and London. Among all the said locations, Singapore is comparatively more interesting as there are not too many VPS providers available in Asia.
locations

Host nodes use 1Gb/s connections so you won’t be limited even when you need to transfer large amount of data. With every VPS you get one static IPv4 address (not more than one). These VPSs also support IPv6.

For every droplet you can enable private networking, backup and SSH key. You can store your SSH keys in the Control Panel and assign any of the keys to your newly created droplet.

There is a wide number of OS distributions available including Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Fedora, Debian, CoreOS and Centos, and almost all the operating systems are available in both 32 and 64bit editions.

You can also install turnkey distros e.g. LAMP on Ubuntu 14.04 or LEMP on Ubuntu 14.04. Currently 19 turnkey distros (applications) are available.

Another interesting thing about DO is that it supports snapshots. This means you can create snapshots of your droplet and use them later to build new droplets that have predefined configuration as that of the snapshots. In other words, you can use your base droplet’s snapshots to create its replicas (mirrors) within a few seconds.

I was able to create a droplet within 1 minute. They claim that your droplet will be created within 55 seconds. My average time was 52 seconds which is quite good, especially when you are creating multiple droplets for testing purposes. There was only one instance (while testing) when it took somewhere around 5 minutes to create a droplet. Apparently there was some unknown issue at the server side which even I am unable to guess at the moment.

Talking about uptime, I found no issue so far. None of my test droplets experienced any downtime.

Test

I created one small droplet at each location (i.e. 5 droplets at 5 locations), where every droplet had minimum available configuration, i.e. 512MB RAM + 20GB SSD + 1 CPU, and each droplet had Ubuntu x64 14.04 running as its operating system.
First I used script from freevps to test the download speed of the droplets and ran UnixBench to measure hardware performance.

I ran the download speed test twice, where the second test was performed around 40min after the first one. After the second test, I came up with some interesting results. (Take a look at the result from Singapore location).

UnixBench
I/O speed

NewYork speed test:

CPU model :  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630L v2 @ 2.40GHz
Number of cores : 1
CPU frequency :  2399.998 MHz
Total amount of ram : 490 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime :   1 min,
Download speed from CacheFly: 78.8MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 55.2MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 29.8MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 5.71MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 11.4MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 17.1MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 6.97MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 22.2MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 20.1MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 69.9MB/s
I/O speed :  481 MB/s

Conclusion:

Pros:
  • 5 locations.
  • SSD drives in standard config.
  • User friendly Control Panel.
  • IPv6 (not very important for most users).
  • Hourly billing.
  • Very flexible (upgrade/downgrade).
  • Ability to move between locations.
  • Backups.
  • Snapshots.
  • SSH keys.
  • DNS.
  • Private network.
  • 1Gb/s connection.
  • API.
Cons:
  • Only one IPv4.
  • You can’t create snapshots when your system is running (and to be honest it’s not easy).
  • No location in Australia and Japan (again…not very important for most users).
  • You can’t use startup scripts.
  • They claim its cloud but actually it isn’t. (I.e. no SAN storage, no fail-over, no redundancy, no firewall, etc.)
  • The minimum RAM for VPS you can order is 512MB. (I would prefer to start from 128MB for tiny VPS, unfortunately for KVM VPS it’s probably impossible.)
  • Upgrade/downgrade doesn’t work in all locations.
  • You can’t create a droplet from your own ISO.
  • No minimal distributions available.
  • No openVZ available. (KVM uses more memory than OpenVZ even though it has far better isolation.)
  • No public node uptime statistics.

So, would I recommend DigitalOcean ? My answer is Yes! Why ? Because DO is cheap and offers good service/price ratio. For $5/month you can get 512MB RAM and 20GB fast SSD space which, after some fine tuning, can easily handle a few thousands of daily visitors on your WordPress powered site(s). In addition to this, if you need VPS for testing purposes, you won’t find any better option than hourly billing (offered by DO). Simply, create, test and destroy :)

This post contains most important parts from my review. For full DigitalOcean review please visit our blog. It includes all UnixBench results and charts. Thank you so much.

Thanked by 2jar Lee

Comments

  • Hello and welcome to LET. Please read the rules before spamming your affiliate link all over the internet: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/15263/lowendtalk-rules-and-guidelines

    Your post has been flagged.

    Thanked by 2BuyAds rm_
  • @0xdragon said:
    Hello and welcome to LET. Please read the rules before spamming your affiliate link all over the internet: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/15263/lowendtalk-rules-and-guidelines

    Your post has been flagged.

    Ohh didn't know. Will fix that now. Thank you

  • @ckissi said:
    Ohh didn't know. Will fix that now. Thank you

    You still have a referral link in your post. Nice try.

  • @0xdragon said: You still have a referral link in your post. Nice try.

    The only link (2 links actually) in the post is the link to original post on our site where the full review is available. No affiliate link in our post. I looked on other reviews in "reviews" category and almost all of them contains affiliate link, so why are you so offensive ;) ?

  • Don't worry about him, he's on his mini mod attitude.

    @ckissi just mention that it's an affiliate link (don't hide it) and you should be fine.

    Thanked by 2Mark_R Brad
  • @Ishaq said:
    Don't worry about him, he's on his mini mod attitude.

    ckissi just mention that it's an affiliate link (don't hide it) and you should be fine.

    That works too.

    @ckissi said:
    The only link (2 links actually) in the post is the link to original post on our site where the full review is available. No affiliate link in our post. I looked on other reviews in "reviews" category and almost all of them contains affiliate link, so why are you so offensive ;) ?

    Did you notice that they actually told the user they were referral links? :)

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • ok guys, I will keep it as it's now. No hidden/direct affiliate link in the post now. Going for beer :)

  • DylanDylan Member
    edited February 2015

    I just read the rules over top to bottom and don't see any mention of affiliate links or referrals. Heck, @mpkossen's signature, which shows below that very post, has an unmarked affiliate link!

    What rule is the OP, and apparently mpkossen, breaking?

    Thanked by 1ckissi
  • SatelliteSatellite Member
    edited February 2015

    0xdragon said: Hello and welcome to LET. Please read the rules before spamming your affiliate link all over the internet:

    Get over yourself, dude.

    Welcome to the forums ckissi, and thanks for the review.

    Thanked by 1ckissi
  • I see the neighborhood watch crew jumped all over this one and prevented the death of anyone at the hands of an affiliate link.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran

    I looked on other reviews in "reviews" category and almost all of them contains affiliate link

    Ask yourself would you really bother writing all of this crap if not for that singular chance to post the affiliate link. No, I mean really. And if not, why wonder that some see right through your b/s and do not welcome your "review".

    Satellite said: Get over yourself, dude.

    Yeah don't get in the way of little people trying to make a few affiliate bucks, writing comprehensive and so infinitely useful "reviews of DigitalOcean", basically describing you in all detail that water is wet.

    Thanked by 10xdragon
  • rm_ said: Ask yourself would you really bother writing all of this crap if not for that singular chance to post the affiliate link.

    Ok man, we're all waiting for your review. Teach us ...

    Thanked by 1geekalot
  • LeeLee Veteran

    Affiliate links are ok providing they are not disguised. It's a decent review, I don't see why there should not be a little compensation in the form of an affiliate link that people can see and click only if they choose.

    Thanked by 3Dylan ckissi netomx
  • DylanDylan Member
    edited February 2015

    @W1V_Lee said:
    It's a decent review, I don't see why there should not be a little compensation in the form of an affiliate link that people can see and click only if they choose.

    That's how I feel too. Even if he did write this just to get his affiliate link out there, is that really such a bad thing? It seems like a small price to pay if it means we see more decent reviews instead of the usual useless five-minute impressions.

    Thanked by 1ckissi
  • W1V_Lee said: Affiliate links are ok providing they are not disguised. It's a decent review, I don't see why there should not be a little compensation in the form of an affiliate link that people can see and click only if they choose.

    Thank you. It's good to see one of the moderators also drop their opinion about this.

  • @Dylan said:
    That's how I feel too. Even if he did write this just to get his affiliate link out there, is that really such a bad thing? It seems like a small price to pay if it means we see more decent reviews instead of the usual useless five-minute impressions.

    Thank you. I tried to do my best when I wrote it. I use DO especially for my development purposes (Laravel PHP framework), so lot of droplets created over time.

  • @W1V_Lee said:
    Affiliate links are ok providing they are not disguised. It's a decent review, I don't see why there should not be a little compensation in the form of an affiliate link that people can see and click only if they choose.

    Yes, the reason I was unhappy about it was due to the fact there were multiple links and nothing telling the user they were referral links.

    @Satellite said:
    Welcome to the forums ckissi, and thanks for the review.

    All I have to say is "lol".

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • LeeLee Veteran

    0xdragon said: Yes, the reason I was unhappy about it was due to the fact there were multiple links and nothing telling the user they were referral links.

    I did not see it before it was edited but I just checked in the dashboard, had it just been the one line where the affiliate was declared fine. But you were right to flag it for the others.

    Thanked by 10xdragon
  • I know people here don't like vultr but looking at this review I see a few places where they do things better. They have a startup script option and you can install using your own ISO. The unix bench scores I got from a bunch of different locations there were consistently over 2k.

    What I would like to see now from these hourly VPS providers is the option for 256MB RAM and 128MB RAM ones.

  • @Abdussamad said:
    I know people here don't like vultr but looking at this review I see a few places where they do things better. They have a startup script option and you can install using your own ISO. The unix bench scores I got from a bunch of different locations there were consistently over 2k.

    What I would like to see now from these hourly VPS providers is the option for 256MB RAM and 128MB RAM ones.

    This is DigitalOcean, not Vultr ;-)

  • A good start

  • AbdussamadAbdussamad Member
    edited February 2015

    0xdragon said: This is DigitalOcean, not Vultr ;-)

    Yes I know. I'm comparing vultr with digital ocean and saying that the former is better in certain respects.

  • Abdussamad said: Yes I know. I'm comparing vultr with digital ocean and saying that the former is better in certain respects.

    Should probably look at the existing threads or make your own if you want to compare the two. This is just a review, and a nicely layout one at that...

  • @Abdussamad said:
    I know people here don't like vultr but looking at this review I see a few places where they do things better. They have a startup script option and you can install using your own ISO. The unix bench scores I got from a bunch of different locations there were consistently over 2k.

    What I would like to see now from these hourly VPS providers is the option for 256MB RAM and 128MB RAM ones.

    What's wrong with vultr? I'm using them now and I'm actually thinking about moving over one of my linode plans to vultr to save a couple of bucks a month and because the performance and uptime has been amazing for me.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited February 2015

    The problem with affiliate links in reviews is that they are very likely to affect the content itself, i.e. the reviewer will present a whiter-and-fluffier view of the host than he otherwise would, because he has an interior motive wanting people to sign up through his links.

    The problem with trying to hide affiliate links (or not marking them very clearly), is that it means the reviewer has jumped at the unique chance to demonstrate to a many thousand audience of readers, that he is placing his greed to make a small chunk of change from the audience, above things such as honesty and integrity.

    The problem with reviews of DO, is that everyone already knows what DO is, so when you see "A review of DigitalOcean" in the forum thread list ("A review of water: it is wet"), you can be instantly certain even without clicking, the only purpose of that review will be just the same old affiliate links peddling, covered by tons of fluffy b/s.

  • Master_BoMaster_Bo Member
    edited February 2015

    TL;DR; nothing especially new. Too many details which are common knowledge now.

    It would be interesting to learn something that's not that common:

    • price of backups, their amount available (and where are they kept?)
    • private networking: its efficiency, samples of usage (have you tried to build a cluster, for example?)
    • useful API-using scripts

    and so on. Whatever I saw above is just copy/paste of a kind. Nothing personal.

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