> We don’t charge for bandwidth. You’ll save a ton of money with our network and it's easy to get started. No need to figure out how much bandwidth you’re going to use, whether that traffic is in or out. Set your site up and pay no extra if it takes off.
Whenever I see statement like this I'm not sure whether I should trust it; what if I use 1 TB/month, would I get kicked out for "using too much bandwidth"? What's your real soft cap?
Honestly we just didn't prioritize traffic accounting as other features were a priority =]
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I'm also a little nervous about the unlimited bandwidth. That seems like it will attract bulk data movers that could affect my traffic. There is no mention of fairness, link utilization, or any kind of traffic allocation policy. I could benchmark it today, but that doesn't help me tomorrow.
Still, interesting enough to add to the list of options with the next project.
As for unlimited bandwidth that is something we offered because we didn't have time to write bandwidth accounting and wanted to focus development on the core service more, we figured that was more important for us in the short run.
We will be switching to paid bandwidth in the future and offering bundled packages with each server and then a simple flat per GB price after that.
Excellent work, DigitalOcean!
We do not offer monthly plans, everything is on a per-usage basis except we default to a monthly price to keep billing simpler for our users, so that was just a misunderstanding on billing.
As for DNS we offered it as a new service in labs, because we were testing it with our customers and improving it based on their feedback. And Im sure if you opened up tickets regarding it, it helped us track down bugs.
I think it all came down to the numbers of cores where Linode have four, where I think I only had access to one on DigitalOcean.
Promo Code: SSDPOWER20
I really don't like "free trials" that require you to have a cc on file, with the promise of not charging it. Believe me, if I decide to build anything meaningful on this platform, I will transition to a paid account.
Is the free trial really only 3 hours if I don't give you my cc information?
We are still deciding whether to roll out first some sort of block/tiered NFS storage that can be mounted or something API driven like S3, so feedback is welcome.
I'm about to sign up for the 2GB box since my 512MB VPS at Linode isn't enough memory to really make Play framework fly and upgrading gets very expensive fast.
I'm running a small Zarafa based mail server on a 2GB plan with Linode and it could do with more RAM. Perfect opportunity to try out a 4GB "droplet" :)
AFAICT, you can't:
- Choose different kernel images
- Resize or alter the disk and swap partitions
- Setup a private network interface
- Specify what action to take if the vm hangs (watchdog)
- Run IPv6
- See machine mem, cpu and bandwidth usage from within the web panel
- Setup IP white lists and security email alerts
- See the progress of queued jobs (e.g. taking a vm snapshot)
So, it's fast but pretty basic. For the price I think it's a great deal and I'm sure some (or all) of the missing features above will be added over time as the service matures.
Edit: I've just discovered you do get a progress bar when taking a snapshot but only if you access the snapshot feature from within the server panel (rather than doing it via the "Images" link on the main left hand menu). They also mention the vm gets powered off while the snapshot is taken but mine stayed up...
If they are the same model and age, they tend to fail at the same time.
You get more than a single drive failing at the same time = data loss.
(the 100 pushups is darn impressive though)
We do provide snapshots and backups and always recommend that customers backup their servers and take care of ensuring that they have access to their important content in case of any failure.
But maybe we can do the impossible if we can do 100 pushups ;)
(just ask someone on OVH)
Great job guys.
Everyone has growing pains we are no exception, and today every little hiccup is public, but it's good because it makes the service overall more resilient so we welcome all feedback positive and negative because it ultimately leads to a better service for our customers.
Really?
I opened ticket 4740 and got the following response:
We currently do not offer a way to update or change the server kernel.
We often build up our features based on user requests. You can submit and
vote for features you would like to here:
http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean
Thanks,
EtelEDIT: we have resolved this problem. You can now add your hostname
The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.
Then I got a redirect loop. :(
Our focus is always on ensuring that virtual servers that customers run are unaffected, but its great to get a nice traffic spike to the front-end to also see real world usage and how we should be updating things for the future.
We should have spun up some more web servers to handle the load, as an IaaS provider most of the time you are serving little front-end traffic, but lesson learned. :)
Thanks! I will enjoy trying out the service, and I will sign a couple students up this afternoon.
When bandwidth pricing is introduced it will be in line with the pricing that we have for SSD/512MB servers so it will still be one of the lowest in the industry, that much is guaranteed.
Even if you mean it in all sincerity, when I see that, what I assume is that there's a secret hidden limit, and I can't know what it is. So that means the site is instantly useless, no matter how good of a deal it might have otherwise been!
An thought-experiment example I've given otherplaces - Let's say I start a site called DevUrandom.org - It has an API which pushes out network-limited random bits.
I fire up computers around the world, and have them filling up their crypto systems using DevUrandom.org, at 100Mbit/sec.
Is that OK? What if I love the service so much, I spin up 100 such boxes? etc, etc.
It's not that your service doesn't sound awesome, it's just that if I'm going to rely on it, I don't want it pulled away for arbitrary reasons, because I hit a double-secret limit. I'd rather know what's OK and what's not OK going in.
Further, it aligns our interests- If I'm paying you, for the things that cost you money, I have an incentive to minimize them! If you have to pay for it, and I don't, I'll do whatever's easiest for me, and not bother spending time/money to reduce bandwidth.
(A classic example of this is seen in with Landlords/Tenants - Tenants pay for Electricity, but Landlords generally buy appliances. This means that Landlords have little incentive to buy energy efficient appliances.. They won't be paying for the energy anyway)
Great job!
It also lines up with the continuing improvements in server density which compensates for the increased costs in power usage and rack space so it just encourages good behavior in rotating out older hardware.