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Bring Your Custom Image to DigitalOcean
- petercooper 8y agoA neat feature, though it'd be really nice to get the sort-of opposite and be able to easily download our droplet snapshots or backups to be able to store or run locally as needed.
- zatkin 8y agoThis is probably not possible because they want you to stay on their platform.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoThat would mean it is possible, just deliberately blocked.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stevekemp 8y agoLots of hosts don't want to let you do that, so you can't port your images to other hosts. That said you can use rsync to transfer the contents of a remote system to a local-snapshot if you wish. It won't cope with changes made during the run of the rsync, but if you coordinate you can migrate easily with this approach if you wish.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoActually I have used this method for cross-country migration of vms to a new datacenter. You have to exclude /dev and /proc at a minimum, then run rsync twice or more. Downtime was less than a minute, the time spent to reboot the vm and ensure it came up properly.
- stevekemp 8y agoI've done it myself, and have the process pretty well memorized now. As you say if you want to rsync "/" you need to exclude /proc, /sys, & /dev. Then on the new install you want to remove references to MAC address of any NIC that udev might have saved, update the hostname, IP, and similar static details. Finally ensure that your bootloader is correct, and that you don't refer to outdated fileystem UIDs, by either updating them or using device-names instead.
- otriv 8y agoThis is great news for making use of OpenBSD and other non-native OS. Most hosting I've used doesn't support OpenBSD or any other *BSD.
- alwillis 8y agoDigital Ocean has supported FreeBSD for quite a while.
- zatkin 8y agoFreeBSD and OpenBSD are different OSes though.
- alwillis 8y agoThe point I was trying to make is that if DigitalOcean supports FreeBSD, it wouldn’t take much to support OpenBSD if they wanted to. I believe there’s a work-around where you can install OpenBSD on DigitalOcean using FreeBSD to bootstrap the process.
- jedimastert 8y agoBSD is one of those things Ive heard of but know nothing about. What are the pros and cons of choosing BSD over something like Linux?
- canhascodez 8y agoBSD has a great firewall, it's usually more integrated than Linux (for certain definitions of "integrated"), and some argue that it's more secure/stable. Some argue that the BSD license is superior. Hardware support and software availability tend to be more hit-or-miss. N.B.: I do not use BSD.
- alwillis 8y agoI run my web servers using FreeBSD on Digital Ocean. Not to get into a whole thing about it, but Linux just refers to the kernel; various groups package the kernel with user-land stuff to create distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, etc. FreeBSD is a unified operating system that’s developed, tested and released as a unit; they take responsibility for the entire stack and architectures: amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64, armv6, and aarch64. In general, FreeBSD (and to my knowledge, the other BSDs) are very stable, memory efficient, supports high throughput, and are quite secure. Famously I suppose, Netflix runs their entire infrastructure on FreeBSD and contributes back lots of code. The base of Apple’s macOS is a FreeBSD variant called Darwin. The narrative has been that FreeBSD is fabulous for servers and the like but not as good for desktops and laptops, due to it not having as broad driver support for the latest PC hardware. My understanding that’s starting to change with BSDs specifically focused on desktop use; see https://trueos.org https://trueos.org. There’s a lot more; see https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/whyusefreebsd.html https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/whyusefreebsd.html
- 15DCFA8F 8y agoWhy only ext3/4 filesystems? Why not XFS?
- alexforster 8y agoThey likely need to be able to mount your filesystem for some of their features to work. That's how they can reset your root password, write out network configs, etc etc.
- Operyl 8y agoNetwork configs are written out via cloud-init last I checked, hence the requirements on one of the variants. Also: You must add an SSH key when creating a Droplets from a custom image. These Droplets have password authentication disabled by default and it’s not possible to use the control panel to generate or reset the root password. https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/custom-images/overview/#limits https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/custom-images/overv...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- donatj 8y agoOh that's so lame. I wanted to run something exotic like BeOS or Plan 9. PoorMan in BeOS was the first public webserver I ever ran! Followed shortly by IIS on Windows 2k... Which should also be an option.
- nullcipher 8y agoCan we share custom images with others?
- simplify 8y agoI wonder if this is compatible with unikernals like MirageOS? https://mirage.io https://mirage.io
- hamandcheese 8y ago> Any Linux OS that supports ext3/4 file systems and has cloudinit 0.7.7, cloudbase-init, coreos-cloudinit, ignition, or bsd-cloudinit So my guess is no.
- EB66 8y agoI don't really see how this is newsworthy... I've been purchasing virtualization and cloud services from a variety of smaller providers for years -- without fail, all of them are more than happy to provision custom images. My current provider, Reprise Hosting, accepts custom images without extra fees and without caveats to their SLA.
- moondev 8y agoIt's a blog announcing a new feature for their platform. It's not like they are taking an ad out on the New York times.
- craftyguy 8y agoYou can still advertise without taking an ad out in the New York Times, and this post is clearly advertising.
- lightwin 8y agoIts their own blog. I think its ok to be writing about every feature they build on the blog even if its a simple feature.
- TheDong 8y agoYes. The question is if it should be on HN or not.
- pathseeker 8y agoWell tell everyone to stop upvoting it at the next meeting.
- penagwin 8y agoI don't use Digital Ocean currently, but I have before and like to know what they're up to. If not many people find it interesting it won't stay on the front page for long anyway.
- tuananh 8y agoi remember DO has been promising to deliver custom image since like more than 5 years ago. glad to see it finally happens
- jagger27 8y agoFaaaaantastic. I've been bootstrapping Alpine on top of Debian for a while now.
- henkdevries 8y agoUsing regular Linux tools you are even able to bootstrap Windows on Digital Ocean (or any kvm vps): https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Windows_7_Installer_on_KVM_Linux_VPS_Digital_Ocean.html https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Windows_7_Installer_on_KVM_Li... This could be done without custom images. Now it will be easier.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoExcellent. This should mean no more instability with DigitalOcean as a deploy target for NixOps.
- tyingq 8y agoVultr also offers this, and has for years. https://www.vultr.com/features/uploadiso/ https://www.vultr.com/features/uploadiso/
- gradschool 8y agoIf anyone from DO is reading, automated deployment and administration with Nixops is at the top of my wish list.
- jolmg 8y agoThough I haven't used DigitalOcean, I always thought it to be pretty equivalent to Linode, being a direct competitor and all. I'm kind of surprised this is a new feature for DO. I installed NixOS on a Linode server a couple years back, and Linode has no explicit support for it. Am I to understand that it was impossible to install custom OSes in DO before, or does this simply make it easier?