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Avoid using Digital Ocean(DO). We had very very bad experience with them, file-system corruption, hardware failures. And we are still unable to recover all ou

by pajju 13y ago

Avoid using Digital Ocean(DO). We had very very bad experience with them, file-system corruption, hardware failures. And we are still unable to recover all our data. And so far, no hope! They don't answer any of the questions properly, my team is very upset. We felt, they don't have much technical expertise in managing servers. DO might be okay for testing and learning, but never use them for any production setups. Update: we are still struggling to get our data back. No hopes so far. We shall write a detailed blog post on the whole experience with Digital Ocean.

jenius 13y ago
On the contrary, if you just need a box to tinker with sysops stuff and learn, digital ocean is a fantastic solution. Cheap and I've never had a bad experience or anything unreliable. I can't speak to using it to store lots of not-backed-up files or running a gigantic production server, but for learning about syops it works great, to get back to the purpose of this article.
- samsnelling 13y ago
  That's kind of where I'm at right now. Normally all of my side projects are hosted on PAAS (Appfog is my current choice, but we will see since their acquisition). I really just want to practice setting up and tearing down configurations. I think DO will be a good choice for this.
  - jenius 13y ago
    Was in that exact same spot a couple months ago and did the same thing. I was eyeing DO for a while and one day folded and paid the (really no brainer) $5. I've learned a ton since then and it has been absolutely worth it for me. I actually transitioned all my apps off any other PAAS platforms (mostly nodejitsu, timed nicely with their 3x price increase) and am now hosting everything I run off a single $5 digital ocean box, which actually is saving me a bit of money, and deploys are a lot smoother. The company I work at, Carrot, is also hosting all of carrot.is on a $5 DO box, including this article, which has had no issues coping with the 600+ people on site at a time that have come with this HN blitz.
Adirael 13y ago
My experience is the complete opposite. They've responded fast and helped when I needed them. They're cheap and fast enough. I'm not too worried about data losses tho, we do regular offsite backups.
samsnelling 13y ago
Wow that sounds like it was quite an issue. Where are you thinking about migrating to? IMO, I can't really trust Linode anymore. MediaTemple is stupid expensive for VPS... Maybe SoftLayer? I've heard mixed reviews.
- pajju 13y ago
  We are moving to SoftLayer or Hetzner. They do more granular level monitoring to detect faulty hardware early and replace them faster. Also greater technical support, having used both of them previously.
umsm 13y ago
My experience is that every host has it's pros and cons. I never trust these types of statements. Just because you didn't perform backups, it doesn't mean that you should blame the host. Even the best-of-the-best hosts will fail, but thing to consider is how fast can they resolve issues and are they proactively trying to improve.

by pajju 13y ago

jenius 13y ago

On the contrary, if you just need a box to tinker with sysops stuff and learn, digital ocean is a fantastic solution. Cheap and I've never had a bad experience or anything unreliable. I can't speak to using it to store lots of not-backed-up files or running a gigantic production server, but for learning about syops it works great, to get back to the purpose of this article.

samsnelling 13y ago
That's kind of where I'm at right now. Normally all of my side projects are hosted on PAAS (Appfog is my current choice, but we will see since their acquisition). I really just want to practice setting up and tearing down configurations. I think DO will be a good choice for this.
- jenius 13y ago
  Was in that exact same spot a couple months ago and did the same thing. I was eyeing DO for a while and one day folded and paid the (really no brainer) $5. I've learned a ton since then and it has been absolutely worth it for me. I actually transitioned all my apps off any other PAAS platforms (mostly nodejitsu, timed nicely with their 3x price increase) and am now hosting everything I run off a single $5 digital ocean box, which actually is saving me a bit of money, and deploys are a lot smoother. The company I work at, Carrot, is also hosting all of carrot.is on a $5 DO box, including this article, which has had no issues coping with the 600+ people on site at a time that have come with this HN blitz.

Adirael 13y ago

My experience is the complete opposite. They've responded fast and helped when I needed them. They're cheap and fast enough. I'm not too worried about data losses tho, we do regular offsite backups.

samsnelling 13y ago

Wow that sounds like it was quite an issue. Where are you thinking about migrating to? IMO, I can't really trust Linode anymore. MediaTemple is stupid expensive for VPS... Maybe SoftLayer? I've heard mixed reviews.

pajju 13y ago
We are moving to SoftLayer or Hetzner. They do more granular level monitoring to detect faulty hardware early and replace them faster. Also greater technical support, having used both of them previously.

umsm 13y ago

My experience is that every host has it's pros and cons. I never trust these types of statements. Just because you didn't perform backups, it doesn't mean that you should blame the host. Even the best-of-the-best hosts will fail, but thing to consider is how fast can they resolve issues and are they proactively trying to improve.