{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-author-jsx","path":"/blog/author/digitalocean/9/","result":{"data":{"prismic":{"allFeaturedblogs":{"edges":[{"node":{"featured_blogs_enabled":true,"heading":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Featured posts","spans":[]}],"featured_blog_1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":395},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6d8d81b1-971a-4313-b033-b4e125cb14a0_MondoDB-blog-header-790x395.PNG?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Introducing DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB – a fully managed, database as a service for modern apps","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-29","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"MongoDB is one of the most popular databases, and it’s ideal for apps that evolve rapidly and need to handle huge volumes of data and traffic. It offers advantages like flexible document schemas, code-native data access, change-friendly design, and easy horizontal scale-out.","spans":[{"start":22,"end":44,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://db-engines.com/en/ranking","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"However, building and maintaining MongoDB clusters from the ground up can be a huge undertaking. Developers often complain that they have to spend their valuable time and resources on database management. Well, we’ve been listening and have some great news: accessing and managing MongoDB on DigitalOcean just got a lot simpler!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce that DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB is now in General Availability. Managed MongoDB is a fully managed, database as a service (DBaaS) offering from DigitalOcean, built in partnership with and certified by MongoDB Inc. It provides you all the technical capabilities that make MongoDB so beloved in the developer community. Together we have ensured that you will get access to all the latest releases of the MongoDB document database as they become available.","spans":[{"start":32,"end":91,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases-mongodb/"}},{"start":230,"end":241,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB simplifies the MongoDB administration. Developers of all skill levels, even those who do not have prior experience in databases, can spin up MongoDB clusters in just a few minutes. We handle the provisioning, managing, scaling, updates, backups, and security of your MongoDB clusters, allowing you to offload the complex, time consuming –yet critical – database administration tasks to us. This empowers you to focus on what really matters: building awesome apps.","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"height":113,"width":200,"embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvHQSV7jnKA","type":"video","version":"1.0","title":"Create a MongoDB Database on DigitalOcean","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","provider_name":"YouTube","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","cache_age":null,"thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NvHQSV7jnKA/hqdefault.jpg","thumbnail_width":480,"thumbnail_height":360,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/NvHQSV7jnKA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"heading2","text":"Benefits of Managed MongoDB","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Easy set up and maintenance: We create the database clusters for you. Simply choose the cluster configuration (e.g., memory, disk size, number of nodes, etc.), and the data center in which you want to host the database. Follow a few simple steps and your database cluster will be up and running in a matter of minutes. You can spin up clusters using the cloud control panel, CLI, or API.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":28,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic daily backups with point in time recovery: Data is one of the most important assets of an app, so it’s critical to backup your database. We take backups of your entire clusters automatically on a daily basis, for free. We also provide a point in time recovery for 7 days, that way if things go wrong due to human error, machine error, or some combination of both, you can easily restore the database as it was at any point in the previous 7 days. \n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":52,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Automatic updates and access to latest MongoDB releases: You get access to MongoDB 4.4. This is the latest release of MongoDB and comes packed with numerous enhancements like hedged reads, rust, and swift drivers. Since we have developed Managed MongoDB in partnership with MongoDB Inc, you will always get access to new releases as they become available. With Managed MongoDB, the updates happen automatically. Just select a date and time for the updates and we take care of the rest. This makes it easy to stay up to date with MongoDB releases without disrupting your business.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":56,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":169,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.mongodb.com/new","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"High availability with automated failover: If your database goes down, it can take down the entire app, leading to bad customer experiences. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily minimize the downtime for your database and make it highly available with standby nodes. Standby nodes add redundancy, so if for example the primary node fails, the standby node is immediately promoted to primary and begins serving requests while we provision a replacement standby node in the background.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":42,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Scale up easily to handle traffic spikes: As your app gains traction and the usage grows, it’s important to have a database that can keep up with the increased demand. With Managed MongoDB, you can easily scale up the size of database nodes when needed.\n\n","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Secure by default: Since data is critical, it also needs to be secure. We encrypt data at rest with LUKS and in transit with SSL. When you create a new cluster, it’s placed in a VPC network by default that provides a more secure connection between resources. You can also restrict access to your nodes to prevent brute-force password and denial-of-service attacks.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":18,"type":"strong"},{"start":178,"end":189,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/vpc/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The need for Managed Databases","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean’s mission is to simplify cloud computing so developers, startups, and SMBs can spend more time building software that changes the world. While databases are a critical component to any application, building, maintaining, and scaling them can be complex and time consuming. For developers that are building apps for their business, database administration is often not a core focus area. But it’s quite common to find developers that write the code and then also roll up their sleeves to maintain databases. Such users would rather offload the tedious database administration and focus their limited time and energy on building and enhancing their apps. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this in mind, we introduced Managed Databases a couple of years ago and are excited to add Managed MongoDB to our portfolio. With this release, DigitalOcean Managed Databases now supports the following engines:","spans":[{"start":33,"end":50,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/87745cc1-1c5f-4463-b104-104b7fc30dc7_managed-databases-logos.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":849,"height":104}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB launch comes on the heels of DigitalOcean App Platform, a modern, reimagined PaaS (Platform as a Service) that we released a few months ago. App Platform makes it very easy to build, deploy, and scale apps and static sites. You can deploy code by simply pointing to your GitHub and GitLab repos, and App Platform will do all the heavy lifting of managing infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies. App Platform, along with Managed Databases, helps fulfill DigitalOcean’s mission by empowering developers, startups, and SMBs to focus more on their apps, and less on the underlying infrastructure and databases.","spans":[{"start":45,"end":70,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"How Managed MongoDB works","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean provides you with various compute options to build your apps like:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Droplets: On-demand, Linux virtual machines suitable for production business applications and personal passion projects.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":8,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes with automatic scaling, upgrades, and a free control plane.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":23,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"DigitalOcean App Platform: A fully managed Platform as a Service.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":25,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No matter which compute option you choose to build your apps, you can easily add Managed MongoDB to it. In addition to this, Managed MongoDB also integrates with the Node.js 1-Click App from DigitalOcean Marketplace making it a lot easier to build Node.js apps.","spans":[{"start":166,"end":215,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/nodejs"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Simple, predictable pricing","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Just like all DigitalOcean products, Managed MongoDB provides simple, predictable pricing that allows you to control costs and prevent any surprise bills. You can spin up a database cluster for just $15/month, or a highly available three-node replica set for $45/month. Click here for more information.","spans":[{"start":270,"end":301,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#managed-databases"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Regional availability","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Managed MongoDB is currently available in the following regions:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"NYC3 (New York, USA)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"FRA1 (Frankfurt, Germany)","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"AMS3 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We will be making Managed Mongo available in other regions soon. Please check out the release notes for most up to date information on regional availability.","spans":[{"start":86,"end":99,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/"}}]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Join us at deploy, DigitalOcean’s virtual user conference","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today we have deploy, DigitalOcean’s signature user conference, which focuses on celebrating, educating, and connecting awesome builders from all over the world.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":20,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/home"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out the keynote session from DigitalOcean's CEO, Yancey Spruill, in which he talks about where we're headed as a company and shares some exciting product updates. His keynote will be followed by sessions from community members, engineers, customers, and other experts that are building technologies and businesses powered by the cloud. With live Q&A and an active Discord server, there’s ample opportunity to engage and learn something new. Click here to attend the deploy conference.","spans":[{"start":14,"end":69,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://deploy.digitalocean.com/agenda/session/552806"}},{"start":347,"end":384,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy-discord"}},{"start":461,"end":489,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://do.co/deploy"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are also launching a hackathon for DigitalOcean Managed MongoDB. Learn how you can participate, submit an app and get a t-shirt.","spans":[{"start":24,"end":66,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/mongodb-hackathon"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you will give Managed MongoDB a try. Here are some sample datasets and sample apps that you can use to kick the tires. Check out the docs and let us know what you think!","spans":[{"start":22,"end":43,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/databases/new?engine=mongodb"}},{"start":59,"end":90,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/do-community/mongodb-resources","target":"_blank"}},{"start":141,"end":145,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/databases/mongodb/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean and Managed MongoDB in your business, please feel free to contact our sales team.","spans":[{"start":120,"end":142,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"André Bearfield","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Director of Product Management","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"André Bearfield","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":553,"height":547},"alt":"André Bearfield","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fdc7c85186f0a850b04083e1d4306bd1c19772e8_andre-bearfield.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"andre-bearfield"}},"_meta":{"uid":"introducing-digitalocean-managed-mongodb"}},"featured_blog_2":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":"Droplet Console","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/710499ae-78cc-4179-afc1-15793637b200_DODX3727-790x400-logo-2.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Securely connect to Droplets with SSH key pairs using a new Droplet Console","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-08-10","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"The famous author Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.\" This is something we truly believe at DigitalOcean, and we always strive to enhance our products based on customer feedback.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With this goal in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Droplet Console that will make it much easier to connect to your Droplets securely. The new Droplet Console provides one-click SSH access to your Droplets through a native-like SSH/Terminal experience. It also eliminates the need for a password or manual configuration of SSH keys. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that the new Droplet Console is now available to all Droplet users.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Why you should be using Secure Shell (SSH) ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Password-based security is notoriously insecure due to password fatigue and the overuse of passwords such as ‘123456’. Secure Shell or SSH is a network communication protocol that solves this by using passwordless solutions for encryption, enabling two computers to communicate and securely share data. At a high level, SSH works by creating cryptographic key pairs consisting of a public and private key, which are computer generated and stored separately to ensure their security. ","spans":[{"start":80,"end":117,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/most-common-passwords/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"SSH has become the default encryption protocol for many industries, but it was difficult to use SSH keys with DigitalOcean’s current Recovery (VNC) console, which is why we developed our new Droplet Console. The new Droplet Console is backed by an agent that security supervises the key pair, while also providing one-click SSH access to our users. You can see the full list of features below.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The new Droplet Console: More time saving, less time wasting ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is for everyone who is looking to build fast, secure apps and avoid hassles with SSH access & usability issues.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In addition to easier SSH access, the new Droplet Console comes with:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Copy/paste text: Instead of typing lengthy key pairs and text manually, you can use copy/paste to save time. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-color support: Multi-color support makes the console more useful and intuitive, and breaks the conventional standard appearance which is black text on a white background. ","spans":[{"start":0,"end":41,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Multi-language support: DigitalOcean’s new Droplet Console supports multiple languages, meaning you can now type and view any content in any language that is supported by UTF-8","spans":[{"start":0,"end":24,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"OS/images supported: Linux distributions (Ubuntu(16.04 - 20.04), Fedora (32 & 33), Debian (9), CentOS (7.6 & 8.3), CentOS 8 Stream, Rocky Linux and Marketplace images.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":20,"type":"strong"},{"start":148,"end":159,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The new Droplet Console is available by default on any new Droplets you spin up. You can also enable it manually on older Droplets. Click here to learn more!","spans":[{"start":132,"end":157,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/connect-with-console/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check out this short walkthrough video that shows the new Droplet Console in action: ","spans":[]},{"type":"embed","oembed":{"type":"video","embed_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt7QihVuxiE","title":"Access Your Droplet Terminal Through the Web Console","provider_name":"YouTube","thumbnail_url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qt7QihVuxiE/hqdefault.jpg","provider_url":"https://www.youtube.com/","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_url":"https://www.youtube.com/c/Digitalocean","height":113,"width":200,"version":"1.0","thumbnail_height":360,"thumbnail_width":480,"html":"<iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qt7QihVuxiE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you’re excited about the new Droplet Console. You’re welcome to spin some Droplets up right now, and try out the new Droplet Console – why wait?","spans":[{"start":72,"end":103,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Happy coding!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Harsh Banwait, Senior Product Manager","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Harsh Banwait","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":399},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e83ff690-b20c-4d88-a2b6-57e562558cd6_download.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"harsh-banwait"}},"_meta":{"uid":"new-droplet-console-ssh-support"}},"featured_blog_3":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Blog","_linkType":"Link.document","blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":790,"height":400},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/588e28d3-d41e-480b-937b-8c3b19201f6e_DODX3568-790x400-Blog.jpg?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"How to scale your SaaS product without breaking the bank","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2021-06-22","blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"These days, if you are in the business of software, chances are you are delivering or plan to deliver your services using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. A combination of internet-based delivery, subscription-based pricing, and low-friction product experiences have made SaaS solutions valuable tools for their users, and an excellent vehicle for software builders looking to distribute their products.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These factors have made SaaS solutions ubiquitous; SaaS is the largest segment in the public cloud market, and is used to provide functionality ranging from personal finance apps for consumers, to productivity software for businesses, and even tools and services for software developers themselves to compose their applications and simplify their workflows. It is also not uncommon to find micro-SaaS applications being built for specific industries such as retail, job functions such as accounting or marketing, or tasks such as event management. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The best thing about this SaaS wave has been that it has allowed a new generation of software builders to build and monetize applications and participate in the digital economy. Previously, you had to be a big company with lots of resources, name recognition and distribution networks to successfully sell software products. Now, irrespective of whether you are a single person working on a passion project, a small team of developers in a startup, or a small and medium-sized business (SMB), the SaaS model enables you to express your ideas in the form of software and deliver them to customers anywhere in the world.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"The unique challenges of building SaaS solutions","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Despite the opportunities that come with the widespread adoption of SaaS products, software builders still have to answer key questions in their journey to building successful SaaS products. Understanding what customers to target, features to prioritize, how to price your product, and how to acquire customers are all critical questions to figure out while you are also doing the important job of actually building and operating the product. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Writing the code, testing, deployment, monitoring the usage in production, and ensuring that your apps are able to handle the additional demand when customer base and usage grows are all essential and time-consuming tasks.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, being able to test multiple ideas, pivot, and double down on the ideas that actually work is critical in early stages of SaaS development. Once growth comes, it is equally important to scale up without compromising on performance or reliability. Needless to say, all of this needs to be economically viable as well, since not everyone has the resources of large SaaS providers like Salesforce or Adobe.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Cloud Computing enables builders but also poses challenges","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, for the act of building and operating your apps, cloud computing can help take some load off your shoulders. Unless you have the scale and resources of Facebook, chances are you are not going to set up your own data centers to host the computing infrastructure that powers your SaaS company. Public cloud infrastructure providers can bring great value to SaaS builders by providing on-demand computing services with usage-based pricing. However, just like how the legacy software companies weren't built for the SaaS model, the early (and big) cloud computing services were not optimized for the unique needs of small SaaS building teams. ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Smaller SaaS teams face challenges with large cloud computing providers, including:","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Too many technology options","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There are just too many options for tech stacks on which to build your SaaS - programming languages, application development frameworks, libraries, runtime environments, architectural patterns, and deployment models - and the list is growing by the day.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Complexity of cloud computing services","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Even when you have decided on a technology stack, there is a lot of cloud vendor-specific terminology you need to learn and heavy lifting you need to do to build on the cloud, not all of which contributes to making your SaaS applications successful.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading4","text":"Unpredictable costs","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The experimentation necessary in early stages of SaaS development, as well as the scaling of applications required during the growth phase, call for affordable and predictable pricing from your cloud provider. The last thing SaaS teams want is surprising and indecipherable bills from your cloud provider. Unfortunately, smaller businesses often experience unpredictable costs with cloud providers who are busy serving only the large enterprises.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"DigitalOcean provides a simple, cost effective solution for SaaS builders","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fortunately, at DigitalOcean we have a laser focus on small software development teams, who are trying to build the next generation of applications. Today, DigitalOcean customers are already building SaaS applications which serve all kinds of customers.","spans":[{"start":191,"end":217,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/saas/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe SaaS builders should focus on building apps that power their business, and not spend their valuable time on managing infrastructure. That is exactly what we have been able to enable through our intuitive products that are built for scale and reliability.","spans":[{"start":205,"end":223,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/products/"}}]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Vidazoo is an advertising technology company specializing in video streaming and serving. It serves video ads to thousands of websites and handles close to 10 billion requests per day. \n\n“We are as much a data company as an adtech company. Our business relies on speedy and accurate data processing at massive scale. DigitalOcean provides us the perfect set of tools to operate our SaaS business profitably, while not making us feel the need to become full time system administrators. We plan to move a lot of our apps to DigitalOcean App Platform and other fully managed products.” - Roman Svichar, CTO of Vidazoo","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://vidazoo.com/"}},{"start":187,"end":583,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe in meeting customers where they are. If they already have an understanding of cloud infrastructure technologies, they should be able to leverage that knowledge and get started with our products without any further ramp up.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Whatfix is an enterprise SaaS provider that offers a digital adoption platform to businesses. The company helps enterprises gain the full value of their investments in enterprise applications by providing real-time, interactive, and contextual guidance to users of those applications. \n\n“What we really love about the DigitalOcean platform is the ease of use. We feel like we know infrastructure and can handle most of the configuration and management. What we needed from a cloud was not bells and whistles but efficiency and reliability. DigitalOcean provides us a platform to build our apps and then gets out of the way. Just how we like it.” - Achyuth Krishna, Director of Engineering of Whatfix","spans":[{"start":0,"end":7,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://whatfix.com/blog/driving-the-future-now-were-excited-to-announce-our-90-million-series-d-funding/"}},{"start":287,"end":648,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We understand that scaling while maintaining reliability of applications and profitability of business is important, so we provide robust solutions which minimize downtime.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Centra is a SaaS-based e-commerce platform for global direct-to-consumer and wholesale e-commerce brands. Centra provides a powerful e-commerce backend that lets brands build pixel-perfect, custom designed, online flagship stores. \n\n“How do we enable our customers to create differentiated online experiences? How do we ensure their e-commerce apps stay up and running at all times? How do we scale on-demand when traffic grows or new customers come in? These are the questions that we ask ourselves every day. Thankfully, we have a partner in DigitalOcean that provides just the platform to answer those questions enabling us to guarantee 99.9% uptime for our clients.” - Martin Jensen, CEO of Centra","spans":[{"start":0,"end":6,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://centra.com/"}},{"start":233,"end":673,"type":"em"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These are just a few examples of SaaS businesses finding success on DigitalOcean. We are constantly amazed by the creativity and innovation that software builders are utilizing our platform for. If you are interested in learning more about product updates, technical deep-dives and best practices for building SaaS products and businesses, please contact us to learn how we can help you get started. ","spans":[{"start":340,"end":357,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Come build with DigitalOcean!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Looking to migrate your SaaS to DigitalOcean? Leverage free infrastructure credits, robust training, and technical support to ensure a worry-free migration.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"strong"},{"start":0,"end":156,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/?utmmedium=blog","target":"_blank"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Raman Sharma","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Vice President, Product & Programs Marketing","spans":[]}],"tags":[{"tag1":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Tag","tag":"Developer Relations","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"developer-relations"}}}],"author":{"__typename":"PRISMIC_Author","author_name":"Raman Sharma","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":512,"height":512},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/497b4b14-d192-493a-8b66-7ae176ba99f3_raman.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"raman-sharma"}},"_meta":{"uid":"how-to-scale-your-saas-product-without-breaking-the-bank"}}}}]}}},"pageContext":{"limit":12,"skip":96,"numAuthorPages":10,"currentPage":9,"uid":"digitalocean","data":[{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":275,"height":499},"alt":"Binary Deep mobie app","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/2c54663fef57a1e81c93c815ceb6c54c14052485_binary-deep-screen.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"A Sleek New App To Maintain Your Droplets: Binary Deep","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"One of our amazing customers, @ariejan, has developed Binary Deep, a beautiful app that allows users to track the status of their droplets from their iPhone.","spans":[{"start":30,"end":38,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/ariejan"}},{"start":54,"end":65,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://forsakenlabs.com/binary-deep/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The bright interface displays the status of each droplet, and the user can reboot, powercyle, or shutdown their droplet by sliding the droplet name to the right or left as needed.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Additionally, users with an SSH client can open up a connection through the app, and all users can protect their servers with a passphrase.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Disclosure: DigitalOcean did not develop Binary Deep. The app leverages our API and was built by Ariejan de Vroom.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"** It is available in the iTunes App Store for $1.99.**","spans":[{"start":26,"end":42,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://appstore.com/forsakenlabs/binarydeep"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-06-17","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"a-sleek-new-app-to-maintain-your-droplets-binary-deep"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"DigitalOcean Releases New Customer Referral Program","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"[Editor's note:This post does not reflect the current state of our referal program. Check out all the details in This post does not reflect the current state of our referal program. Check out all the details in this more recent post.]","spans":[{"start":1,"end":113,"type":"strong"},{"start":15,"end":233,"type":"em"},{"start":113,"end":232,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://assets.digitalocean.com/blog/static/give-your-friends-10-to-host-their-projects-and-get-25-yourself/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce our customer referral program!  Our referral program rewards customers that suggest DigitalOcean to their friends and colleagues. We will issue $10 in account credits or commission for every referred customer that totals $10 in billings. There is no limit to how much you can earn.","spans":[{"start":171,"end":207,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Customers can access the referral program by clicking on the settings icon in the left menu of the control panel (see screen shot below).","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/b19df2703993728a2c4d85722c51b7694c0abcc2_referral-program-settings.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"Settings","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":760,"height":508}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Customers will be provided with a referral code link that will track referrals and commissions. The referral code link can be accessed within the 'Referral Program Settings' page (see below). There will be two different payout options available based on your preference: 'Account Credits' or 'PayPal'. Payouts or applied credit will be issued once a month.","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e24b8a840daf7768a8224c4d2e6ee4cc7bb964c5_referral-program-options.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"Payout options","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":760,"height":295}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Referrals have been a huge driver of success for DigitalOcean. We are excited to give back and support our customer's continued efforts in endorsing our services.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Nobody can tell the DigitalOcean story better than our customers! =]","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-05-21","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean-releases-new-customer-referral-program"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Introducing Two-Factor Authentication","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/2dddd66a1ef87679a2de18b6aa770367e5f589d6_google-authenticator-icon.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"Two factor auth","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":360,"height":360}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"DigitalOcean has just released Two-Factor Authentication!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Here's how two-factor authentication works: After you enter your email and password with two-factor authentication enabled, we will also require that you supply an additional one-time use token that is updated every 30 seconds automatically. We recommend using Google Authenticator, which is available for both iOS and Android devices as the preferred app for generating these tokens for your account. No internet connection is required for the tokens to be generated.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As part of the process, we will also require an SMS enabled phone number, which we will default use to unlock your account should you misplace your two-factor authentication app.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You can enable Two-Factor Authentication by navigating to the \"Settings\" page of your account!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is just one of several steps that we will be introducing to enhance security of your DigitalOcean account. With two-factor authentication, we'll be adding additional functionality in the future (such as protecting specific events like destroys) for further security.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-05-14","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"introducing-two-factor-authentication"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Linux Kernel Management Part 1","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/eea43ba0cab4807a1caeb7c91edc332dcd6bd5d3_linux-kernel-icon.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"Linux","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":151,"height":178}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It's been a long time coming, but we are excited to announce the first phase of our Linux Kernel Management, which can now be found under the new settings icon on the droplet's page. Currently, we are pre-compiling all of the kernels and not yet supporting the import of kernels from a running droplet.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For now though, we will be managing this process for security reasons and providing kernels that we pre-compile for our supported base OSes. We felt it was imperative to give our customers the ability to swap to new kernels, as there have been several security vulnerability announcements for prior kernel versions.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ultimately, our goal is to also allow customers to import kernels from their droplets and eventually provide full grub support– but there is quite a bit of development left before we can get there.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In the next couple of days, we will be updating the remaining kernels in other Linux distributions to provide more options and we are launching this feature with support for Fedora 17 (x32/x64) and Ubuntu 12.10 (x32/x64) currently.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-04-23","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"linux-kernel-management-part-1"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"DigitalOcean Opens San Francisco Datacenter","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/f43785a58e3a43d10d94c2a5eba5029bb34395d4_blog-post-sf-header.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":295,"height":295}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are excited to announce the opening of our newest datacenter location: San Francisco, CA! In addition to serving the west coast, the datacenter is located next to the trans-pacific cables, providing a fast connection to Asia.","spans":[{"start":74,"end":91,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Over the past year, we had many site visitors from California (see map below) and an outpouring of requests on our feedback page, emails, and Tweets for a West Coast location. Starting today, we will be hosting Droplets in California from the Telx facility located at 200 Paul Avenue in San Francisco. Telx is a leading colocation and interconnection provider and one of the premier carrier facilities in Northern California (425,000 square feet in size and built with protection against earthquakes).","spans":[{"start":243,"end":247,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.telx.com/"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/c826b43bd31bb5edfccc65ca8a4aecf358124d6d_usa-visitors-past-year.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":750,"height":460}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are planning to open more datacenters in 2013, including locations in Brazil, UK, and Asia. Stay tuned! =]","spans":[{"start":73,"end":79,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/3614876-brazilian-datacenter"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-04-22","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean-opens-san-francisco-datacenter"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Announcing: The Swag Shop","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/4df9292a5c98db5ec9edb0f0ad00b3d921820057_do-tshirt.jpg?auto=compress,format","alt":"DigitalOcean Store","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":300,"height":276}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"**11/30/16 — Update: **We've launched a brand new DigitalOcean Store with updated t-shirts, Sammy the Shark stickers, and more. All items are strictly sold at cost — not at a profit!","spans":[{"start":50,"end":68,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://store.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Check it out at: http://store.digitalocean.com/","spans":[{"start":17,"end":47,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://store.digitalocean.com/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Due to the high demand of our \"Who gives a SSH…?\" t-shirt giveaway at SXSW, we have gone ahead and opened a DigitalOcean Swag Shop. We've decided to partner with the fine folks at @Spreadshirt to provide you with the finest merchandise and best experience. It is best for us to keep focusing on building the best cloud for our customers instead of fulfilling merchandise orders. :)","spans":[{"start":180,"end":192,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://twitter.com/spreadshirt"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There are only a couple of products available to purchase for now. And to offer the lowest possible prices for our fans, we've decided to forgo making any profit on our items.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Enjoy the cool swag and be sure to check back periodically for new stuff.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-04-14","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"announcing-the-swag-shop"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"AudioBox: Why We Moved to DigitalOcean","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[{"start":0,"end":0,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://audiobox.fm"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/fe918a883d4cd8c78dd5666b9786683697350886_audiobox.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":300,"height":72}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For us, developers and system administrators, the 'Cloud' offers many possibilities in the form of different key services. Nowadays if you need a component for your platform, be it critical (database, hosting) or a commodity one (external queues, free Heroku dynos), there is a cloud service that provides it, and the problem usually boils down to how much does it cost.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"In most small start-ups simply there isn't much money to invest, and on the other hand there are always critical decisions about hardware and software services awaiting approval.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"I've seen cloud services that let's you pay quite a big chunk of money per month for something that you can easily make in-house, and great services at affordable prices. It's a wild market out there, so after doing our research it was time to test and experiment.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"First critical decision: hosting. Where do we put this code? Do we need other services from the same provider? What about the costs? Does it scale easily? Will it be easy to switch or will I become vendor locked-in? Decisions, decisions...","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"AudioBox.fm, our startup, initially adopted Amazon EC2 as its home, because of the flexibility in automated horizontal scaling (with a proper, non-trivial configuration however) and the presence of other niceties, such as Security Groups, Load Balancers, S3 in the same zone and more.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":11,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://audiobox.fm"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Let me get started by saying that our platform is fairly clean and lightweight. Every line of code has been benchmarked and deeply tested. It's a platform composed, like many others today, by small mini-applications, each with a specific role and often written in a different language from the main one.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our core app, which provides API and front-end is Ruby, some key components is Node.js and C/Java. Whilst I can spend some (many) words about all the problems you can incur with Ruby (memory and concurrency to name few), this is not my main goal; what I'm going to describe is our real life, direct experience in hosting a website/platform on EC2, like many of you do.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"After much effort, the day finally comes; AudioBox.fm on TechCrunch and all other major tech blogs. They are saying that the product is worth five minutes of their lives. Suddenly you have people visiting from USA, China, Japan, Europe and South America. Judging from the analytics and the server logs it seems the entire planet is trying to take a look at the web pages trying to score an account, which proves to be difficult given the sheer amount of traffic.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our auto scale policies go wild and spin up another instance. When the instance boots up it pulls the latest version of the code and proceed to a self-deploy.\n\nWe get notified. It works; our nights passed testing all this finally has been proven to work, and work smoothly. We are happy. We feel safe that we can continue serving the traffic. But wait, another instance fires up. And another one, up until our auto scale limit.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"It's quite clear that something does not work as expected. Our auto scale policies were set to trigger alarms after an average use of CPU (>80%) for 10 minutes. They went on fire rapidly.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"At this point I'll just mention that those auto scaled instances stayed up for days after the initial wave, but ultimately kept the site alive, albeit slow. No one of them got terminated due to the scale down policy. This definitely was not in the plans. You may ask what type of instances we were running? C1.medium, 32-bit. Underpowered you say? Well, maybe. But remember it's a web site/service we are talking about; it shouldn't take so much CPU power to process even the most basic JSON calls.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Fast-forward to the next natural step: trying to find a problem within your apps/frameworks of choice. We run the profilers. Switched the main applications to use JRuby for better insight and tools, trying to find memory leaks or where the most expensive calls are made. Signed up for New Relic, etc. only to find ourselves at the starting point: the apps are fine.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"And then it was clear: we are succumbing the infamous \"CPU steal time\". This term rings a bell? Welcome to the Cloud.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"That's it, since our initial months on EC2 we observed a dramatic drop in the performance allotted to us by the supervisor running on EC2 and this left consistently our apps in a crippled state with a steal time going beyond 20%.\n\nThere are different kinds of instances of EC2, but they are quite pricey, even if you decide to pay in advance and use reserved instances. Scale vertically? Been there, done that: problem not solved and got huge bill at the end of the month, because they are limited as well, and they have an odd ratio between CPU/memory.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We did put the platform under load test but they were sketchy: you may get different results from production to staging due to where your server is located and on which supervisor. In any case the results were somewhat uncomfortable, but ultimately something we were able to live with, at least initially, with horizontal scaling.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The problem is that I don't need nor want cluster instances or high CPU (with low memory) to run a website. Neither you have the money for them, right?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There must be something better. Then we discovered DigitalOcean, which provides inexpensive and powerful servers.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The switch from a mindset like the one you use on EC2 to a VPS can be quite brutal for a big, dynamic-by-nature, architecture. And for different reasons:","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"You don't have certain services that you took for granted when you made the initial choice.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"You need to rethink your auto scaling architecture. Auto configured load balancers that must stay up to date based on how many instances you want to spin up if you want to stay dynamic. DigitalOcean API comes in help here. Unless your site is small and you can make adjustments to your HAProxy manually.","spans":[]},{"type":"list-item","text":"Custom monitoring solutions, you don't have CloudWatch, but you probably need something better anyway.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"And more. Basically you're on your own, and for a typical small start-up team I realize it can be though.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"But hear this. Nothing is impossible and with some practice you can achieve 100x the throughput you are having on EC2. If you are not a system administrator there are plenty of guides that can walk you through the basics of setting up a secure and fast DigitalOcean server.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Now, a single DigitalOcean 4-core/8GB machine can keep up all the traffic we are having, with an overall CPU usage that never hits the 30% mark. For just 80 bucks per month it's a godsend.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We are about to launch the AudioBox.fm Android app, and I bet we'll have to have, maybe, fire up just another server. I can finally focus on fleshing out our next new features for enterprise and partners.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Every innovative platform has a unique architecture under the hood, and sometimes the right decisions can be made only after lot of trial and errors, as in our case.\n\nBut while it's common to have a small team working onto a big project, often without deep budgets, you always have to choose carefully the best tools for the job. There are mistakes that can end up costing you and your start-up a lot.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"For AudioBox.fm, DigitalOcean helped dramatically cut costs, well before the real fun happened, and increasing the overall performance and responsiveness of the platform.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-04-02","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Community","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"community"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"audiobox-why-we-moved-to-digitalocean"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Resolved: LVM Data Issue","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":" ","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/8af1f2580046d15be3f58fd98b8d54ecde409053_sammy-cleaning-up.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":270,"height":220}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We received a call today from Robert McMillan from Wired regarding an issue related to virtual servers that may contain data from a previous user. We were aware of this case and were securely erasing data prior to our new SSD plans.","spans":[{"start":30,"end":45,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/author/bobmcmillan/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As of today, Tuesday, April 2nd at 2:18:54PM EST, we've implemented a fix which has been deployed to all hypervisors resolving this rare case from reoccurring.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Now all new virtual servers come with a blank disk, ensuring there is no way to read previous data. It also ensures that any customer that processed a destroy prior to this fix will not be affected, since the data will be wiped before the new virtual server is created.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Less than 3% of all virtual servers were potentially at risk. With the code fix in place the issue is erased entirely!","spans":[{"start":10,"end":12,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you have questions regarding a particular virtual server that is running, please open a ticket.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-04-01","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"resolved-lvm-data-issue"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Our New Control Panel and Transparent Design Process","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"We've been working hard on the latest iteration of our Control Panel. Given that it is a large departure from our current design, we decided that it was best to put it in front of you, our customers, and get feedback.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Ship Pre-Alpha","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We decided to go with a Lean Startup approach on this large rewrite. So we pushed out large design elements as quickly as possible and then gave everyone access to the new control panel immediately.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"You can check it out here: DigitalOcean Control Panel v3","spans":[{"start":27,"end":56,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://beta.digitalocean.com/droplets"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The first thing to notice, aside from the new visuals, is that there are entire portions that are completely unfinished. We have a lot of front-end validation JS code to add, and many more visual updates to complete. But the design is far enough along that it gives a glimpse of coming changes.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Collect Feedback!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We added a new topic for discussion in our UserVoice  and updated the header to ask customers to let us know their thoughts. Of course we'd love to hear that everyone loves the new design, but we know that's not realistic. And within minutes of announcing it on twitter the feedback started rolling in. All of it wasn't positive and we were ecstatic!","spans":[{"start":97,"end":123,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/3786396-new-control-panel-feedback"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Bad Feedback is the Best Feedback","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you get bad feedback early it rocks! That's because there's still time to change everything and iterate on the design to make sure that we do not alienate our happy customers while still moving things forward.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We immediately saw some large changes that customers weren't going to be happy with. And when we started seeing the same comments repeated multiple times, we knew we had to address those elements before shipping v3. The biggest complaints were that the new design didn't make use of the display space as efficiently as the original, and that we'd gone a little too far down the \"big image\" \"flat design\" look.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is common during the design process. We start off with a general idea and move forward in a bubble. But by pushing this out in front of our customers, we get many different perspectives and we can quickly see where we didn't hit the mark.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"heading2","text":"Transparent Design","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We believe in transparent design. That means we give everyone access to the in-development beta server where we are actively pushing and deploying code. This way we can continue to collect customer feedback throughout the entire process and make sure that when it finally comes time to ship the new version, we've hopefully listened enough to our customers that the majority agree it's one step forward, not two steps back.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-03-26","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"our-new-control-panel-and-transparent-design-process"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Snapshot and Backup Roadmap","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"1. Offsite Snapshots and Backups Storage on Amazon Glacier","spans":[{"start":0,"end":58,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We've already begun the initial framework for storing all snapshots and backups on Amazon Glacier to ensure that there is a copy of each snapshot and backup that is stored on another provider. This provides an added layer of redundancy that is completely outside of DigitalOcean's network, ensuring that a single failure will not lead to any dataloss for customers.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Snapshots and backups will begin syncing to Amazon Glacier on Tuesday and we will provide an update when the sync of all existing snapshots and backups are complete. All new snapshots and backups will be automatically synced starting Wednesday.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This will allow us to always pull snapshots and backups out of Glacier and make them available for customers if for any reason one of our NAS systems experience an issue.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"2. Snapshot and Backup Downloads","spans":[{"start":0,"end":32,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Customers have already been requesting that we provide a way for them to directly download their snapshots and backups so they can store them locally and allow for data portability. We will be implementing this as soon as possible. While this may seem like a trivial item to add, the complexity in rolling out this feature is to ensure security in the rollout because data will need to be made available from the backend NAS systems (which are completely off of the public network currently).","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"3. Communication","spans":[{"start":0,"end":16,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"As a startup, often times we develop rapidly and there are a lot of internal conversations that we have about the merits of particular features and their development. We try to push this communication back to customers through our UserVoice forum, but we also need to curate this conversation better to keep customers better informed of our overall product roadmap. To that end, we will be using our blog and updating more frequently not only with feature announcements, but also development updates to let everyone know what planned changes we are currently working on.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"4. Backup Pricing","spans":[{"start":0,"end":17,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Part of being a startup is sometimes admitting when you've made a mistake, correcting it, and improving the overall service having learned from those issues. When we initially launched, we planned to offer pricing for bandwidth, snapshots, and backups; however we simply were more focused on developing the core functionality than introducing those pricing guidelines.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The main reason we are introducing pricing for backups and snapshots is to ensure that we can build out a robust backend storage solution, as well as pay for the costs for off-site backups which are $0.01 per GB and thus ensure customer data is safe and redundant with multiple providers at all times.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"These pricing changes will go into effect June 1st, giving customers two months to adjust any of their service selections accordingly. The first time they will see an invoice item for backups will be on the July 1st invoice.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"5. Snapshot Pricing","spans":[{"start":0,"end":19,"type":"strong"}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We will also be introducing pricing for snapshots to ensure that we can provide the level of service that customers expect, including data redundancy and offsite backups as well. The price for snapshots will be $0.02 per GB of snapshot storage. These rates will also go into effect as of June 1st, also giving customers two months to adjust their snapshot usage as they like without incurring any fees in the interval.","spans":[]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-03-17","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"snapshot-and-backup-roadmap"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Development Environments Made Easy with Vagrant and DigitalOcean","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[{"start":0,"end":0,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/smdahlen/vagrant-digitalocean"}}]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/5139885bbfaad4445e728d6928b80bf4af29a779_vagrant.png?auto=compress,format","alt":null,"copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":250,"height":305}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Developing is now easier than before with the new DigitalOcean provider driver in Vagrant 1.1.","spans":[{"start":82,"end":93,"type":"strong"},{"start":82,"end":93,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/smdahlen/vagrant-digitalocean"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Vagrant provides the framework and configuration format to create and manage complete portable development environments. These development environments can live on your computer or in the cloud, and are portable between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases development/production parity, and makes the \"works on my machine\" excuse a relic of the past.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With Vagrant 1.1 and the new DigitalOcean driver, you aren't limited to your local machine and VirtualBox anymore. This allows you to utilize all of the benefits of DigitalOcean's SSD cloud servers, snapshots, server resizing and more.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To read more and to learn how it works click here.","spans":[{"start":39,"end":49,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/smdahlen/vagrant-digitalocean"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-03-14","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Engineering","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"engineering"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"development-environments-made-easy-with-vagrant-and-digitalocean"}}},{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"DigitalOcean","author_image":{"dimensions":{"width":600,"height":600},"alt":"Sammy avatar","copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/a10e3c2eb15b74ee43f872be3044313423b1c9a9_sammy_avatar.png?auto=compress,format"},"_meta":{"uid":"digitalocean"}},"blog_header_image":null,"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Deploy RoR in the Cloud in 5 Minutes and 55 Seconds","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/c9ff5e7cf7b162d599eed6ff93884d0a0748599d_cloud66.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"Cloud 66","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":170,"height":165}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Today, we're extremely excited to announce our partnership and integration with Cloud 66.","spans":[{"start":80,"end":88,"type":"strong"},{"start":80,"end":88,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://www.cloud66.com"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"With the full integration and support of DigitalOcean by Cloud 66, you can deploy, manage and configure your Rails apps to DigitalOcean easier than before. This means single click scaling, load balancing, scheduled backups, server monitoring, proactive log analysis and much more for all your Rails applications on our SSD cloud servers.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Our goal at DigitalOcean is to bring premium performance, breakthrough pricing, and convenience to every developer. Through our partnership with Cloud 66, we will be able to deliver performance and convenience to even more developers around the world. We're thrilled to be working with the Cloud 66 team.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"To learn more about the partnership and how it works click here.","spans":[{"start":53,"end":63,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"http://blog.cloud66.com/post/44063734098/code-to-cloud-in-5-minutes-and-55-seconds"}}]}],"blog_post_date":"2013-02-25","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Product Updates","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"product-updates"}}},{"tag1":{"tag":"News","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"news"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"deploy-ror-in-the-cloud-in-5-minutes-and-55-seconds"}}}]}}}