{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-author-jsx","path":"/blog/author/geoff_hickey/","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":""}},{"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":""}},{"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":0,"numAuthorPages":1,"currentPage":1,"uid":"geoff_hickey","data":[{"node":{"author":{"_linkType":"Link.document","author_name":"Geoff Hickey","author_image":null,"_meta":{"uid":"geoff_hickey"}},"blog_header_image":{"dimensions":{"width":784,"height":418},"alt":null,"copyright":null,"url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/2aebccc9-23d0-4c4d-9598-460b0a28833a_go-libvirt_blog.png?auto=compress,format"},"blog_headline":[{"type":"heading1","text":"Open Source at DigitalOcean: Extending go-libvirt with Code Generation","spans":[]}],"blog_post_content":[{"type":"paragraph","text":"Back in November 2016, DigitalOcean released go-libvirt, an open source project containing a pure Go interface to libvirt. Using go-libvirt, developers could manage virtual machines leveraging all the power of libvirt’s extensive API without leaving the comfortable environment of Go. But there was a catch.","spans":[{"start":23,"end":55,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://blog.digitalocean.com/introducing-go-qemu-and-go-libvirt/"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"While the libvirt library has close to 400 API calls, initial versions of go-libvirt implemented only a handful of those calls. But go-libvirt is open source, so you can just add your own implementations for the routines you need, right?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Well, yes you could. But go-libvirt talks to libvirt by exchanging XDR-encoded buffers using an RPC mechanism based on the venerable ONC RPC (or Sun RPC), so you would first have to familiarize yourself with those RPCs. Then, you would have to locate the argument and return value structures in the libvirt protocol definition file, and write code to marshal and unmarshal them on send and receive. By that time you might be asking yourself, “Why don’t I just give up and use CGO?” But hang on. Tedious, repetitive work; that sounds like what we invented computers for. Maybe they can help?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is the tale of how we used code generation to extend go-libvirt to cover every one of the libvirt API calls, and how we made it more resilient to future changes in the libvirt API.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Sun RPC and the Missing Toolchain","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re working with Sun RPC in C, you write a protocol file describing the messages you want to exchange and feed it to a utility called “rpcgen”. The output of rpcgen includes header files and stubs for both client and server. The stubs contain generated code to marshal and unmarshal the message bodies for each of the messages. This is exactly how libvirt works— the protocol files are right there in the libvirt source repo (look for source files ending in .x), and during the build they get processed by rpcgen into .c and .h files.","spans":[{"start":411,"end":430,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/libvirt/libvirt"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If rpcgen could output Go code we’d be all set, but it doesn’t. Sun RPC isn’t a popular option for native Go programs, and although there are libraries for handling its on-the-wire data representation—XDR—there aren’t any libraries around for parsing its protocol files into Go.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Time to roll up our sleeves!","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Learning the Language","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Sun RPC protocol files look a lot like a collection of C declarations. We could throw a parser together with regexes and custom code, but when the source files start getting complex that path often ends in tears. The protocol files we need to parse definitely meet the complexity threshold: like C, data types can be nested inside other data types, and this is exactly the kind of thing that regexes are ill-equipped to handle. To be reliable we’ll want a real stateful parser. We could write one, but there’s a better way.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Parser generators have been around since the 1970s, and Go includes a port of one of the oldest, yacc, in `golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goyacc`. Using goyacc to generate our parser means we don’t have to write the state machine that makes up the bulk of the parser by hand (and yes, it also means our code generator is itself generated). With a generated parser we’re left with three pieces of code to write: the language grammar, which is consumed by the parser generator to build the parser state machine, the actions, which run when the parser identifies a bit of grammar, and the lexer.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The grammar definition lives in its own file, `sunrpc.y`, and goyacc uses the same syntax for the contents of this file as yacc did before it. Luckily, some of the documentation for Sun RPC includes grammar definitions in exactly the format goyacc expects, and we used that as a starting point for writing the grammar. ","spans":[{"start":152,"end":218,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E35597/rpcproto-24229.html#scrolltoc"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The actions are simply Go code mixed in with the grammar. When the parser identifies an element of the grammar, it will execute any actions defined at that point in the grammar file. In our case, the actions build an internal representation of the protocol file that we’ll use later to output our generated Go code.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The actions are simply Go code mixed in with the grammar. When the parser identifies an element of the grammar, it will execute any actions defined at that point in the grammar file. In our case, the actions build an internal representation of the protocol file that we’ll use later to output our generated Go code.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Alexa, Where’s My Lexer?","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"That leaves the lexer, also called a tokenizer. The lexer is called by the parser, and each time it’s called it returns the next token in the input stream, where a token is a unit of the grammar. For our grammar, if the input stream looks like this:","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/7d467eb0-0778-4d15-9fce-0cd1e2f7e493_Screen-Shot-2017-12-12-at-6.02.33-PM.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"remote string max","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1600,"height":68}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The lexer will return the token CONST, then IDENTIFIER, =, CONSTANT, and ;. That matches one of the valid forms of `const_definition` from our grammar file (`const_ident` is elsewhere defined as `IDENTIFIER`):","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/bd5817d6-a217-4d71-85bb-4033ca81b3c0_Screen-Shot-2017-12-12-at-6.10.29-PM.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"identifier","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1600,"height":660}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The Go code inside the braces after the grammar is the action the parser will execute when it sees this sequence of tokens. So the parser will call `AddConst()`, passing in the value of the second and fourth tokens, in this case the const_ident and the CONSTANT. The resulting call will be `AddConst(“REMOTE_STRING_MAX”, “4194304”)`, because in our grammar the value of any token is the original string.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you’re familiar with yacc, at this point you might be wondering, “Where’s the Go port of lex? Is there a golex?” The answer is no; lex isn’t part of the standard library. (To get an idea of why this might be so, and an excellent introduction to lexers in general, you might want to see this talk by Rob Pike, from back in the early days of Go, in 2011.)","spans":[{"start":289,"end":310,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"So instead we have a handwritten lexer, `lvlexer.go`. It’s pretty straightforward, about 330 lines long, and uses no regular expressions. To work with the parser, the lexer has to satisfy an interface consisting of two functions: `Lex()` and `Error()`.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Generating the Output","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The actions, as well as the code that drives the parser, are found in `generate.go`, which gets compiled together with the lexer and the parser into a standalone binary. The generator calls the parser, and when the parser has finished its work the generator has an internal representation of the protocol file, and we need to tie everything together and output some Go code.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Up until now we’ve been talking about libvirt and Sun RPC, because libvirt is using many of the pieces that make up Sun RPC. But if you look at `remote_protocol.x` in the libvirt sources, you’ll notice something surprising: the procedure definitions, which would describe the argument and return types for each RPC procedure, are missing. There is an enum containing procedure numbers, but nothing that resembles a function prototype.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is where libvirt departs from Sun RPC. Rather than use rpcgen to build the procedure stubs for client and server, they have implemented their own method for calling remote routines (have a look at libvirt’s `callFull()` in `remote_driver.c` if you’re curious). ","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"So instead of a procedure definition in the protocol file, the procedure, its arguments, and it’s return values are associated by name. All arguments and return values in libvirt are structures. We can start from the `remote_procedure` enum in the protocol file. For the procedure `REMOTE_NODE_ALLOC_PAGES`, we have a procedure number of 347. To find the arguments structure we convert this to lowercase and add `_args`; for return we add `_ret`. We can apply this pattern to every procedure in the protocol file. If a procedure doesn’t take arguments or return values, the corresponding struct will be missing.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This gives us enough information to generate the Go client functions for each procedure. We’ll drop the `remote_` prefix, since it’s common to every procedure, and we’ll convert the names to camel case so they look natural in Go. For `REMOTE_NODE_ALLOC_PAGES`, that means our generated Go routine would look like this:","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"That’s not a bad start, but it forces the caller to construct the arguments structure and decode the return structure. Putting all the arguments into a structure makes the function awkward to use, and doesn’t match the libvirt documentation for `virNodeAllowPages`. We can do better.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"API, Deconstructed","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Because we used a real parser to process the protocol definition, our generator has full type information available. In fact for every struct definition in the protocol, we have our own Go struct containing all the type information for the struct’s elements. So the generator can replace the struct in the arguments for our generated function with a list of its contents, simply by doing this:","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/e6cb83f5-6b71-473e-8fed-48670b8e76f2_Screen-Shot-2017-12-14-at-5.41.42-PM.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"gen.procs","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1518,"height":96}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Gen.Procs is an array of generated procedures, and Args is an array of arguments. With that statement we set the arguments for a generated function to the array of members in the corresponding arguments structure. We do the same thing for the return values, and then our generated NodeAllocPages looks like this:","spans":[]},{"type":"image","url":"https://images.prismic.io/www-static/013e00f3-805a-42e0-a80a-1dfcfeb5d880_Screen-Shot-2017-12-14-at-5.47.04-PM.png?auto=compress,format","alt":"func (l *Libvirt)","copyright":null,"dimensions":{"width":1460,"height":478}},{"type":"paragraph","text":"This is very close to the libvirt documentation; the Go version just omits two size arguments since slices carry size information with them.","spans":[{"start":8,"end":47,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt-host.html#virNodeAllocPages"}}]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Templates","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The last step in our code generator is to iterate through all the type information we’ve collected and build the actual Go files. We use Go’s `text/template` library with a couple of fairly simple template files to do this. The generated procedures are output to `libvirt.gen.go`, and some constants to a separate file, `internal/constants/constants.gen.go`. We even generate comments so that godoc has something to work with.","spans":[]},{"type":"heading3","text":"Go, Generate","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Code generation is exactly what the `go generate` command was created for. If you’ve never explored this part of the Go toolchain before, there’s an excellent introduction in the Go blog. The generate command is intended to be run separately from `go build`, and much less often - typically the generated code for a project only needs to be re-created when an external dependency changes. To rebuild the generated files for a particular version of libvirt, you simply set an environment variable `LIBVIRT_SOURCE` with the path to the libvirt sources, and run `go generate ./…` from the go-libvirt directory. That command will descend through the go-libvirt sources executing generate instructions embedded in the source files.","spans":[{"start":149,"end":186,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://blog.golang.org/generate"}}]},{"type":"heading3","text":"That’s It!","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hope you enjoyed this brief tour of the code generator for go-libvirt. There’s still work to be done on the project, but with these changes it should be much more useful to a wider audience.","spans":[]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The go-libvirt project is hosted on GitHub, and pull requests are welcome!","spans":[{"start":4,"end":42,"type":"hyperlink","data":{"link_type":"Web","url":"https://github.com/digitalocean/go-libvirt"}}]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Geoff Hickey is a Senior Engineer at DigitalOcean, where he works on hypervisors and the code that surrounds them. In his spare time he teaches machines to make things out of wood and then shamelessly takes credit for their work. As a result, he views the rise of machine learning with some trepidation.","spans":[{"start":0,"end":303,"type":"em"}]}],"blog_post_date":"2018-01-23","tags":[{"tag1":{"tag":"Engineering","_linkType":"Link.document","_meta":{"uid":"engineering"}}}],"_meta":{"uid":"extending-go-libvirt-with-code-generation"}}}]}}}