My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean

[Emad R]

So for the sake of knowledge and even though I have used Vultr from before and liked it and it completely covered my needs. I said I want to learn more about Digital Ocean (DO) ofcourse it will be better cause it is more known and stuff, here is what I found out:

1. It is limited alot in VMs and wants you to gain reputation to create more VMs
   your limited to 10 droplets from the start.

2. I have compared the instance i have in Vultr hosted in Frankfurt with another "Droplet" hosted in Frankfurt

3. both are secure with 2FA setup easily

4. DO does not have the smart My IP Vultr thing when you want to add your IP to SSH, however you can do it manually.

5. The firewall setting for DO has Inboud + Outbound Rules while Vultr has only Inboud Rules. I eventually let the Outbound to allow all, it is good to have I guess but feels redundant and in the British sense.

6. So performance wise now, I did the ping test and DO seems to give better lower ping responses, great right ? not really I deployed software packages and connected using ssh and the interface kept disconnecting after while, not like security feature more of hang reminds me of when you use VPN everything felt slower.

7. DNS setup was the last straw I DID the exact same steps I did with vutlr to make my site have cool name, and with vultr it was go to the Name hosting that you purchased change the the name servers to vultr servers and go back to vultr admin and create DNS entry and link it with instance, Did exactly like that with DO but what I got is when I go to my site www.example.com --> it went to the IP address of the site and users would get http://IP

After I saw this much hassle and slow speed in ssh and installing packages compares to the stability of Vultr and at least my SSH session does not freeze and it feels like real SSD powering the whole thing, I deleted all the DO stuff and went back to lovely Vultr.

[Emad R]

[coliver]

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

DNS setup was the last straw I DID the exact same steps I did with vutlr to make my site have cool name, and with vultr it was go to the Name hosting that you purchased change the the name servers to vultr servers and go back to vultr admin and create DNS entry and link it with instance, Did exactly like that with DO but what I got is when I go to my site www.example.com --> it went to the IP address of the site and users would get http://IP

This last one seems weird. Why are you letting vultr or DO handle your DNS?

[stacksofplates]

I think you lose a lot of the advantages of you treat these as just VPS vendors and not as cloud providers. While Vultr does have an API most tools have DO already included as providers. So I think the advantage of being able to use tools like Terraform, Packer, etc natively gives DO an advantage.

[stacksofplates]

@coliver said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

DNS setup was the last straw I DID the exact same steps I did with vutlr to make my site have cool name, and with vultr it was go to the Name hosting that you purchased change the the name servers to vultr servers and go back to vultr admin and create DNS entry and link it with instance, Did exactly like that with DO but what I got is when I go to my site www.example.com --> it went to the IP address of the site and users would get http://IP

This last one seems weird. Why are you letting vultr or DO handle your DNS?

Probably just ease of use. Like having Route53 and AWS.

[scottalanmiller]

We moved from DO to Vultr because we liked it better. Better performance, easier to use, and lower cost. DO was great, but Vultr was greater.

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

We moved from DO to Vultr because we liked it better. Better performance, easier to use, and lower cost. DO was great, but Vultr was greater.

I suspect there will be a big shift at some point. Vultr is offering people money to write documentation for them. I would say their documentation is on par with DO's (I don't know how much each has in comparison), I'm just referencing quality.

[Emad R]

@coliver said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

DNS setup was the last straw I DID the exact same steps I did with vutlr to make my site have cool name, and with vultr it was go to the Name hosting that you purchased change the the name servers to vultr servers and go back to vultr admin and create DNS entry and link it with instance, Did exactly like that with DO but what I got is when I go to my site www.example.com --> it went to the IP address of the site and users would get http://IP

This last one seems weird. Why are you letting vultr or DO handle your DNS?

Why not I want to focus on building application, not CNAME and AAA records and stuff like that, I just want to get things done fast and be in charge, my domain name is from Name Cheap and with Vultr setting it up is very easy and in like minutes you get domain name instead of IP

[scottalanmiller]

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@coliver said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

DNS setup was the last straw I DID the exact same steps I did with vutlr to make my site have cool name, and with vultr it was go to the Name hosting that you purchased change the the name servers to vultr servers and go back to vultr admin and create DNS entry and link it with instance, Did exactly like that with DO but what I got is when I go to my site www.example.com --> it went to the IP address of the site and users would get http://IP

This last one seems weird. Why are you letting vultr or DO handle your DNS?

Why not I want to focus on building application, not CNAME and AAA records and stuff like that, I just want to get things done fast and be in charge, my domain name is from Name Cheap and with Vultr setting it up is very easy and in like minutes you get domain name instead of IP

Well it violates one of those coupling rules that you use to protect businesses. There are times that DNS can be bundled, but I'd be wary in general. But I've seen so many companies get into trouble with this kind of thing - that exact thinking. "I don't want to deal with my IT chores, I just want to develop." You can't skip the IT pieces and doing something not inside your cloud host is essentially zero effort, it's not like Vultr or someone is actually saving you real time or effort here. But it does limit you potentially.

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

[scottalanmiller]

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

... with Vultr setting it up is very easy and in like minutes you get domain name instead of IP

With anyone, though. That's not a special feature.

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

Here's an example with Terraform for anyone who's curious. It creates a Jenkins server from an image I created with Packer. Then it adds the new A record to Cloudflare. While this looks more complicated, after you write the module all you need is the first block below to create more.

module "jenkins" {
  source = "./modules/jenkins"
  server_name      = "jenkins"
  cluster_name     = "jenkins"
  openstack_keypair = "xps15"
}

resource "cloudflare_record" "jenkins" {
    domain = "jhbcomputers.com"
	name   = "jenkins.pa"
	value  = "${module.jenkins.jenkins_ip}"
	type   = "A"
}

Here's the module where all of the good stuff happens:

main.tf:

resource "openstack_compute_instance_v2" "jenkins" {
  count = 1
  name = "${var.server_name}"
  image_name = "jenkins"
  flavor_id = "7ebe8c2d-99bb-480f-be71-40dcb3033240"
  key_pair = "${var.openstack_keypair}"
  security_groups = ["${openstack_compute_secgroup_v2.instance.id}"]
  network {
    name = "external"
  }
}

resource "openstack_compute_secgroup_v2" "instance" {
    name  = "${var.cluster_name}"
    description = "webserver secgroup"

    rule {
        from_port = 8080
        to_port   = 8080
        ip_protocol = "tcp"
        cidr        = "0.0.0.0/0"
    }

    rule {
        from_port   = 22
        to_port     = 22
        ip_protocol = "tcp"
        cidr        = "0.0.0.0/0"
    }

    rule {
        from_port = -1
        to_port   = -1
        ip_protocol = "icmp"
        cidr        = "0.0.0.0/0"
    }

}

outputs.tf:

output "jenkins_ip" {
  value = "${openstack_compute_instance_v2.jenkins.network.0.fixed_ip_v4}"
}

vars.tf:

variable cluster_name       { }
variable openstack_keypair  { }
variable server_name        { }
variable number              { 
    default = 1
}

[Emad R]

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

BUt what I am doing wrong here ? should I do all those setting in the VM level to be more in Control you mean ? cause I still feel that I own everything and it was easy to setup. First 2 pics is Vultr + second 2 is name cheap. I simply bought name cheap domain + pointed to vultr dns + went to vultr and added dns record ? is there another way to do this ?

[scottalanmiller]

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

BUt what I am doing wrong here ? should I do all those setting in the VM level to be more in Control you mean ? cause I still feel that I own everything and it was easy to setup. First 2 pics is Vultr + second 2 is name cheap. I simply bought name cheap domain + pointed to vultr dns + went to vultr and added dns record ? is there another way to do this ?

Sure, just point the DNS to anyone. Pointing it to Vultr doesn't give you any benefits. What benefit are you thinking you are getting? This is one of those difficult cases where you think something is beneficial and ask how to do it another way, but we don't see anything beneficial so have no idea how to tell you to do it another way, because we don't know which part you think is important.

[scottalanmiller]

For example, all of my DNS points to CloudFlare. Now it's in one place for all DNS, no matter what cloud hosts, VPS, internal posting, etc. that I use. It's not tied to one arbitrary cloud host. It could not possibly be easier and CF has so many special features.

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

BUt what I am doing wrong here ? should I do all those setting in the VM level to be more in Control you mean ? cause I still feel that I own everything and it was easy to setup. First 2 pics is Vultr + second 2 is name cheap. I simply bought name cheap domain + pointed to vultr dns + went to vultr and added dns record ? is there another way to do this ?

Sure, just point the DNS to anyone. Pointing it to Vultr doesn't give you any benefits. What benefit are you thinking you are getting? This is one of those difficult cases where you think something is beneficial and ask how to do it another way, but we don't see anything beneficial so have no idea how to tell you to do it another way, because we don't know which part you think is important.

It could be valid if you're just doing dev/testing work and don't want to mess with setting up records and just want it to work. Not sure what it's being used for here though.

[scottalanmiller]

@stacksofplates said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

BUt what I am doing wrong here ? should I do all those setting in the VM level to be more in Control you mean ? cause I still feel that I own everything and it was easy to setup. First 2 pics is Vultr + second 2 is name cheap. I simply bought name cheap domain + pointed to vultr dns + went to vultr and added dns record ? is there another way to do this ?

Sure, just point the DNS to anyone. Pointing it to Vultr doesn't give you any benefits. What benefit are you thinking you are getting? This is one of those difficult cases where you think something is beneficial and ask how to do it another way, but we don't see anything beneficial so have no idea how to tell you to do it another way, because we don't know which part you think is important.

It could be valid if you're just doing dev/testing work and don't want to mess with setting up records and just want it to work. Not sure what it's being used for here though.

Maybe, but DNS is DNS and it "just works" already. Can't imagine where this would be actually easier.

[stacksofplates]

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@stacksofplates said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@emad-r said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

@scottalanmiller said in My 0.08$ experince with DigitalOcean:

Now there is value to using automation tools to make some of this easier. But you can use those with dedicated DNS hosts, too.

BUt what I am doing wrong here ? should I do all those setting in the VM level to be more in Control you mean ? cause I still feel that I own everything and it was easy to setup. First 2 pics is Vultr + second 2 is name cheap. I simply bought name cheap domain + pointed to vultr dns + went to vultr and added dns record ? is there another way to do this ?

Sure, just point the DNS to anyone. Pointing it to Vultr doesn't give you any benefits. What benefit are you thinking you are getting? This is one of those difficult cases where you think something is beneficial and ask how to do it another way, but we don't see anything beneficial so have no idea how to tell you to do it another way, because we don't know which part you think is important.

It could be valid if you're just doing dev/testing work and don't want to mess with setting up records and just want it to work. Not sure what it's being used for here though.

Maybe, but DNS is DNS and it "just works" already. Can't imagine where this would be actually easier.

Just the automated setup. If you destroy a box and get a new one you have to put that into DNS somewhere (either through automation or manually). This just does it automatically for you without you writing the automation.

[jmoore]

@stacksofplates That looks like an excellent way of doing tasks like this. Having that kind of control and options with that few lines is great i think.