October 2019 Summaries

In September, DigitalOcean introduced Memory-Optimized Droplets with 8GB of RAM per dedicated vCPU for memory-intensive applications like high-performance SQL or NoSQL databases, large in-memory caches and indexes, real-time big data processing, and applications with large JVM requirements. These production-ready droplets are now available in New York (NYC1, NYC3), San Francisco (SFO2), and Amsterdam (AMS3) data centers, with plans to add them in Singapore (SGP1) over the next few weeks and other data centers in the coming months. Memory-Optimized Droplets are part of a range of droplet types that cater to different business or personal applications, including General Purpose, CPU-Optimized, and Standard Droplets.

The DigitalOcean Marketplace team aims to provide a platform that encodes operational knowledge into shareable and repeatable software through community collaboration. They built marketplace.digitalocean.com on DigitalOcean Kubernetes, utilizing three main infrastructure components: DigitalOcean Kubernetes for core infrastructure, OpenChannel for the catalog API and data warehouse, and Cloudflare for CDN and load-balancing. The benefits of GitOps workflows include safe upgrades, repeatable environment, rollbacks, automation, central source of truth, and transparency. Their Kubernetes clusters run various open-source packages such as Prometheus, FluentD, Fluent Bit, Nginx, Apollo, GraphQL, Node, cert-manager, Let's Encrypt, Grafana, Runscope, Docker Hub, Kustomize, GitHub, Kibana, and DigitalOcean Spaces. They also use Shipit for automated deploys to staging and production from Git commits, and Codefresh for automated unit and integration testing on Git commits.

DigitalOcean is launching the Spin Up, an educational program aimed at supporting the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs. The program introduces students to cloud computing and software development through a series of hands-on workshops, with a focus on expanding opportunities for historically underrepresented communities in the technology industry. DigitalOcean has partnered with a16z's Cultural Leadership Fund and is planning to scale up the program in the coming months, inviting nonprofits, educational institutions, and technology companies to partner with them to bring it to their communities. The program has already been launched in private beta with SocialWorks, a Chicago-based nonprofit, and offers $200 of credit to those who sign up for DigitalOcean's products over 60 days.

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) has released new features to enhance user experience and improve functionality. These include cluster autoscaling based on CPU and memory usage triggers, tokenized authentication for easier connection to clusters, seamless upgrades to minor versions including 1.15, and the introduction of Kubernetes 1-Click Apps in the DigitalOcean Marketplace. The new features aim to provide better control over costs while ensuring fast performance, simplify cluster management, and streamline software deployment on Kubernetes clusters.