February 2021 Summaries

DigitalOcean introduces Premium Droplets with faster Intel and AMD CPUs along with NVMe SSDs for enhanced performance. These new droplets utilize the latest generation of CPUs, including second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 2nd Generation AMD EPYC processors. They also feature improved memory performance and NVMe SSDs for faster disk operations. The Premium Droplets are now available in all global data center regions for Intel and three locations for AMD, with more coming soon.

In February, DigitalOcean introduced Premium Droplets with faster Intel and AMD CPUs and NVMe SSDs. Spaces are now available in SFO3, while the creation of new resources in SFO2 is disabled for new customers due to capacity limits. FreeBSD 12.1 has reached its end of life. App Platform is now available in BLR, SGP, and SFO regions. DigitalOcean Marketplace launched many preconfigured 1-Click Apps. Updates were made to the DigitalOcean CLI, including Docker Hub and GitLab support for App Platform's create and update commands.

DigitalOcean has increased its offering for students to $100 worth of credits on their platform for one year. This initiative is part of the GitHub Student Developer Pack and aims to support students in building, sharing, and collaborating on software projects. Students can use these credits to create Droplets, learn about scaling infrastructure, or host their apps on DigitalOcean App Platform. Additionally, DigitalOcean offers educational resources such as tutorials, eBooks, and a self-guided cloud course. To claim the offer, students must be enrolled in a formal educational program and apply to the GitHub Student Developer Pack program. Educators can also benefit from DigitalOcean's support programs and open-educational resources.

DigitalOcean has launched a new ambassador program called Navigators to help support and connect with developers and startups worldwide. The program aims to prove that DigitalOcean customers can contribute content, code, and community engagement to help others build and grow while receiving recognition and rewards in return. As part of the Navigator Program, members will receive benefits such as early access to DigitalOcean technologies, a direct line of communication with company representatives, speaking, writing, and organizing opportunities, discounts on personal use of DigitalOcean products, custom swag, and donations to open-source projects of their choice. The program is designed for individuals who are already immersed in the developer ecosystem and have found success in helping others learn and build through writing, presenting, or community organization.

DigitalOcean, as a cloud service provider, emphasizes simplicity and reliability in its network monitoring strategy, transforming its data center networking to layer-3 fabrics for easier packet flow understanding. The company embarked on a journey to develop a near real-time monitoring solution for its Droplets, akin to an EKG signal, by focusing on network availability rather than end-to-end networking. This initiative involved breaking down complex network availability issues into smaller, manageable problems, allowing for efficient monitoring without overhead. By integrating telemetry data collection across various network functions, DigitalOcean created a tool that provides visibility into network performance, enhancing support response and customer satisfaction. This approach not only facilitated rapid value delivery to customers but also optimized engineering efforts and improved organizational awareness of network data potential.

DigitalOcean recently launched its App Platform, a reimagined Platform as a Service (PaaS) designed to help developers deploy their full-stack applications faster than ever before. In collaboration with the DEV community, they hosted a hackathon challenge from December 10, 2020, to January 10, 2021, which received 245 app submissions and 530 written posts about users building and deploying their apps. The winners were chosen for each of the four categories: Personal Site or Portfolio, Program for the People, Built for Business, and Random Roulette. The overall engagement was encouraging to see as many developers used their holiday breaks to build the apps they've always wanted to create.