May 2022 Summaries

Object storage is becoming increasingly popular due to the rise in unstructured data from technologies like video streaming, IoT, and AI. Traditional storage systems struggle with handling large amounts of unstructured data, while object storage addresses these drawbacks by using a flat file space without hierarchy. This approach allows for limitless scaling and accessing data through APIs. Object storage offerings like DigitalOcean's Spaces can make scaling easier and data more accessible and reliable at an affordable price. Combining object storage with a CDN can benefit businesses in various ways, such as video streaming, file sharing, and handling read many, write few requests. Pricing for object storage varies among cloud providers, but DigitalOcean offers simple and predictable pricing starting at $5 per month, including a built-in CDN.

The new Droplet Console in DigitalOcean provides a secure and convenient way to connect to droplets through one-click SSH access. To ensure the security of each session, the console integrates the SSH protocol which supports end-to-end encryption. When creating a new console session, the Console UI generates a unique pair of SSH keys for every session, with the private key kept within the customer's browser and the public key securely distributed to the droplet. The connection is bridged by a proxy that ensures end-to-end encryption between the Console UI (i.e., the browser) and the target droplet. Dynamic SSH keys management on droplets is handled by the droplet-agent, which manages the installation of new keys and removal of expired ones.

DigitalOcean has introduced its serverless computing product, DigitalOcean Functions, which enables developers to build quickly, scale automatically, and save costs by removing the need to pay for idle resources. The benefits of using DigitalOcean Functions include higher developer productivity, lower operating costs, automatic scaling based on demand, and eliminating the need to maintain idle servers. With this solution, users can write functions in their preferred language and deploy them easily in just a few steps. Pricing is simpler, more affordable, and predictable, with 90,000GB-seconds of usage for free per month and overages charged at $0.0000185/GB-second.

DigitalOcean has introduced dedicated virtual machines (Dedicated Droplets) for its Managed MongoDB service to provide developers with more control over their database performance and predictability. The new options, General Purpose MongoDB and Storage Optimized MongoDB, offer different levels of computing power and storage capacity tailored to specific business needs. Pricing remains simple and competitive, starting at $15 per month for a Basic plan, with General Purpose beginning at $115 per month and Storage Optimized Droplets starting at $240 per month. These new options are available in all existing DigitalOcean regions.

DigitalOcean has announced a major milestone in simplifying collaboration for developers and project leaders with the introduction of Teams accounts. Every account on the platform is now considered a team, allowing owners to share control over server infrastructure with just a few clicks. With this update, users can create up to 15 teams per account, each with an unlimited number of collaborators. DigitalOcean Teams accounts feature three different roles: owners, billers, and members, with varying levels of access to resources, billing information, and account settings.

The article discusses the differences between Container-based PaaS and Serverless computing solutions, highlighting their distinct advantages depending on the use case for businesses. It explains that serverless computing is event-driven and automatically scales resources as needed, while PaaS solutions typically consume resources at all times. The pricing models of both are compared, with serverless being more cost-effective for small workloads and PaaS being a better choice for consistent or high workloads. The article also provides guidance on how to choose the right solution based on factors such as utility tasks, team's familiarity with the stack, performance needs, predictability of workloads, and suggests using both PaaS and serverless functions together to leverage their strengths.

DigitalOcean has announced a price change on some of its products from July 1, 2022, along with the introduction of a new $4 Droplet to better meet customer needs. The company has noticed a pattern of usage called "the developer journey," which starts with learning and progresses through building and scaling applications. DigitalOcean provides resources for developers at each stage, including tutorials, Q&A, tech talks, and events like Hacktoberfest. Its products aim to deliver the simplest developer experience in the market, enabling users to create software that changes the world.

The DigitalOcean Kubernetes Starter Kit is designed to help organizations save weeks of learning time in bootstrapping a production-ready cluster using curated, open tools with pre-configured examples. It simplifies Day 2 operations by providing step-by-step tutorials on important operations like logging and monitoring, ingress, enabling backups, autoscaling, automation, and optimizing your cluster in a way that makes sense for you and your customers. The starter kit uses Loki for logging, using promtail to send worker nodes and application logs to Loki, Grafana for visualizing and analyzing logs, and DigitalOcean block storage or Spaces for logs. For monitoring, Kube-prom-stack is used, allowing developers to monitor the DigitalOcean control plane, nodes, and applications and receive metrics data stored in DigitalOcean block storage. Ingress helps route incoming traffic to appropriate backend services, with Nginx being a popular Ingress Controller covered in detail. Velero and Triliovault are provided as backup solutions, while HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA) is used for auto-scaling. GitOps tools like Flux CD or Argo CD fetch current configuration from the Git repository and apply required changes to your Kubernetes cluster to maintain the desired state.

DigitalOcean has been named to Inc. Magazine's annual Best Workplaces list for the second consecutive year. The company was recognized for its exceptional work culture and remote-first approach. Employees praised DigitalOcean for its collaboration, employee engagement across generations, and overall valuing of employees. The company encourages collaboration through events like Shark-a-Hack, a 2-day internal hackathon that brings together employees from different teams and departments. DigitalOcean also scored highly in employee engagement across different age groups, offering flexible PTO policies and wellness benefits to accommodate diverse work styles. Additionally, the company has introduced various Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for different demographics, promoting inclusivity and fostering a supportive environment. DigitalOcean's commitment to employee appreciation is evident through its #DOLove campaign, where employees can nominate their colleagues for recognition and receive charitable donation credits in return. The company also ensures transparent communication between senior leadership and the rest of the organization through regular meetings and newsletters.

In April, DigitalOcean released several updates to its products and services. The App Platform now supports auto-detection of multiple resources for new apps and has updated Python and Hugo Buildpacks. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is available as a base image, while FreeBSD Droplets will be deprecated on July 1st, 2022. DigitalOcean Load Balancer now supports UDP for time-sensitive transmission. Managed MongoDB has dedicated CPU options, and the API Tokens have new management features. Additionally, SaaS Add-Ons are available from the DigitalOcean Marketplace, with several offerings in monitoring, backups, automation, log management, and security. Apple Pay is now accepted as a payment method for DigitalOcean services.

AMD recently disclosed a vulnerability affecting its Premium AMD Droplets on DigitalOcean's platform. The issue stemmed from a bug in the CPU core logic that could allow malicious users to cause performance or availability issues for other Droplets on the same hypervisor. However, the vulnerability has been successfully patched and no customer data was affected. DigitalOcean responded by rapidly mitigating risks and minimizing service interruptions through live migration of Droplets from vulnerable hypervisors to patched ones. The company remains committed to proactively detecting, protecting against, and responding to such issues in the future.

Function as a Service (FaaS) is an event-driven subset of serverless computing that allows developers to write and deploy code without worrying about servers or infrastructure management. FaaS solutions are different from Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions because functions are completely event-driven and stateless. Developers can use FaaS to save significant resources and reduce costs by combining long-running servers with on-demand reactive functions. To use FaaS appropriately, make sure that each event triggers only one function, keep functions short-lived, maintain statelessness, test and configure functions locally, and ensure security by keeping secrets out of source code and granting permissions only for necessary tasks.

DigitalOcean is excited to participate in KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2022, where they will share insights on how cloud native technology can accelerate development while reducing costs. Kim Schlesinger, their Cloud Native Developer Advocate, will be present at the Data on Kubernetes Day and facilitate a workshop on GitOps to Automate the Setup, Management, and Extension of a Kubernetes Cluster. Additionally, Adam Wolfe Gordon and Wayne Warren, senior software engineers, will host a talk on `docker push` to Bytes on Disk: Inside Distribution. DigitalOcean invites everyone to follow their cloud native content and join them for their weekly talk show, Cloud Chats, where they will discuss the tech news of the week.

The first release of the DigitalOcean Crossplane Provider has been announced, allowing users to turn a Kubernetes cluster into a universal control plane. This open-source project simplifies setting up multi-cloud infrastructure and enables platform engineers to let application developers spin up and down cloud resources without requiring extensive knowledge of the cloud. With Crossplane, all cloud resources are stored in the Kubernetes API as Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), unlocking the power of Infrastructure as Code and a GitOps workflow. The DigitalOcean Provider currently supports creating Droplets, Load Balancers, Database Clusters, and Kubernetes Clusters, with more features planned for future releases.

DigitalOcean Kubernetes has added several new features to enhance its managed K8s offering for developers and businesses. These include more regional support for High Availability Control Plane, built-in Operational Readiness Checks, support for Kubernetes v1.22.x, and a new add-ons tab for clusters. The high availability control plane is now available in additional data centers, while the Operational Readiness Checks simplify configuration of underlying resources. DigitalOcean Kubernetes also supports 1.22, which brings security updates and better Cilium support. Users can now discover and manage third-party and open-source preconfigured apps and stacks directly from the Kubernetes control panel.