10 ms·

Linode vs. DigitalOcean – performance benchmarks

305 points by okor 14y ago

niggler 14y ago
How are the "requests per second" measured? (I assume that something like `ab` is used, but I'm wondering if it run on the same machine or from an external machine ...)
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Don't fuss about it. HN loves benchmark porn. Throw some dramatic charts up, show approximately zilch methodological control, voila: front page. (Complete with sarky comments like this one.) My personal question is: are DigitalOcean making a profit?
  - niggler 14y ago
    "are DigitalOcean making a profit?" -- pandodaily is mentioned on the home page, so I'm guessing no. Let's suppose for a moment that I actually wanted to do a performance comparison for my own purposes (which means I actually care about the actual results). How would I do it right?
  - zagi 14y ago
    >My personal question is: are DigitalOcean making a profit? Yes. If you do the math they actually do break even and manage to squeeze some profit.
voidlogic 14y ago
I've been very happy with DigitalOcean since switching to them. This blog echo's my anecdotal experience. If DigitalOcean would open up a Chicago and West coast DC I could switch completely over... I wish this had been a $20 vs $20 plan comparison.
nlh 14y ago
The article says Linode has "predictably greater CPU performance". Am I missing something? It looks like Digital Ocean is the winner in every single benchmark other than Apache Static Page Serving. (I'm assuming lower is better for encoding time.)
- karolist 14y ago
  Last I had to work on a video transcoder using ffmpeg, most codecs were not easily parallelized. That's what might have happened here, even though Linode has 4 cores, core vs core comparison it gets beaten.
  - jpdoctor 14y ago
    Your reply makes sense. I'd note also that running 4 parallel encoding jobs would expose the CPU difference.
- milliams 14y ago
  My thought exactly. Unless I'm misunderstanding, the only benchmark in which Linode came out in front was the Apache static page one and that was the closest of all the tests. Based on this DigitalOcean is a run-away winner which is a bit surprising.
- justin0 14y ago
  For some of the media encoding, presumably higher is better. x264 for sure: when talking about frames encoded per second, more would be better. the rest of the benchmarks are all "higher is better" so perhaps the same is true for seconds of (mp3|flac) encoded in a period. they are certainly ambiguous though.
- spyder 14y ago
  The X264 encoding graph shows "frames per second" and if it's higher then it's better. And probably he measured the other encondings the same way but mislabeled the graphs.
- okor 14y ago
  spyder is correct, the x264 graph was mislabeled. I've updated the label. It should have read "Frames per Second" not "Seconds". However, the mp3 and flac graphs are correctly labeled. DigitalOcean still outperforms Linode on mp3 and flac, but that's probably (guessing) because the processer are not waiting for the disk and the x264 encoding is using multiple cores where mp3 and flac encoding is only using one core.
brandon272 14y ago
There are plenty of VPS providers out there who are cheaper than Linode, including some with compelling SSD packages. With Linode, I know that I am getting excellent support. There's the peace of mind of knowing that when I submit a ticket, someone will read and respond in short order. A $5 SSD VPS sounds great, but I automatically wonder what kind of hardware I will be on (does it compete with Linode's RAID 10 configuration?), and how long my support requests will take to be addressed, and whether or not the low prices are a sustainable business model.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I agree with everything you say, but if history has taught us anything it is that people want "cheap" and just expect great support regardless of price. I mean the best example is airlines. For the longest time the big national airlines claimed that they would laugh last since their support/customer care was /so/ much better than cheap no-thrills airlines. But look at what happened! The no-thrills airlines have been stealing market share year upon year, people are booking whatever is cheapest in the price comparison all other things be damned. The same is true of retail Vs. the internet. Retails shops claimed that they wouldn't lose market share because people loved the one on one customer service and face to face interaction, but clearly they were mistaken. In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest.
  - LeonidasXIV 14y ago
    > In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest. Not sure about the US, but when buying electronics Amazon is usually somewhere in the middle, price-wise. They are almost never really the cheapest and if so, this is usually due to a Amazon Marketplace seller, not Amazon themselves.
    - nanidin 14y ago
      When I had Amazon Prime, the free shipping + lack of sales tax made almost always made Amazon the best choice, financially.
jstalin 14y ago
My favorite site for finding all kinds of VPS deals (some for as little as $15 a year) is http://www.lowendbox.com http://www.lowendbox.com. It's great for finding a VPS nearly anywhere in the world for your SSH tunnel, offsite storage, or just to tinker with.
- TylerE 14y ago
  That's ok for some, but it kind of annoys me. Where's the equivalent index for people want a VPS to do real work? I'd love a site that would let me compare pricing for say, 4GB/4 core machines.
  - visionpol 14y ago
    I use this list to find a VPS to my specs. It has sliders for pretty much any relevant spec. * http://vps-list.cryto.net/index.php?action=list http://vps-list.cryto.net/index.php?action=list
  - brandon272 14y ago
    Here's a site comparing different types of plans. http://serverbear.com/ http://serverbear.com/
- dsl 14y ago
  LowEndBox is a great site, but the hosts that tend to advertise there are ran by kids (literally). It is also the recommended go to spot that is linked from a lot of "hack forums" for information on where to find VPS providers who don't have solid abuse handling in place yet.
fowlduck 14y ago
These graphs are meaningless without methodology.
- michael37 14y ago
  The methodology is a well-documented "Phoronix Benchmark Suite". However, why in the world is this methodology relevant for the hosting service? Would any of you really do any x264 encoding on an outsourced server, or would you use your desktop? I would much rather get apache running, and run the ab (Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool).
  - noamsml 14y ago
    I might, actually. A huge part of the reason I own a VPS is precisely because I don't own a desktop, and having a persistent networked machine comes in handy often.
  - photomattmills 14y ago
    In fact, he did do benchmarks with ab: http://jasonormand.com/2013/02/08/linode-vs-digitalocean-performance-benchmarks/#chart-7 http://jasonormand.com/2013/02/08/linode-vs-digitalocean-per...
rmoriz 14y ago
(shameless self-promo ;-) Use the DigitalOcean API from Ruby and Chef/knife to create/shutdown/destroy virtual servers ("droplets"): * https://github.com/rmoriz/digital_ocean https://github.com/rmoriz/digital_ocean * https://github.com/rmoriz/knife-digital_ocean https://github.com/rmoriz/knife-digital_ocean
- rjsamson 14y ago
  That's really cool! I'm definitely going to have to give it a try.
  - rmoriz 14y ago
    feel free to contact me if you encounter problems :)
- homosaur 14y ago
  No problem with self promos when you're dropping dope softwares. I'll check this out later.
- pwelch 14y ago
  Nice work. I did not see a knife plugin on the community site a few weeks ago when I looked. Thanks for putting this together!
Steveism 14y ago
Where are Digital Ocean's data centers? I can't seem to find that information anywhere on their site.
- jamroom 14y ago
  Looks like New York and Amsterdam.
- DASD 14y ago
  Equinix(New York) and Telecity(Amsterdam).
Ologn 14y ago
I was choosing VPS providers recently. I used http://www.serverbear.com http://www.serverbear.com for the benchmarks. Then I looked on the web for anecdotal information on how good and reliable the VPSs were. I chose Linode. Then I needed another VPS. It was favoring Ramnode, but they had temporarily run out of SSDs. So I went with Rackspace, which was used by many people, even though they seemed to generate more complaints then Linode.
karolist 14y ago
I've never heard of Digital Ocean. Are they reliable? Do they have a DNS manager comparable to Linode? (I have no aspirations of running multiple Bind instances on my own, thanks). I might consider moving off Linode for pricing alone.
- yogo 14y ago
  I've been evaluating them for the past 6 months or so and it's definitely one of the more stable cheap VPS providers out there. I believe they added a DNS manager a few months ago but I haven't used it as yet.
- driverdan 14y ago
  They're a Techstars company, if that means anything to you.
- signifiers 14y ago
  They've been very reliable for us. Network is spiky (12-20MB/s at times), but otherwise, compared to roughly equivalent VMs (lscpu, /proc/cpuinfo, etc.) they are hands-down faster than AWS. In the limited testing we've done on AWS SSD AMIs (optimized for cluster compute), AWS wins on network and CPU, but at literally 10X the cost. Also, see: http://serverbear.com/9806/digitalocean http://serverbear.com/9806/digitalocean for interesting benchmarks over time (with all the standard caveats, yada yada).
citricsquid 14y ago
For me the performance of Linode isn't the greatest factor, the greatest factor (and the reason I spend ~$300/m with them when I could get the 10 servers for 1/5th the price elsewhere) is that support is second to none. I have never experienced better support than I have with Linode. If I have a problem and submit a ticket (which is rare) it's answered within a few minutes, if there's a network or hardware issue they open a ticket with me before I've even noticed. No other provider I've used has ever had that quality of service.
- okor 14y ago
  I've had the same experience with Linode. They have great support.
- rjsamson 14y ago
  I've been on Digital Ocean for around 6 months now and I have to say that their support is pretty awesome - very responsive when needed. I couldn't be happier with DO so far.
  - homosaur 14y ago
    That's good to hear, I was thinking of switching to Linode which I use for work, but I think I will try buying two 512MB DO servers instead.
  - namidark 14y ago
    Seconded, DO's support is as quick to respond to technical issues as linode (and they're helpful on IRC as well).
  - kposehn 14y ago
    Thirded. DO is pretty fanatical about support.
  - chadcf 14y ago
    Good to know. I just set up a $5 a month server with a $20 promotional coupon code. That's 4 months free, yeesh. I love linode too, but my needs are modest as all I really do is host a few small traffic sites for friends and staging sites for clients. As much as I love linode, my next year of hosting will go from $240 to $40. And with their prices if I'm happy I now have a great affordable host to recommend to clients.
deutronium 14y ago
I recently switched from Linode to a dedicated server from Hetzner as I found I could get better specs for only a few quid more / month (than Linodes 1GB package). Linode was a great provider, but now I can manage my own VMs using Xen myself.
- elbear 14y ago
  I just checked Hetzner out and their VPS is also cheaper than Linode. Are you satisfied with their services?
  - petercooper 14y ago
    Not to answer for the OP but I'm both a Linode and Hetzner customer. The Hetzner machine has been solid and their network is great. But.. I keep the most important stuff on Linode because if a piece of hardware in the Hetzner machine blows up, I could be off the air for $indeterminate_time whereas with Linode, the worst case is I fire up another Linode within 5 minutes and reload from a backup.
    - elbear 14y ago
      Thanks for answering. In my case, I'm looking more at the Hetzner VPS offering, because it's in the same price range and has better specs than the equivalent Linode.
machbio 14y ago
Performance Benchmarks for what.. Are these Benchmarks for a Remote Server for Work.. Or is it as a Webserver.. Benchmark does not prove thing for Webserver other than Disk I/O is greater with Digital ocean. If Disk I/O was so critical then no one would go with AWS since they have got the worst of all. Benchmarks need to prove a thing in its application, unless it does its waste of time.
larrys 14y ago
A new broom sweeps clean. Results even with VPS depend on who else is using the equipment and what they are doing. Easy to spin up a machine with no usage and get great performance if there is nobody on it. That doesn't mean this data isn't correct of course but keep in mind the OP is making a comparison between 1 machine at Linode and 1 machine at Digital Ocean at a given point in time. Same equipment or different equipment at a later date could yield different results as the equipment gets filled up or depending on who else is using it. We had VPS's at Media Temple that would literally stall periodically for a few seconds. We then migrated to a different machine at a different data center and it hasn't happened since.
earless1 14y ago
DigitalOcean seems like they are worth a look
tcohen 14y ago
We just switched over to Digital Ocean and I'm very happy with it!
endijs 14y ago
Doh. "Due to a high load that we are experiencing with Trial Accounts - we have temporarily disabled them." However email after signup tells: Your trial period will last 12 hours.
- clone1018 14y ago
  Sorry we'll get that fixed asap D:!
  - isalmon 14y ago
    Same for me, please let us know when this is resolved
sergiotapia 14y ago
Off-topic: Who is this "Terrence Andrew Davis" fellow who comments on pretty much every single post that reaches HN? He sounds like a lunatic and religious fanatic constantly quoting bible verses and sermons. Pretty darn creepy to read at 4am.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  He's a schizophrenic but quite a brilliant one. He wrote this entire OS in assembler: http://www.sparrowos.com/ http://www.sparrowos.com/ If it disturbs you you can always turn off showdead (or if he made a new account, wait until it's banned as it soon will be.)
- minsight 14y ago
  He's the author of LoseThos (64 bit OS, written from scratch), and has schizophrenia. His story is very interesting, if you can get past the wall of computer-generated religious content.
  - sergiotapia 14y ago
    Wow, I had no idea. Now I feel sorry for him. I wish him well.
curcumin 14y ago
Very confused, but I understand brand loyalty. Linode scorched Slicehost at one point. I like the idea of DigitalOcean and I'm moving all my non critical/beta/alpaha sites to DigitalOcean.
armored_mammal 14y ago
From DigitalOcean's TOS: "You agree that you will NOT use DigitalOcean's services to: violate any applicable state and federal law and regulation, including, but not limited to, any copyright, trademark, patent, anti-piracy, or other intellectual property law or regulation, or encourage or enable others to violate any such law or regulation. Transmit, distribute, post, store, link, or otherwise traffic in information, software, or materials that is offensive, abusive, inappropriate, malicious, or detrimental, including, but not limited to, those that: Are obscene, fraudulent, or discriminatory, including any containing profanity, or obscenities. DigitalOcean permits adult websites that abide by state and federal law and regulation. ..." I think it's funny how they can go from barring any information "offensive, abusive, inappropriate, malicious, or detrimental, including, but not limited to, those that: Are obscene, fraudulent, or discriminatory, including any containing profanity, or obscenities" to specifically permitting "adult websites that abide by state and federal law and regulation." In any case good, luck keeping your blog, blog, comments, or whatever else you host with them clear of all profanity all of you who decide to try their services, because you've just walked into a convenient TOS violation. Damn! (Oops. TOS violation. Goodbye HN. Ha ha.)
- beigeotter 14y ago
  Thank you for raising this issue. We try to make our terms of service as fair as possible—we are not looking to censor any information or content on our customers' droplets. As you have raised this issue, to make the situation clearer, the phrase referring to obscenity and profanity has been removed from our terms of service. Thanks, Etel
  - aflott 14y ago
    I recently signed up with Digital Ocean and I'm now happier I did due to responses like this.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  Good spot. Also if you Google you can find the exact same TOS on other sites. It's just generic boiler-plate.
nhebb 14y ago
Since their US servers are based in New York, what are the state's policies as far as sales taxes? I believe there was a issue with Linode's Texas hub that any sales to Texas residents required you collect sales tax. Does NY have a similar issue where a server constitutes a physical presence?
snowwrestler 14y ago
I rarely see Rackspace Cloud mentioned on Hacker News in these sorts of VPS discussions. Anyone have insight as to why that is? Too expensive? Crappy service? Background - my employer hosts on dedicated servers at Rackspace and we're considering using more of their cloud offering.
- nemesisj 14y ago
  We've had an absolutely horrible experience with Rackspace (managed, managed cloud, and unmanaged cloud). I think Rackspace has seen their day come and go (used to be a very loyal customer) and are really struggling. Their tech is old and outdated, they're awash in duplicate controls panels, their billing isn't unified, and their UK presence is completely out of control. We're moving away as quickly as possible to Linode and AWS.
  - RackerShagz 14y ago
    I work at Rackspace, and I'm really sorry to hear about this experience. We are working very hard to address the control panel inconveniences that you've mentioned and we would be extremely grateful if you could take the time to provide us with some feedback on how we could improve. You can reach me directly at shaggy@rackspace.com. Thanks.
    - nemesisj 14y ago
      Hey there - thanks for the response, but I've already wasted at least 15-20 hours over the last year communicating with Rackspace techs, management, and senior management (so I'm told). If you truly believe you can actually do something to fix all the problems, let me know. Like I said, Rackspace's model of hiring great people and giving premium service worked great in the old days pre-cloud, but now the people are poor quality as the company has grown, the underlying tech is horrible, and the billing and other services so bad that you can't justify the premium prices anymore. Rackspace servers and service (in all forms) are considered harmful. Just go with AWS or Linode.
- tszming 14y ago
rythie 14y ago
ServerBear has all the $5/month hosts in one place: http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=BearScore&Order=desc&Monthly+Cost=500000-500000&HDD=-&RAM=-&BearScore=-&I%2FO+Benchmark=-&Virtualization= http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=BearScore&Order=desc&...
sunyc 14y ago
i think its bullshit, just buy 10 vps and write garbage to disk, in a month you can wipe their entire stock of ssd disks.
antiterra 14y ago
DigitalOcean is promising, but they should probably hire a lawyer to fix up their Terms of Service. I notice they've attempted to appease adult content websites by removing the restriction against nudity and adding a statement that adult sites are expressly allowed if legal. But, they've left in a prohibition on profanity? That seems a bit backwards. Inappropriate content is also disallowed, what does that mean? It's not a legal term of art that I'm familiar with. Why does a sentence begin with "Transmit"? And please, consider using bulleted lists. https://www.digitalocean.com/tos https://www.digitalocean.com/tos
- beigeotter 14y ago
  Profanity clause has been removed.
SanjayUttam 14y ago
Anyone know of any similar hosts (VPS, SSD) for Windows Server? Seems like installing a virtual Win instance may not work [ http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/2536799-can-i-deploy-windows- http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea... ] Alternatively, if anyone has successfully installed Windows on a VPS instance, please let me know :)
ck2 14y ago
Just hope those SSD are made by intel and are in raid10. Otherwise 3-4 year failure is quite common.
epaulson 14y ago
It's still just 512 megs of RAM. I'd love to find a VPS provider that gives me like 2 gigs of RAM, and charged me by how much of that was hot during the month. It's frustrating to have to pay in advance for the maximum amount of RAM I might need. I'd like to be able to leave processes running that might have a lot of data mapped into their address spaces, but for much of the time that data can safely be paged out to disk and not used. When I come and use the machine, I'd like to have a large amount of RAM, but when I'm not using it, I don't want to pay for it.
- clone1018 14y ago
  You can dynamically resize your servers via DigitalOcean's API.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  What happens when they sell your ram to another customer, and then you decide you want it back?
  - epaulson 14y ago
    It's just capacity planning - they can migrate me around as needed, though obviously they'd like to minimize the number of times that happens. Maybe there are periods where I spin up but don't get the full memory - that's OK, I'm only paying for what I use. We have all of this virtualization technology but I still have to make hard decisions about size ahead of time. There are lots of providers that will let me burst CPU, I'd like to burst RAM. For people building small apps that get occasional usage, having more flexibility on memory would be a huge boon.
    - crynix 14y ago
      I know IntoVPS lets you burst RAM. I believe the cheapest plan can burst to 1GB.
account_taken 14y ago
DigitalOcean is good value but I found their I/O speed not anywhere close to SSD levels. I ran this bench mark from github. RamNode is the best. https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench
mrinterweb 14y ago
When Digital Ocean has a west coast datacenter, I will give them another look. Latency has a larger perceived impact to users than any of those benchmarks given.
csomar 14y ago
I think DO compares to Linode (or even better) in CPU performance because the software used (for Encoding or whatever) doesn't make use of extra cores. You'll need multi-threads aware software to take advantage of the available cores. I have a Linode 1Gb (and another 512Mb) and I rarely go over 110% CPU utilization even when my server is busy (the max is 400%, 4 cores being used). Also, price comparison, Linode charges an extra $5 (for 512Mb) and $10 (for 1 Gb) for Backups. DO seems to be giving them for free. My yearly bill on Linode : $900 My yearly bill on DO : $180 I think I'm trying DO soon, especially I'll be in need for more servers. Edit: I'm a little afraid from DO. They are simply too^8 cheap and it's scary. Will they be around for too long? What's their down time like? Will they lose my data (and backups)?... Price wise, DO beats the hell out of anything. I can renew my smartphone yearly for free just by moving.
- cheapsteak 14y ago
  >I can renew my smartphone yearly for free just by moving. You lost me there. Is that slang for something?
  - gamblor956 14y ago
    He's saving roughly $720 yearly by switching to DO. Most high-end smartphones retail off-contract for roughly $600 (which you would pay if you have a grandfathered unlimited data plan on Verizon or AT&T).
  - csomar 14y ago
    I'm just emphasizing the opportunity cost here. I bought a high-end Smartphone the last year and I have been thinking if I should renew it on a yearly basis with the latest model. By switching to DO (expecting they offer a comparable service), my purchasing power gets bigger and allow me to become richer (renew smartphone or buy some other stuff). I'm just trying to show how competition, technology and efficiency makes us richer.
jwmoz 14y ago
Well looks like I'm just spunking away ~£12 every month!
willholloway 14y ago
I made the switch from Linode/AWS micro instances to Digital Ocean recently. Pros: Great pricem, performance is excellent,UI is great for creating servers Cons: I have had two periods of about 20 minutes of down time in the early mornings recently. Digital Ocean is great hosting for developers. They are really doing it right.
- clone1018 14y ago
  Have you ticketed your issue?
zargon 14y ago
I've been using digital ocean for a minecraft server and vpn. Network reliability has been a problem. Some days I get frequent disconnects, and other days it is fine. I will continue using linode for my servers that matter, and digital ocean for toys and experiments, just because it's so cheap.
- ksec 14y ago
  During my resrach for performance / $ I recently discovered a host specialise in Minecraft hosting that offers one of the best performance for its price. Check Out Simplenode. ( I am not related to them in anyways )
nathanstitt 14y ago
I fail to see how anyone can create a repeatable objective benchmark between different VPS providers. I respect the fact that the author tried hard and didn't bias the results, but I fail to see where he even repeated the benchmark over a number of days to attempt to eliminate variations in what the other guests were doing while the benchmark was running. As I see it, the only way I would trust a benchmark of this nature was if it was somehow ran over multiple hosts and was able to sample a large fraction of the physical boxes over a large period of time. As you can image, that's impossible to do on S3 and any of the other larger VPS providers Even if somehow someone did manage to pull off a benchmark like the above, I still wouldn't trust it because it would only be valid until the provider added "Joe's Cheap Video Encoding Service" as a client that's sharing my box. Or someone else who's running a benchmark just like you are? With all of the above said: I'm sure that there is differences between the VPS providers in how they allocate CPU and IO resources and Digital Ocean may indeed be much better on average. I'm just not sure how you can measure it objectively to make sure they are or that they will continue to be so even 5 minutes in the future. Which is a shame, because an objective metric that was trustworthy that compared all the different providers would be absolutely awesome.
derefr 14y ago
For a while, I was pretty happy with another low-price host (ChicagoVPS)--but I had to switch away (to Linode, as it happens) due to something not mentioned or measured in this article at all: network throughput volatility. Someone or something was regularly burst-saturating the physical pipe going into the machine, such that it would seem to all the rest of the world that my website would be down for random 90-second periods every few hours. This is really bad when you're trying to run a realtime game with persistent connections :) I'm not sure quite what it was--whether malicious user behavior, a lack of separation in bridge-interface setup making network traffic on the box un-QoS-able, or maybe someone on the box I was on bearing the brunt of temporary, persistent DoS attacks--but I didn't care to roll the dice on another box from the same host, when I knew that this kind of thing "just doesn't happen" with the major providers. Still, if there was a low-end host that specifically mentioned stable network throughput in their SLA, I'd love to try another one. $7/mo sure does buy a lot of horizontal scaling and High Availability, once you can ensure each node can hold onto the little bit of traffic you send it. :)
danellis 14y ago
Hmm. They email your initial root password in cleartext, rather than either letting me choose it or displaying it on the site, both of which would be over SSL.
- signifiers 14y ago
  If you use keys, no password is sent. An option to not send password by mail (for non-key-based launches) is on the coming-soon roadmap: http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/3566070-add-a-checkbox-to-not-email-root-password http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...
  - danellis 14y ago
    You should probably make it clear during server creation that if you have added SSH keys on the web site, they will be injected into ~root/authorized_keys in the image, if that's what you do. Linode, for example, lets you add SSH keys on their web site, but that's only to access your VM's console.
jsnrkd 14y ago
Not a bad deal for Digital Ocean especially when there are $20 off promo codes available. Assuming you can use it for 4 months, it's essentially a 4 month trial. I found a few codes with a Google search. ;)
madmaze 14y ago
In this article, DigitalOcean's virtualization technology is misstated. Its KVM not VMware
- madmaze 14y ago
  this has now been corrected.
gourneau 14y ago
I signed up for DigitalOcean, thanks.
dhruvbird 14y ago
I personally use digitalocean for hosting http://en.wikipins.org/ http://en.wikipins.org/ and would like to say that I am very happy with their service and SSD IOPS - something that took me 6hrs. on EC2 takes me ~45mins on digitalocean hosted machines for a half (or less) the cost.
emddudley 14y ago
DigitalOcean does not currently offer IPv6. http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/2639897-ipv6-addresses http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...
DigitalJack 14y ago
How does KVM compare with Xen? Can you over-subscribe ram with KVM?
- aliguori 14y ago
  Yes, you can over-subscribe RAM either through ballooning or just by over-subscribing the host. Both KVM and Xen use QEMU for their device models so the machine they emulate is very similar (at least in HVM mode). Xen and KVM use different paravirtual I/O drivers but everything I've ever seen indicates that I/O performance is better in KVM. Xen PV guests are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they work on boxes without virtualization hardware (which are rare anymore) but on pre-Nehalem/Barcelona processors, they are much slower than using HVM (especially 64-bit). I've never seen a good Xen HVM benchmark either comparatively speaking... Of course, I'm more than a little biased :-)
dotBen 14y ago
One of the many reasons I pay for Linode is the "good neighbor" aspect the price point brings. I'm not saying that DigitalOcean suffers this problem but the cheaper a VPS provider is the greater chance of it being used by folks running bit torrent, warez downloads, etc and/or folks who think they need to smash the (shared) resources out of server to get their moneys worth. Paying a few dollars extra for a Linode instance (and I have 100's of them, so it adds up) is worth the peace of mind of being unattractive to these kinds. IE 'bad neighbors" who will pee in the pool. Support is also top notch (although I rarely need it).
- jordan0day 14y ago
  > etc and/or folks who think they need to smash the (shared) resources out of server to get their moneys worth. Wouldn't this be more likely on a higher-priced VPS (like Linode) than a lower-priced VPS (like DigitalOcean)?
  - sirclueless 14y ago
    No, definitely not. If your top priority is performance per dollar, then no rational person would choose Linode. As a result, Linode attracts people whose top priorities are reliable support and good uptime. People who are worried about uptime don't run their boxes at 110% all the time.
    - taligent 14y ago
      > good uptime Which is funny because Linode has pretty bad uptime. When I was on their Fremont DC it went down all the time.
      - corford 14y ago
        Apparently Fremont is their oldest DC and seems to attract the lion's share of the downtime. I've had 8 linode's running in their London DC for almost 3 years now and can't remember any DC related downtime. The only hiccup I've ever experienced is a host machine having disk issues once which meant they needed to move one of my vms. From being alerted of the problem to having the vm back up and running took ~45 mins with no intervention on my part.
geuis 14y ago
I just switched http://jsonip.com http://jsonip.com from Rackspace/Slicehost to Linode about a month ago. I was a multi-year Slicehost customer and couldn't have been happier. It was only a matter of time after Rackspace aquired them that I was expecting problems. That occurred about a month + one week ago. (Sorry for the downtime to any users that might be reading this.) I've since migrated the service to Linode and holy shit, it's such an improvement. The support is great, but even more their admin interface is excellent. Gives me so much more info than I ever had before. It's even a little cheaper than the plan I had with Slicehost. Just to throw some numbers out there: jsonip.com is a node-based app that supports upwards of 6-10 million requests per day. Lets just say that I couldn't be happier with Linode. Note to Linode: Do not ever sell out to Rackspace or else I will be forced to go live in the woods somewhere. Thanks.
- jervisfm 14y ago
  I'm just curious : which linode plan do you have for your server ? Is it the $20 monthly plan ?
  - geuis 14y ago
    Linode 1024, ~$50 USD.
- bartkozord 14y ago
  You don't need node.js for this little service. If you're already using nginx you can just use the return directive. Voilà http://git.io/ip http://git.io/ip
  - geuis 14y ago
    Yes, I know. nginx is pretty awesome and I use it a lot in various servers. jsonip started as a node.js side-project for me a few years ago, and its scaled beautifully as traffic has grown. Its my preferred server environment these days, and I prefer to see how far it can be pushed. So far, I've yet to hit the limit on what it can do for this kind of high-traffic application. In the future, if it started capping out, I'd look at alternatives. But I'm not there yet, and I like to continue experimenting with node. =)
graham_king_3 14y ago
There might be better performing hosting providers, and there are definitely lower cost providers than Linode, but I don't love them like I love Linode. It's not entirely rational, but if you ask around, I'd wager most people who use Linode love it. Maybe it's because it used to be just caker doing everything, or the free disk / memory upgrades he kept handing out. I remember him asking about LASIK surgery in the (very helpful) forums; there's a family feeling to it. It's the anti-Rackspace. It's home.
- corford 14y ago
  >It's not entirely rational So true. I moved a mail server I manage over to digital ocean recently because it needed more RAM and the price difference between a 4GB DO instance and a 4GB Linode one was just too much to swallow. Very happy with DO so far but... I still have 7 1GB and 512MB vms with Linode and no plans to move any of them because I just can't bring myself to sever all ties with Linode :D
kawsper 14y ago
Doesn't something like Rails appservers (Unicorns for an example) run better on Linode because of more access to cores? Or does that depend on implementation? I remember reading something about MRI only being able to utilize one core.
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dharma1 14y ago
I've been with Linode for a few years, nothing to complain about. Like others have mentioned, super fast support, good wiki pages for setting things up, and good IRC channel. With RAM prices being what they are, Linode should price their RAM more competitively and offer SSD for those who want it, at a reasonable price. On the other hand they also have a data centre in Tokyo, which means noticeably better pings to Asia than DigitalOcean. In any case, will give DigitalOcean a try for a couple of projects. Might also want to try OVH and Hetzner for dedicated servers for about £50/month.
JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
For over VPS benchmarks, I love serverbear.com I host with Ramnode.com, and I love their prices and SSDs. Not one issue yet except the odd DDoS attack. Used the server bear coupon code to get 31% off my services for life. I wonder how it stacks up to DigitalOcean. I also have a linode server, but I'm thinking of cancelling because it is too expensive, but it is solid as a rock.
orthecreedence 14y ago
Shiny new services will always be popping up with great deals and "faster" servers but I prefer to not move my infrastructure every time the next host du jour comes out. Plus, they're just going to raise their prices once they get a critical mass of customers. Linode has been there through thick and thin for me. Sounds cheesy, but they report on and fix issues before I even notice them, I've only had to submit a ticket once (for something that was my fault), and their infrastructure is tight as a drum. Linode is very, very reliable. Another thing that many people who work with larger applications than mine will tell you is that speed is not important, what's important is consistency. Linode's virtualization is set up to provide, above all, consistency (even on a loaded host). So sure your site might run 1.6778 times faster on DO, but when the host server is loaded your site's going to be crawling because the other neighbors are bursting their CPU into your space. We'll see if DO's prices and performance stand the test of time. My guess is their support is extremely lacking in comparison. When everything's running perfectly, this is great. But when the chips are down can you really rely on them? I guess we'll see.
- taligent 14y ago
  Wow. I found the complete opposite. Linode would routinely not respond during major incidents (e.g. power outage at Fremont which was common for me) and when they did they were often not clear about what was happening. Their infrastructure is hardly tight as a drum (Google 'Linode bitcoin').
  - orthecreedence 14y ago
    From reading through the comments, it seems a lot of the pain points for Linode happened in the non-Dallas datacenters. Our servers are hosted there with almost 0 problems. I did a good amount of research on which Linode datacenters are the best before placing our servers there (this was years ago) and found that the Fremont datacenter had a lot of flaky issues (and if your experience was recent at all, then they apparently still have issues). So maybe Linode's main support system is set up to favor Dallas, which if this is true is pretty shoddy. I'd be interested to hear more experiences from other people across different datacenters.
whalesalad 14y ago
I've been a Linode customer for many years. I couldn't be happier. They have a buttload of locations to choose from, fast networks, and as everyone else has already mentioned: out of this world support. I've even managed to earn a few hundred bucks in referral cash from them. I had a handful of dyno's, a worker, and a few add-ons running my iPhone app's API within Heroku up until about a week ago where I transitioned everything onto a small collection of Linodes in the UK datacenter. We're launching in Europe so it made sense to bring everything closer. If you're comfortable and skilled with a terminal, you can get a lot more bang for your buck with Linode. That being said, I am always interested in trying something new. For a $40 Linode you get 1GB of RAM, with DigitalOcean the same $40 gets you 2GB of RAM and they run on SSD's. I'm going to deploy a copy of my primary API server here to take it for a spin. First impression thus far: fast deployment. From pressing the submit button to shelling in took literally less than a minute. Unfortunately though the latency on the box seems a bit high. There is a bit of lag in the terminal, something I do not experience with Linode's UK datacenter. I'm in Sweden on a 4G modem, here's a traceroute between me and both boxes. DigitalOcean is first, followed by Linode. ### DigitalOcean – Amsterdam Datacenter traceroute to 192.81.221.48 (192.81.221.48), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 tiny (192.168.0.1) 10.573 ms 1.658 ms 1.393 ms 2 10.9.14.115 (10.9.14.115) 33.218 ms 24.250 ms 59.223 ms 3 10.9.14.113 (10.9.14.113) 51.009 ms 35.878 ms 30.836 ms 4 90-229-25-24.link.se.telia.net (90.229.25.24) 33.153 ms 30.662 ms 34.999 ms 5 s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.96) 33.962 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.228) 74.544 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.133.147) 77.395 ms 6 s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.246.148) 36.792 ms s-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.234) 29.966 ms s-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.133.142) 31.228 ms 7 kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.134.141) 151.952 ms kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.248.65.29) 42.281 ms kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.178) 123.130 ms 8 kbn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.51) 39.032 ms 45.868 ms kbn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.245.159) 44.708 ms 9 te4-7.ccr01.cph01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.14.33) 67.971 ms 60.729 ms 96.055 ms 10 te0-7-0-0.ccr22.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.62.117) 132.391 ms te0-7-0-6.ccr21.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.2.149) 97.568 ms te0-7-0-0.ccr22.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.62.117) 137.713 ms 11 te0-0-0-3.mpd21.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.50.57) 101.141 ms 89.885 ms te0-0-0-3.mpd22.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.1.101) 147.596 ms 12 te2-1.mag01.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.48.62) 104.005 ms te1-1.mag01.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.0.242) 52.704 ms 127.224 ms 13 nxs-internet.demarc.cogentco.com (149.6.128.6) 98.294 ms 130.686 ms 142.924 ms 14 192.81.221.48 (192.81.221.48) 148.148 ms 107.753 ms 134.880 ms and now Linode... ### Linode – London, UK Datacenter traceroute to blitzen.dbld8.com (176.58.120.7), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 tiny (192.168.0.1) 9.671 ms 2.313 ms 1.411 ms 2 10.9.14.115 (10.9.14.115) 32.881 ms 21.701 ms 34.152 ms 3 10.9.14.113 (10.9.14.113) 36.843 ms 21.986 ms 26.750 ms 4 90-229-25-24.link.se.telia.net (90.229.25.24) 26.421 ms 24.166 ms 26.982 ms 5 s-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.134.55) 27.415 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.248.199) 33.347 ms 37.758 ms 6 s-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.254.114) 34.993 ms s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.254.58) 92.886 ms s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.247.216) 38.297 ms 7 hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.135.236) 83.932 ms hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.251.41) 36.076 ms hbg-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.147) 47.708 ms 8 ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.201) 67.937 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.247) 106.801 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.169) 63.880 ms 9 ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.170) 54.534 ms ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.251.237) 101.259 ms ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.247.25) 64.316 ms 10 telecity-ic-150799-ldn-b3.c.telia.net (80.239.167.94) 59.564 ms 70.329 ms 64.835 ms 11 85.90.238.70 (85.90.238.70) 70.606 ms 68.463 ms 60.808 ms 12 212.111.33.234 (212.111.33.234) 69.237 ms 60.927 ms 70.726 ms 13 li522-7.members.linode.com (176.58.120.7) 65.147 ms 60.434 ms 62.646 ms Quite a difference here. Geographically Sweden is closer to Amsterdam, but i'd imagine there is a fat pipe crossing the North Sea that is faster than being routed through Northern Europe to AMS.
taligent 14y ago
It amazes me that people on here are so quick to forget about the Linode Bitcoin incident. Because it is during security incidents that you really find out what type of company you are dealing with. With Cloudflare they informed users quickly, were transparent about what happened and took their licks. With Linode they didn't inform users and we still don't know what happened. As a former customer I would never, ever use Linode again.
- zzzeek 14y ago
  I'd wager (though not with bitcoins) that Linode would be entirely happy to not have bitcoin-related apps running on their systems either, considering the probability of attracting highly motivated attackers.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Sure. But then everyone should be clear about it. Linode is a toy and should never be used if you value the security of your data.
    - zzzeek 14y ago
      > Linode is a toy and should never be used if you value the security of your data. Substitute "Linode / data" for "Bitcoin / money" ? Sorry, couldn't resist. Looking through your old comments and linking out a bit it seems the incident occurred as a result of a leaked password from an employee. Seems pretty simple, and I take them at their word in their statement (http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.html http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.h...) that they've made improvements here. Only a month later Bruce Schneier praised some new password related features being set up (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/password_securi.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/password_secur...). I'll agree they're obviously in no mood to make public comments about this, but I think that might be part of that I think they're more than happy to not be a destination host for users that want to store unencrypted bitcoin wallets on hosts. I'd certainly never store anything that translates into money on a public host.
- 14y ago
benbro 14y ago
How is it possible that amazon charge $0.050 per GB (for more than 350 TB / month ) while DigitalOcean charge $0.02 per GB for each extra GB and 0.005$ / GB for the 5$ plan? How can they make any profit?
- ios84dev 14y ago
  Given you can get 1Gbps from Cogent for ~1K/mo (at least that's the price I heard last time they were having a sale) that works out to $0.003/GB, so both are making a massive amount of profit.
  - benbro 14y ago
    How can I get $0.003/GB? Can I do it with a single dedicated server or do I need my own data center?
    - ios84dev 14y ago
      Contact your local cogent rep. If your dedicated server is in a building with a cogent feed you can probably get a line to it. I'm not sure their current non sales pricing and that might require a 10Gbps commit.
ktzar 14y ago
Maybe this is the reason, (from DigitalOcean): Backup User is solely responsible for the preservation of User's Data. Even with respect to Data as to which User contracts for backup services, DigitalOcean shall have no responsibility to preserve Data, the service is provided as is, without warranty.
- dspillett 14y ago
  That is pretty much the case with every VPS provider in my experience. Many will make best efforts but hardly any will offer any garantees so officially distater recovery is your responsibility not their's.
EugeneOZ 14y ago
But what about features set comparison? ipv6 support, backups, node balancer, dashboard, API, community, documentation...?
callmeed 14y ago
I just launched this project on a Digital Ocean $5 VPS ... it seems pretty fast. (nginx + passenger + Rails) http://romancepass.com http://romancepass.com I've been a happy Linode customer as well. But being able to deploy silly side projects like this for just $5/mo is really cool. This is my 3rd DO VPS and they've all been great. I had a PostgreSQL problem on another one and my support requests were replied to really fast.
propercoil 14y ago
Linode customer for years. I'll buy 4 servers and give digital ocean a shot just because it seems the community approves the service and they accept paypal (Linode doesn't and it bothers me)
gleb 14y ago
There is routine 10x variation in disk performance between different VPS's on Linode. It's luck of the draw and performance will change (i.e. get worse) over time. You'd need to provision and benchmark a bunch of Linodes to get meaningful numbers. That's one of a dozen ways in which a VPS is not like a real server. 5 second benchmark which corresponds well to real-life disk performance: sysbench --test=fileio --file-fsync-freq=1 --file-num=1 \ --file-total-size=16384 --file-test-mode=rndwr run --max-time=10 \ | grep "Requests/sec"
hhw 14y ago
Has nobody else noticed that the benchmarks use ext3 for Linode and ext4 for DigitalOcean? Not that the SSD's won't outperform hard drives anyway, but that's one extra variable that will skew results.
DeepDuh 14y ago
As someone living in a land far beyond the mountains and the sea (aka Switzerland) I'm thinking this: 5$ for a nice Hulu / Netflix proxy? Sweet!
dspillett 14y ago
One of the key featuers of Linode (at least it was when I used them) is the control panel which allows you to manage various vdisks (and even various whole OS installs on those vdisks if you so desire, though not with several running on a single account) within the space limits of your account. That and the general support. At the time I used Linode very few other hosts at that price-for-stuff value point offered such control. Neither of these things are mentioned in the comparison so I don't know if DO offers similar - obviously it isn't important to this reviewer but that sort of thing is for some. I currently use one of the cheap servers from http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ (9UKP/mo for 2Gb RAM, 500Gb space and 5Tb bandwidth (after 5Tb you are not cut off but bandwdth is throttled, though I've never come close to that to see how much effect it has)). Excellent if you don't need any hand holding (it is a completely self managed service) or much support (I've not needed to contact support so can't comment, but again "completely self manged"), or a very specific OS/kernel (they have their own builds, getting stock versions intalled is possible but a bit of a faf), you want a pile of space, and your tasks are not CPU intensive (the cheaper machines only have Atom or Celeron processors). Having your own dedicated drive makes I/O contention a moot point unlike with a VPS (though depending on how loaded DigitalOcean's host servers are they may still outperform this for some I/O patterns due to the use of SSDs).
datagramm 14y ago
The tests on disk performance are kind of redundant as ext3 is being compared to ext4. This will skew the results in favour of DigitalOcean somewhat.
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t0mislav 14y ago
I have both Linode 512 and DigitalOcean 512 VPS. Both VPS are running the same version of Debian, same version of Apache (Apache/2.2.16 (Debian), same apache2.conf files, list of loaded modules are same. For benchmark is used same web site on localhost. (simple joomla site). Results are quite different and I can't figure why. Linode has much more "Requests per second". #linode London Server Software: Apache/2.2.16 Server Hostname: localhost Server Port: 80 Document Path: / Document Length: 7483 bytes Concurrency Level: 20 Time taken for tests: 33.140 seconds Complete requests: 1000 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Total transferred: 8037000 bytes HTML transferred: 7483000 bytes Requests per second: 30.18 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 662.791 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 33.140 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 236.84 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 2.1 0 16 Processing: 118 658 1143.2 487 19006 Waiting: 113 655 1138.1 485 19006 Total: 118 659 1143.2 488 19006 Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 488 66% 563 75% 616 80% 658 90% 779 95% 932 98% 3635 99% 6406 100% 19006 (longest request) #DigitalOcean Amsterdam Server Software: Apache/2.2.16 Server Hostname: localhost Server Port: 80 Document Path: / Document Length: 7483 bytes Concurrency Level: 20 Time taken for tests: 118.087 seconds Complete requests: 1000 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Total transferred: 8032000 bytes HTML transferred: 7483000 bytes Requests per second: 8.47 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 2361.734 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 118.087 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 66.42 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 1 4.0 0 33 Processing: 1256 2355 234.1 2284 3604 Waiting: 1256 2328 232.5 2264 3604 Total: 1256 2356 234.1 2284 3604 Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 2284 66% 2328 75% 2412 80% 2500 90% 2666 95% 2768 98% 2877 99% 3204 100% 3604 (longest request)

305 points by okor 14y ago

How are the "requests per second" measured? (I assume that something like `ab` is used, but I'm wondering if it run on the same machine or from an external machine ...)

jacques_chester 14y ago
Don't fuss about it. HN loves benchmark porn. Throw some dramatic charts up, show approximately zilch methodological control, voila: front page. (Complete with sarky comments like this one.) My personal question is: are DigitalOcean making a profit?
- niggler 14y ago
  "are DigitalOcean making a profit?" -- pandodaily is mentioned on the home page, so I'm guessing no. Let's suppose for a moment that I actually wanted to do a performance comparison for my own purposes (which means I actually care about the actual results). How would I do it right?
- zagi 14y ago
  >My personal question is: are DigitalOcean making a profit? Yes. If you do the math they actually do break even and manage to squeeze some profit.

voidlogic 14y ago

I've been very happy with DigitalOcean since switching to them. This blog echo's my anecdotal experience. If DigitalOcean would open up a Chicago and West coast DC I could switch completely over... I wish this had been a $20 vs $20 plan comparison.

nlh 14y ago

The article says Linode has "predictably greater CPU performance". Am I missing something? It looks like Digital Ocean is the winner in every single benchmark other than Apache Static Page Serving. (I'm assuming lower is better for encoding time.)

karolist 14y ago
Last I had to work on a video transcoder using ffmpeg, most codecs were not easily parallelized. That's what might have happened here, even though Linode has 4 cores, core vs core comparison it gets beaten.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  Your reply makes sense. I'd note also that running 4 parallel encoding jobs would expose the CPU difference.
milliams 14y ago
My thought exactly. Unless I'm misunderstanding, the only benchmark in which Linode came out in front was the Apache static page one and that was the closest of all the tests. Based on this DigitalOcean is a run-away winner which is a bit surprising.
justin0 14y ago
For some of the media encoding, presumably higher is better. x264 for sure: when talking about frames encoded per second, more would be better. the rest of the benchmarks are all "higher is better" so perhaps the same is true for seconds of (mp3|flac) encoded in a period. they are certainly ambiguous though.
spyder 14y ago
The X264 encoding graph shows "frames per second" and if it's higher then it's better. And probably he measured the other encondings the same way but mislabeled the graphs.
okor 14y ago
spyder is correct, the x264 graph was mislabeled. I've updated the label. It should have read "Frames per Second" not "Seconds". However, the mp3 and flac graphs are correctly labeled. DigitalOcean still outperforms Linode on mp3 and flac, but that's probably (guessing) because the processer are not waiting for the disk and the x264 encoding is using multiple cores where mp3 and flac encoding is only using one core.

brandon272 14y ago

There are plenty of VPS providers out there who are cheaper than Linode, including some with compelling SSD packages. With Linode, I know that I am getting excellent support. There's the peace of mind of knowing that when I submit a ticket, someone will read and respond in short order. A $5 SSD VPS sounds great, but I automatically wonder what kind of hardware I will be on (does it compete with Linode's RAID 10 configuration?), and how long my support requests will take to be addressed, and whether or not the low prices are a sustainable business model.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I agree with everything you say, but if history has taught us anything it is that people want "cheap" and just expect great support regardless of price. I mean the best example is airlines. For the longest time the big national airlines claimed that they would laugh last since their support/customer care was /so/ much better than cheap no-thrills airlines. But look at what happened! The no-thrills airlines have been stealing market share year upon year, people are booking whatever is cheapest in the price comparison all other things be damned. The same is true of retail Vs. the internet. Retails shops claimed that they wouldn't lose market share because people loved the one on one customer service and face to face interaction, but clearly they were mistaken. In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest.
- LeonidasXIV 14y ago
  > In fact the ONLY company I can think of who has high quality customer care/support AND is actually growing is Amazon. But they also often happen to be the cheapest. Not sure about the US, but when buying electronics Amazon is usually somewhere in the middle, price-wise. They are almost never really the cheapest and if so, this is usually due to a Amazon Marketplace seller, not Amazon themselves.
  - nanidin 14y ago
    When I had Amazon Prime, the free shipping + lack of sales tax made almost always made Amazon the best choice, financially.

jstalin 14y ago

My favorite site for finding all kinds of VPS deals (some for as little as $15 a year) is http://www.lowendbox.com http://www.lowendbox.com. It's great for finding a VPS nearly anywhere in the world for your SSH tunnel, offsite storage, or just to tinker with.

TylerE 14y ago
That's ok for some, but it kind of annoys me. Where's the equivalent index for people want a VPS to do real work? I'd love a site that would let me compare pricing for say, 4GB/4 core machines.
- visionpol 14y ago
  I use this list to find a VPS to my specs. It has sliders for pretty much any relevant spec. * http://vps-list.cryto.net/index.php?action=list http://vps-list.cryto.net/index.php?action=list
- brandon272 14y ago
  Here's a site comparing different types of plans. http://serverbear.com/ http://serverbear.com/
dsl 14y ago
LowEndBox is a great site, but the hosts that tend to advertise there are ran by kids (literally). It is also the recommended go to spot that is linked from a lot of "hack forums" for information on where to find VPS providers who don't have solid abuse handling in place yet.

fowlduck 14y ago

These graphs are meaningless without methodology.

michael37 14y ago
The methodology is a well-documented "Phoronix Benchmark Suite". However, why in the world is this methodology relevant for the hosting service? Would any of you really do any x264 encoding on an outsourced server, or would you use your desktop? I would much rather get apache running, and run the ab (Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool).
- noamsml 14y ago
  I might, actually. A huge part of the reason I own a VPS is precisely because I don't own a desktop, and having a persistent networked machine comes in handy often.
- photomattmills 14y ago
  In fact, he did do benchmarks with ab: http://jasonormand.com/2013/02/08/linode-vs-digitalocean-performance-benchmarks/#chart-7 http://jasonormand.com/2013/02/08/linode-vs-digitalocean-per...

rmoriz 14y ago

(shameless self-promo ;-) Use the DigitalOcean API from Ruby and Chef/knife to create/shutdown/destroy virtual servers ("droplets"): * https://github.com/rmoriz/digital_ocean https://github.com/rmoriz/digital_ocean * https://github.com/rmoriz/knife-digital_ocean https://github.com/rmoriz/knife-digital_ocean

rjsamson 14y ago
That's really cool! I'm definitely going to have to give it a try.
- rmoriz 14y ago
  feel free to contact me if you encounter problems :)
homosaur 14y ago
No problem with self promos when you're dropping dope softwares. I'll check this out later.
pwelch 14y ago
Nice work. I did not see a knife plugin on the community site a few weeks ago when I looked. Thanks for putting this together!

Steveism 14y ago

Where are Digital Ocean's data centers? I can't seem to find that information anywhere on their site.

jamroom 14y ago
Looks like New York and Amsterdam.
DASD 14y ago
Equinix(New York) and Telecity(Amsterdam).

Ologn 14y ago

I was choosing VPS providers recently. I used http://www.serverbear.com http://www.serverbear.com for the benchmarks. Then I looked on the web for anecdotal information on how good and reliable the VPSs were. I chose Linode. Then I needed another VPS. It was favoring Ramnode, but they had temporarily run out of SSDs. So I went with Rackspace, which was used by many people, even though they seemed to generate more complaints then Linode.

karolist 14y ago

I've never heard of Digital Ocean. Are they reliable? Do they have a DNS manager comparable to Linode? (I have no aspirations of running multiple Bind instances on my own, thanks). I might consider moving off Linode for pricing alone.

yogo 14y ago
I've been evaluating them for the past 6 months or so and it's definitely one of the more stable cheap VPS providers out there. I believe they added a DNS manager a few months ago but I haven't used it as yet.
driverdan 14y ago
They're a Techstars company, if that means anything to you.
signifiers 14y ago
They've been very reliable for us. Network is spiky (12-20MB/s at times), but otherwise, compared to roughly equivalent VMs (lscpu, /proc/cpuinfo, etc.) they are hands-down faster than AWS. In the limited testing we've done on AWS SSD AMIs (optimized for cluster compute), AWS wins on network and CPU, but at literally 10X the cost. Also, see: http://serverbear.com/9806/digitalocean http://serverbear.com/9806/digitalocean for interesting benchmarks over time (with all the standard caveats, yada yada).

citricsquid 14y ago

For me the performance of Linode isn't the greatest factor, the greatest factor (and the reason I spend ~$300/m with them when I could get the 10 servers for 1/5th the price elsewhere) is that support is second to none. I have never experienced better support than I have with Linode. If I have a problem and submit a ticket (which is rare) it's answered within a few minutes, if there's a network or hardware issue they open a ticket with me before I've even noticed. No other provider I've used has ever had that quality of service.

okor 14y ago
I've had the same experience with Linode. They have great support.
rjsamson 14y ago
I've been on Digital Ocean for around 6 months now and I have to say that their support is pretty awesome - very responsive when needed. I couldn't be happier with DO so far.
- homosaur 14y ago
  That's good to hear, I was thinking of switching to Linode which I use for work, but I think I will try buying two 512MB DO servers instead.
- namidark 14y ago
  Seconded, DO's support is as quick to respond to technical issues as linode (and they're helpful on IRC as well).
- kposehn 14y ago
  Thirded. DO is pretty fanatical about support.
- chadcf 14y ago
  Good to know. I just set up a $5 a month server with a $20 promotional coupon code. That's 4 months free, yeesh. I love linode too, but my needs are modest as all I really do is host a few small traffic sites for friends and staging sites for clients. As much as I love linode, my next year of hosting will go from $240 to $40. And with their prices if I'm happy I now have a great affordable host to recommend to clients.

deutronium 14y ago

I recently switched from Linode to a dedicated server from Hetzner as I found I could get better specs for only a few quid more / month (than Linodes 1GB package). Linode was a great provider, but now I can manage my own VMs using Xen myself.

elbear 14y ago
I just checked Hetzner out and their VPS is also cheaper than Linode. Are you satisfied with their services?
- petercooper 14y ago
  Not to answer for the OP but I'm both a Linode and Hetzner customer. The Hetzner machine has been solid and their network is great. But.. I keep the most important stuff on Linode because if a piece of hardware in the Hetzner machine blows up, I could be off the air for $indeterminate_time whereas with Linode, the worst case is I fire up another Linode within 5 minutes and reload from a backup.
  - elbear 14y ago
    Thanks for answering. In my case, I'm looking more at the Hetzner VPS offering, because it's in the same price range and has better specs than the equivalent Linode.

machbio 14y ago

Performance Benchmarks for what.. Are these Benchmarks for a Remote Server for Work.. Or is it as a Webserver.. Benchmark does not prove thing for Webserver other than Disk I/O is greater with Digital ocean. If Disk I/O was so critical then no one would go with AWS since they have got the worst of all. Benchmarks need to prove a thing in its application, unless it does its waste of time.

larrys 14y ago

A new broom sweeps clean. Results even with VPS depend on who else is using the equipment and what they are doing. Easy to spin up a machine with no usage and get great performance if there is nobody on it. That doesn't mean this data isn't correct of course but keep in mind the OP is making a comparison between 1 machine at Linode and 1 machine at Digital Ocean at a given point in time. Same equipment or different equipment at a later date could yield different results as the equipment gets filled up or depending on who else is using it. We had VPS's at Media Temple that would literally stall periodically for a few seconds. We then migrated to a different machine at a different data center and it hasn't happened since.

earless1 14y ago

DigitalOcean seems like they are worth a look

tcohen 14y ago

We just switched over to Digital Ocean and I'm very happy with it!

endijs 14y ago

Doh. "Due to a high load that we are experiencing with Trial Accounts - we have temporarily disabled them." However email after signup tells: Your trial period will last 12 hours.

clone1018 14y ago
Sorry we'll get that fixed asap D:!
- isalmon 14y ago
  Same for me, please let us know when this is resolved

sergiotapia 14y ago

Off-topic: Who is this "Terrence Andrew Davis" fellow who comments on pretty much every single post that reaches HN? He sounds like a lunatic and religious fanatic constantly quoting bible verses and sermons. Pretty darn creepy to read at 4am.

mtrimpe 14y ago
He's a schizophrenic but quite a brilliant one. He wrote this entire OS in assembler: http://www.sparrowos.com/ http://www.sparrowos.com/ If it disturbs you you can always turn off showdead (or if he made a new account, wait until it's banned as it soon will be.)
minsight 14y ago
He's the author of LoseThos (64 bit OS, written from scratch), and has schizophrenia. His story is very interesting, if you can get past the wall of computer-generated religious content.
- sergiotapia 14y ago
  Wow, I had no idea. Now I feel sorry for him. I wish him well.

curcumin 14y ago

Very confused, but I understand brand loyalty. Linode scorched Slicehost at one point. I like the idea of DigitalOcean and I'm moving all my non critical/beta/alpaha sites to DigitalOcean.

armored_mammal 14y ago

From DigitalOcean's TOS: "You agree that you will NOT use DigitalOcean's services to: violate any applicable state and federal law and regulation, including, but not limited to, any copyright, trademark, patent, anti-piracy, or other intellectual property law or regulation, or encourage or enable others to violate any such law or regulation. Transmit, distribute, post, store, link, or otherwise traffic in information, software, or materials that is offensive, abusive, inappropriate, malicious, or detrimental, including, but not limited to, those that: Are obscene, fraudulent, or discriminatory, including any containing profanity, or obscenities. DigitalOcean permits adult websites that abide by state and federal law and regulation. ..." I think it's funny how they can go from barring any information "offensive, abusive, inappropriate, malicious, or detrimental, including, but not limited to, those that: Are obscene, fraudulent, or discriminatory, including any containing profanity, or obscenities" to specifically permitting "adult websites that abide by state and federal law and regulation." In any case good, luck keeping your blog, blog, comments, or whatever else you host with them clear of all profanity all of you who decide to try their services, because you've just walked into a convenient TOS violation. Damn! (Oops. TOS violation. Goodbye HN. Ha ha.)

beigeotter 14y ago
Thank you for raising this issue. We try to make our terms of service as fair as possible—we are not looking to censor any information or content on our customers' droplets. As you have raised this issue, to make the situation clearer, the phrase referring to obscenity and profanity has been removed from our terms of service. Thanks, Etel
- aflott 14y ago
  I recently signed up with Digital Ocean and I'm now happier I did due to responses like this.
bitcartel 14y ago
Good spot. Also if you Google you can find the exact same TOS on other sites. It's just generic boiler-plate.

nhebb 14y ago

Since their US servers are based in New York, what are the state's policies as far as sales taxes? I believe there was a issue with Linode's Texas hub that any sales to Texas residents required you collect sales tax. Does NY have a similar issue where a server constitutes a physical presence?

snowwrestler 14y ago

I rarely see Rackspace Cloud mentioned on Hacker News in these sorts of VPS discussions. Anyone have insight as to why that is? Too expensive? Crappy service? Background - my employer hosts on dedicated servers at Rackspace and we're considering using more of their cloud offering.

nemesisj 14y ago
We've had an absolutely horrible experience with Rackspace (managed, managed cloud, and unmanaged cloud). I think Rackspace has seen their day come and go (used to be a very loyal customer) and are really struggling. Their tech is old and outdated, they're awash in duplicate controls panels, their billing isn't unified, and their UK presence is completely out of control. We're moving away as quickly as possible to Linode and AWS.
- RackerShagz 14y ago
  I work at Rackspace, and I'm really sorry to hear about this experience. We are working very hard to address the control panel inconveniences that you've mentioned and we would be extremely grateful if you could take the time to provide us with some feedback on how we could improve. You can reach me directly at shaggy@rackspace.com. Thanks.
  - nemesisj 14y ago
    Hey there - thanks for the response, but I've already wasted at least 15-20 hours over the last year communicating with Rackspace techs, management, and senior management (so I'm told). If you truly believe you can actually do something to fix all the problems, let me know. Like I said, Rackspace's model of hiring great people and giving premium service worked great in the old days pre-cloud, but now the people are poor quality as the company has grown, the underlying tech is horrible, and the billing and other services so bad that you can't justify the premium prices anymore. Rackspace servers and service (in all forms) are considered harmful. Just go with AWS or Linode.
tszming 14y ago

rythie 14y ago

ServerBear has all the $5/month hosts in one place: http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=BearScore&Order=desc&Monthly+Cost=500000-500000&HDD=-&RAM=-&BearScore=-&I%2FO+Benchmark=-&Virtualization= http://serverbear.com/compare?Sort=BearScore&Order=desc&...

sunyc 14y ago

i think its bullshit, just buy 10 vps and write garbage to disk, in a month you can wipe their entire stock of ssd disks.

antiterra 14y ago

DigitalOcean is promising, but they should probably hire a lawyer to fix up their Terms of Service. I notice they've attempted to appease adult content websites by removing the restriction against nudity and adding a statement that adult sites are expressly allowed if legal. But, they've left in a prohibition on profanity? That seems a bit backwards. Inappropriate content is also disallowed, what does that mean? It's not a legal term of art that I'm familiar with. Why does a sentence begin with "Transmit"? And please, consider using bulleted lists. https://www.digitalocean.com/tos https://www.digitalocean.com/tos

beigeotter 14y ago
Profanity clause has been removed.

SanjayUttam 14y ago

Anyone know of any similar hosts (VPS, SSD) for Windows Server? Seems like installing a virtual Win instance may not work [ http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/2536799-can-i-deploy-windows- http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea... ] Alternatively, if anyone has successfully installed Windows on a VPS instance, please let me know :)

ck2 14y ago

Just hope those SSD are made by intel and are in raid10. Otherwise 3-4 year failure is quite common.

epaulson 14y ago

It's still just 512 megs of RAM. I'd love to find a VPS provider that gives me like 2 gigs of RAM, and charged me by how much of that was hot during the month. It's frustrating to have to pay in advance for the maximum amount of RAM I might need. I'd like to be able to leave processes running that might have a lot of data mapped into their address spaces, but for much of the time that data can safely be paged out to disk and not used. When I come and use the machine, I'd like to have a large amount of RAM, but when I'm not using it, I don't want to pay for it.

clone1018 14y ago
You can dynamically resize your servers via DigitalOcean's API.
tedunangst 14y ago
What happens when they sell your ram to another customer, and then you decide you want it back?
- epaulson 14y ago
  It's just capacity planning - they can migrate me around as needed, though obviously they'd like to minimize the number of times that happens. Maybe there are periods where I spin up but don't get the full memory - that's OK, I'm only paying for what I use. We have all of this virtualization technology but I still have to make hard decisions about size ahead of time. There are lots of providers that will let me burst CPU, I'd like to burst RAM. For people building small apps that get occasional usage, having more flexibility on memory would be a huge boon.
  - crynix 14y ago
    I know IntoVPS lets you burst RAM. I believe the cheapest plan can burst to 1GB.

account_taken 14y ago

DigitalOcean is good value but I found their I/O speed not anywhere close to SSD levels. I ran this bench mark from github. RamNode is the best. https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench https://github.com/mgutz/vpsbench

mrinterweb 14y ago

When Digital Ocean has a west coast datacenter, I will give them another look. Latency has a larger perceived impact to users than any of those benchmarks given.

csomar 14y ago

I think DO compares to Linode (or even better) in CPU performance because the software used (for Encoding or whatever) doesn't make use of extra cores. You'll need multi-threads aware software to take advantage of the available cores. I have a Linode 1Gb (and another 512Mb) and I rarely go over 110% CPU utilization even when my server is busy (the max is 400%, 4 cores being used). Also, price comparison, Linode charges an extra $5 (for 512Mb) and $10 (for 1 Gb) for Backups. DO seems to be giving them for free. My yearly bill on Linode : $900 My yearly bill on DO : $180 I think I'm trying DO soon, especially I'll be in need for more servers. Edit: I'm a little afraid from DO. They are simply too^8 cheap and it's scary. Will they be around for too long? What's their down time like? Will they lose my data (and backups)?... Price wise, DO beats the hell out of anything. I can renew my smartphone yearly for free just by moving.

cheapsteak 14y ago
>I can renew my smartphone yearly for free just by moving. You lost me there. Is that slang for something?
- gamblor956 14y ago
  He's saving roughly $720 yearly by switching to DO. Most high-end smartphones retail off-contract for roughly $600 (which you would pay if you have a grandfathered unlimited data plan on Verizon or AT&T).
- csomar 14y ago
  I'm just emphasizing the opportunity cost here. I bought a high-end Smartphone the last year and I have been thinking if I should renew it on a yearly basis with the latest model. By switching to DO (expecting they offer a comparable service), my purchasing power gets bigger and allow me to become richer (renew smartphone or buy some other stuff). I'm just trying to show how competition, technology and efficiency makes us richer.

jwmoz 14y ago

Well looks like I'm just spunking away ~£12 every month!

willholloway 14y ago

I made the switch from Linode/AWS micro instances to Digital Ocean recently. Pros: Great pricem, performance is excellent,UI is great for creating servers Cons: I have had two periods of about 20 minutes of down time in the early mornings recently. Digital Ocean is great hosting for developers. They are really doing it right.

clone1018 14y ago
Have you ticketed your issue?

zargon 14y ago

I've been using digital ocean for a minecraft server and vpn. Network reliability has been a problem. Some days I get frequent disconnects, and other days it is fine. I will continue using linode for my servers that matter, and digital ocean for toys and experiments, just because it's so cheap.

ksec 14y ago
During my resrach for performance / $ I recently discovered a host specialise in Minecraft hosting that offers one of the best performance for its price. Check Out Simplenode. ( I am not related to them in anyways )

nathanstitt 14y ago

I fail to see how anyone can create a repeatable objective benchmark between different VPS providers. I respect the fact that the author tried hard and didn't bias the results, but I fail to see where he even repeated the benchmark over a number of days to attempt to eliminate variations in what the other guests were doing while the benchmark was running. As I see it, the only way I would trust a benchmark of this nature was if it was somehow ran over multiple hosts and was able to sample a large fraction of the physical boxes over a large period of time. As you can image, that's impossible to do on S3 and any of the other larger VPS providers Even if somehow someone did manage to pull off a benchmark like the above, I still wouldn't trust it because it would only be valid until the provider added "Joe's Cheap Video Encoding Service" as a client that's sharing my box. Or someone else who's running a benchmark just like you are? With all of the above said: I'm sure that there is differences between the VPS providers in how they allocate CPU and IO resources and Digital Ocean may indeed be much better on average. I'm just not sure how you can measure it objectively to make sure they are or that they will continue to be so even 5 minutes in the future. Which is a shame, because an objective metric that was trustworthy that compared all the different providers would be absolutely awesome.

derefr 14y ago

For a while, I was pretty happy with another low-price host (ChicagoVPS)--but I had to switch away (to Linode, as it happens) due to something not mentioned or measured in this article at all: network throughput volatility. Someone or something was regularly burst-saturating the physical pipe going into the machine, such that it would seem to all the rest of the world that my website would be down for random 90-second periods every few hours. This is really bad when you're trying to run a realtime game with persistent connections :) I'm not sure quite what it was--whether malicious user behavior, a lack of separation in bridge-interface setup making network traffic on the box un-QoS-able, or maybe someone on the box I was on bearing the brunt of temporary, persistent DoS attacks--but I didn't care to roll the dice on another box from the same host, when I knew that this kind of thing "just doesn't happen" with the major providers. Still, if there was a low-end host that specifically mentioned stable network throughput in their SLA, I'd love to try another one. $7/mo sure does buy a lot of horizontal scaling and High Availability, once you can ensure each node can hold onto the little bit of traffic you send it. :)

danellis 14y ago

Hmm. They email your initial root password in cleartext, rather than either letting me choose it or displaying it on the site, both of which would be over SSL.

signifiers 14y ago
If you use keys, no password is sent. An option to not send password by mail (for non-key-based launches) is on the coming-soon roadmap: http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/3566070-add-a-checkbox-to-not-email-root-password http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...
- danellis 14y ago
  You should probably make it clear during server creation that if you have added SSH keys on the web site, they will be injected into ~root/authorized_keys in the image, if that's what you do. Linode, for example, lets you add SSH keys on their web site, but that's only to access your VM's console.

jsnrkd 14y ago

Not a bad deal for Digital Ocean especially when there are $20 off promo codes available. Assuming you can use it for 4 months, it's essentially a 4 month trial. I found a few codes with a Google search. ;)

madmaze 14y ago

In this article, DigitalOcean's virtualization technology is misstated. Its KVM not VMware

madmaze 14y ago
this has now been corrected.

gourneau 14y ago

I signed up for DigitalOcean, thanks.

dhruvbird 14y ago

I personally use digitalocean for hosting http://en.wikipins.org/ http://en.wikipins.org/ and would like to say that I am very happy with their service and SSD IOPS - something that took me 6hrs. on EC2 takes me ~45mins on digitalocean hosted machines for a half (or less) the cost.

emddudley 14y ago

DigitalOcean does not currently offer IPv6. http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocean/suggestions/2639897-ipv6-addresses http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea...

DigitalJack 14y ago

How does KVM compare with Xen? Can you over-subscribe ram with KVM?

aliguori 14y ago
Yes, you can over-subscribe RAM either through ballooning or just by over-subscribing the host. Both KVM and Xen use QEMU for their device models so the machine they emulate is very similar (at least in HVM mode). Xen and KVM use different paravirtual I/O drivers but everything I've ever seen indicates that I/O performance is better in KVM. Xen PV guests are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they work on boxes without virtualization hardware (which are rare anymore) but on pre-Nehalem/Barcelona processors, they are much slower than using HVM (especially 64-bit). I've never seen a good Xen HVM benchmark either comparatively speaking... Of course, I'm more than a little biased :-)

dotBen 14y ago

One of the many reasons I pay for Linode is the "good neighbor" aspect the price point brings. I'm not saying that DigitalOcean suffers this problem but the cheaper a VPS provider is the greater chance of it being used by folks running bit torrent, warez downloads, etc and/or folks who think they need to smash the (shared) resources out of server to get their moneys worth. Paying a few dollars extra for a Linode instance (and I have 100's of them, so it adds up) is worth the peace of mind of being unattractive to these kinds. IE 'bad neighbors" who will pee in the pool. Support is also top notch (although I rarely need it).

jordan0day 14y ago
> etc and/or folks who think they need to smash the (shared) resources out of server to get their moneys worth. Wouldn't this be more likely on a higher-priced VPS (like Linode) than a lower-priced VPS (like DigitalOcean)?
- sirclueless 14y ago
  No, definitely not. If your top priority is performance per dollar, then no rational person would choose Linode. As a result, Linode attracts people whose top priorities are reliable support and good uptime. People who are worried about uptime don't run their boxes at 110% all the time.
  - taligent 14y ago
    > good uptime Which is funny because Linode has pretty bad uptime. When I was on their Fremont DC it went down all the time.
    - corford 14y ago
      Apparently Fremont is their oldest DC and seems to attract the lion's share of the downtime. I've had 8 linode's running in their London DC for almost 3 years now and can't remember any DC related downtime. The only hiccup I've ever experienced is a host machine having disk issues once which meant they needed to move one of my vms. From being alerted of the problem to having the vm back up and running took ~45 mins with no intervention on my part.

geuis 14y ago

I just switched http://jsonip.com http://jsonip.com from Rackspace/Slicehost to Linode about a month ago. I was a multi-year Slicehost customer and couldn't have been happier. It was only a matter of time after Rackspace aquired them that I was expecting problems. That occurred about a month + one week ago. (Sorry for the downtime to any users that might be reading this.) I've since migrated the service to Linode and holy shit, it's such an improvement. The support is great, but even more their admin interface is excellent. Gives me so much more info than I ever had before. It's even a little cheaper than the plan I had with Slicehost. Just to throw some numbers out there: jsonip.com is a node-based app that supports upwards of 6-10 million requests per day. Lets just say that I couldn't be happier with Linode. Note to Linode: Do not ever sell out to Rackspace or else I will be forced to go live in the woods somewhere. Thanks.

jervisfm 14y ago
I'm just curious : which linode plan do you have for your server ? Is it the $20 monthly plan ?
- geuis 14y ago
  Linode 1024, ~$50 USD.
bartkozord 14y ago
You don't need node.js for this little service. If you're already using nginx you can just use the return directive. Voilà http://git.io/ip http://git.io/ip
- geuis 14y ago
  Yes, I know. nginx is pretty awesome and I use it a lot in various servers. jsonip started as a node.js side-project for me a few years ago, and its scaled beautifully as traffic has grown. Its my preferred server environment these days, and I prefer to see how far it can be pushed. So far, I've yet to hit the limit on what it can do for this kind of high-traffic application. In the future, if it started capping out, I'd look at alternatives. But I'm not there yet, and I like to continue experimenting with node. =)

graham_king_3 14y ago

There might be better performing hosting providers, and there are definitely lower cost providers than Linode, but I don't love them like I love Linode. It's not entirely rational, but if you ask around, I'd wager most people who use Linode love it. Maybe it's because it used to be just caker doing everything, or the free disk / memory upgrades he kept handing out. I remember him asking about LASIK surgery in the (very helpful) forums; there's a family feeling to it. It's the anti-Rackspace. It's home.

corford 14y ago
>It's not entirely rational So true. I moved a mail server I manage over to digital ocean recently because it needed more RAM and the price difference between a 4GB DO instance and a 4GB Linode one was just too much to swallow. Very happy with DO so far but... I still have 7 1GB and 512MB vms with Linode and no plans to move any of them because I just can't bring myself to sever all ties with Linode :D

kawsper 14y ago

Doesn't something like Rails appservers (Unicorns for an example) run better on Linode because of more access to cores? Or does that depend on implementation? I remember reading something about MRI only being able to utilize one core.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dharma1 14y ago

I've been with Linode for a few years, nothing to complain about. Like others have mentioned, super fast support, good wiki pages for setting things up, and good IRC channel. With RAM prices being what they are, Linode should price their RAM more competitively and offer SSD for those who want it, at a reasonable price. On the other hand they also have a data centre in Tokyo, which means noticeably better pings to Asia than DigitalOcean. In any case, will give DigitalOcean a try for a couple of projects. Might also want to try OVH and Hetzner for dedicated servers for about £50/month.

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago

For over VPS benchmarks, I love serverbear.com I host with Ramnode.com, and I love their prices and SSDs. Not one issue yet except the odd DDoS attack. Used the server bear coupon code to get 31% off my services for life. I wonder how it stacks up to DigitalOcean. I also have a linode server, but I'm thinking of cancelling because it is too expensive, but it is solid as a rock.

orthecreedence 14y ago

Shiny new services will always be popping up with great deals and "faster" servers but I prefer to not move my infrastructure every time the next host du jour comes out. Plus, they're just going to raise their prices once they get a critical mass of customers. Linode has been there through thick and thin for me. Sounds cheesy, but they report on and fix issues before I even notice them, I've only had to submit a ticket once (for something that was my fault), and their infrastructure is tight as a drum. Linode is very, very reliable. Another thing that many people who work with larger applications than mine will tell you is that speed is not important, what's important is consistency. Linode's virtualization is set up to provide, above all, consistency (even on a loaded host). So sure your site might run 1.6778 times faster on DO, but when the host server is loaded your site's going to be crawling because the other neighbors are bursting their CPU into your space. We'll see if DO's prices and performance stand the test of time. My guess is their support is extremely lacking in comparison. When everything's running perfectly, this is great. But when the chips are down can you really rely on them? I guess we'll see.

taligent 14y ago
Wow. I found the complete opposite. Linode would routinely not respond during major incidents (e.g. power outage at Fremont which was common for me) and when they did they were often not clear about what was happening. Their infrastructure is hardly tight as a drum (Google 'Linode bitcoin').
- orthecreedence 14y ago
  From reading through the comments, it seems a lot of the pain points for Linode happened in the non-Dallas datacenters. Our servers are hosted there with almost 0 problems. I did a good amount of research on which Linode datacenters are the best before placing our servers there (this was years ago) and found that the Fremont datacenter had a lot of flaky issues (and if your experience was recent at all, then they apparently still have issues). So maybe Linode's main support system is set up to favor Dallas, which if this is true is pretty shoddy. I'd be interested to hear more experiences from other people across different datacenters.

whalesalad 14y ago

I've been a Linode customer for many years. I couldn't be happier. They have a buttload of locations to choose from, fast networks, and as everyone else has already mentioned: out of this world support. I've even managed to earn a few hundred bucks in referral cash from them. I had a handful of dyno's, a worker, and a few add-ons running my iPhone app's API within Heroku up until about a week ago where I transitioned everything onto a small collection of Linodes in the UK datacenter. We're launching in Europe so it made sense to bring everything closer. If you're comfortable and skilled with a terminal, you can get a lot more bang for your buck with Linode. That being said, I am always interested in trying something new. For a $40 Linode you get 1GB of RAM, with DigitalOcean the same $40 gets you 2GB of RAM and they run on SSD's. I'm going to deploy a copy of my primary API server here to take it for a spin. First impression thus far: fast deployment. From pressing the submit button to shelling in took literally less than a minute. Unfortunately though the latency on the box seems a bit high. There is a bit of lag in the terminal, something I do not experience with Linode's UK datacenter. I'm in Sweden on a 4G modem, here's a traceroute between me and both boxes. DigitalOcean is first, followed by Linode. ### DigitalOcean – Amsterdam Datacenter traceroute to 192.81.221.48 (192.81.221.48), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 tiny (192.168.0.1) 10.573 ms 1.658 ms 1.393 ms 2 10.9.14.115 (10.9.14.115) 33.218 ms 24.250 ms 59.223 ms 3 10.9.14.113 (10.9.14.113) 51.009 ms 35.878 ms 30.836 ms 4 90-229-25-24.link.se.telia.net (90.229.25.24) 33.153 ms 30.662 ms 34.999 ms 5 s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.96) 33.962 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.228) 74.544 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.133.147) 77.395 ms 6 s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.246.148) 36.792 ms s-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.234) 29.966 ms s-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.133.142) 31.228 ms 7 kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.134.141) 151.952 ms kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.248.65.29) 42.281 ms kbn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.246.178) 123.130 ms 8 kbn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.51) 39.032 ms 45.868 ms kbn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.245.159) 44.708 ms 9 te4-7.ccr01.cph01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.14.33) 67.971 ms 60.729 ms 96.055 ms 10 te0-7-0-0.ccr22.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.62.117) 132.391 ms te0-7-0-6.ccr21.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.2.149) 97.568 ms te0-7-0-0.ccr22.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.62.117) 137.713 ms 11 te0-0-0-3.mpd21.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.50.57) 101.141 ms 89.885 ms te0-0-0-3.mpd22.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.1.101) 147.596 ms 12 te2-1.mag01.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.48.62) 104.005 ms te1-1.mag01.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.0.242) 52.704 ms 127.224 ms 13 nxs-internet.demarc.cogentco.com (149.6.128.6) 98.294 ms 130.686 ms 142.924 ms 14 192.81.221.48 (192.81.221.48) 148.148 ms 107.753 ms 134.880 ms and now Linode... ### Linode – London, UK Datacenter traceroute to blitzen.dbld8.com (176.58.120.7), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 tiny (192.168.0.1) 9.671 ms 2.313 ms 1.411 ms 2 10.9.14.115 (10.9.14.115) 32.881 ms 21.701 ms 34.152 ms 3 10.9.14.113 (10.9.14.113) 36.843 ms 21.986 ms 26.750 ms 4 90-229-25-24.link.se.telia.net (90.229.25.24) 26.421 ms 24.166 ms 26.982 ms 5 s-b2-link.telia.net (213.155.134.55) 27.415 ms s-b2-link.telia.net (80.91.248.199) 33.347 ms 37.758 ms 6 s-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.254.114) 34.993 ms s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.254.58) 92.886 ms s-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.247.216) 38.297 ms 7 hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (213.155.135.236) 83.932 ms hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.251.41) 36.076 ms hbg-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.147) 47.708 ms 8 ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.201) 67.937 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.132.247) 106.801 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.247.169) 63.880 ms 9 ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.249.170) 54.534 ms ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.251.237) 101.259 ms ldn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.247.25) 64.316 ms 10 telecity-ic-150799-ldn-b3.c.telia.net (80.239.167.94) 59.564 ms 70.329 ms 64.835 ms 11 85.90.238.70 (85.90.238.70) 70.606 ms 68.463 ms 60.808 ms 12 212.111.33.234 (212.111.33.234) 69.237 ms 60.927 ms 70.726 ms 13 li522-7.members.linode.com (176.58.120.7) 65.147 ms 60.434 ms 62.646 ms Quite a difference here. Geographically Sweden is closer to Amsterdam, but i'd imagine there is a fat pipe crossing the North Sea that is faster than being routed through Northern Europe to AMS.

taligent 14y ago

It amazes me that people on here are so quick to forget about the Linode Bitcoin incident. Because it is during security incidents that you really find out what type of company you are dealing with. With Cloudflare they informed users quickly, were transparent about what happened and took their licks. With Linode they didn't inform users and we still don't know what happened. As a former customer I would never, ever use Linode again.

zzzeek 14y ago
I'd wager (though not with bitcoins) that Linode would be entirely happy to not have bitcoin-related apps running on their systems either, considering the probability of attracting highly motivated attackers.
- taligent 14y ago
  Sure. But then everyone should be clear about it. Linode is a toy and should never be used if you value the security of your data.
  - zzzeek 14y ago
    > Linode is a toy and should never be used if you value the security of your data. Substitute "Linode / data" for "Bitcoin / money" ? Sorry, couldn't resist. Looking through your old comments and linking out a bit it seems the incident occurred as a result of a leaked password from an employee. Seems pretty simple, and I take them at their word in their statement (http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.html http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.h...) that they've made improvements here. Only a month later Bruce Schneier praised some new password related features being set up (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/password_securi.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/password_secur...). I'll agree they're obviously in no mood to make public comments about this, but I think that might be part of that I think they're more than happy to not be a destination host for users that want to store unencrypted bitcoin wallets on hosts. I'd certainly never store anything that translates into money on a public host.
14y ago

benbro 14y ago

How is it possible that amazon charge $0.050 per GB (for more than 350 TB / month ) while DigitalOcean charge $0.02 per GB for each extra GB and 0.005$ / GB for the 5$ plan? How can they make any profit?

ios84dev 14y ago
Given you can get 1Gbps from Cogent for ~1K/mo (at least that's the price I heard last time they were having a sale) that works out to $0.003/GB, so both are making a massive amount of profit.
- benbro 14y ago
  How can I get $0.003/GB? Can I do it with a single dedicated server or do I need my own data center?
  - ios84dev 14y ago
    Contact your local cogent rep. If your dedicated server is in a building with a cogent feed you can probably get a line to it. I'm not sure their current non sales pricing and that might require a 10Gbps commit.

ktzar 14y ago

Maybe this is the reason, (from DigitalOcean): Backup User is solely responsible for the preservation of User's Data. Even with respect to Data as to which User contracts for backup services, DigitalOcean shall have no responsibility to preserve Data, the service is provided as is, without warranty.

dspillett 14y ago
That is pretty much the case with every VPS provider in my experience. Many will make best efforts but hardly any will offer any garantees so officially distater recovery is your responsibility not their's.

EugeneOZ 14y ago

But what about features set comparison? ipv6 support, backups, node balancer, dashboard, API, community, documentation...?

callmeed 14y ago

I just launched this project on a Digital Ocean $5 VPS ... it seems pretty fast. (nginx + passenger + Rails) http://romancepass.com http://romancepass.com I've been a happy Linode customer as well. But being able to deploy silly side projects like this for just $5/mo is really cool. This is my 3rd DO VPS and they've all been great. I had a PostgreSQL problem on another one and my support requests were replied to really fast.

propercoil 14y ago

Linode customer for years. I'll buy 4 servers and give digital ocean a shot just because it seems the community approves the service and they accept paypal (Linode doesn't and it bothers me)

gleb 14y ago

There is routine 10x variation in disk performance between different VPS's on Linode. It's luck of the draw and performance will change (i.e. get worse) over time. You'd need to provision and benchmark a bunch of Linodes to get meaningful numbers. That's one of a dozen ways in which a VPS is not like a real server. 5 second benchmark which corresponds well to real-life disk performance: sysbench --test=fileio --file-fsync-freq=1 --file-num=1 \ --file-total-size=16384 --file-test-mode=rndwr run --max-time=10 \ | grep "Requests/sec"

hhw 14y ago

Has nobody else noticed that the benchmarks use ext3 for Linode and ext4 for DigitalOcean? Not that the SSD's won't outperform hard drives anyway, but that's one extra variable that will skew results.

DeepDuh 14y ago

As someone living in a land far beyond the mountains and the sea (aka Switzerland) I'm thinking this: 5$ for a nice Hulu / Netflix proxy? Sweet!

dspillett 14y ago

One of the key featuers of Linode (at least it was when I used them) is the control panel which allows you to manage various vdisks (and even various whole OS installs on those vdisks if you so desire, though not with several running on a single account) within the space limits of your account. That and the general support. At the time I used Linode very few other hosts at that price-for-stuff value point offered such control. Neither of these things are mentioned in the comparison so I don't know if DO offers similar - obviously it isn't important to this reviewer but that sort of thing is for some. I currently use one of the cheap servers from http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ (9UKP/mo for 2Gb RAM, 500Gb space and 5Tb bandwidth (after 5Tb you are not cut off but bandwdth is throttled, though I've never come close to that to see how much effect it has)). Excellent if you don't need any hand holding (it is a completely self managed service) or much support (I've not needed to contact support so can't comment, but again "completely self manged"), or a very specific OS/kernel (they have their own builds, getting stock versions intalled is possible but a bit of a faf), you want a pile of space, and your tasks are not CPU intensive (the cheaper machines only have Atom or Celeron processors). Having your own dedicated drive makes I/O contention a moot point unlike with a VPS (though depending on how loaded DigitalOcean's host servers are they may still outperform this for some I/O patterns due to the use of SSDs).

datagramm 14y ago

The tests on disk performance are kind of redundant as ext3 is being compared to ext4. This will skew the results in favour of DigitalOcean somewhat.

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t0mislav 14y ago

I have both Linode 512 and DigitalOcean 512 VPS. Both VPS are running the same version of Debian, same version of Apache (Apache/2.2.16 (Debian), same apache2.conf files, list of loaded modules are same. For benchmark is used same web site on localhost. (simple joomla site). Results are quite different and I can't figure why. Linode has much more "Requests per second". #linode London Server Software: Apache/2.2.16 Server Hostname: localhost Server Port: 80 Document Path: / Document Length: 7483 bytes Concurrency Level: 20 Time taken for tests: 33.140 seconds Complete requests: 1000 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Total transferred: 8037000 bytes HTML transferred: 7483000 bytes Requests per second: 30.18 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 662.791 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 33.140 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 236.84 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 2.1 0 16 Processing: 118 658 1143.2 487 19006 Waiting: 113 655 1138.1 485 19006 Total: 118 659 1143.2 488 19006 Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 488 66% 563 75% 616 80% 658 90% 779 95% 932 98% 3635 99% 6406 100% 19006 (longest request) #DigitalOcean Amsterdam Server Software: Apache/2.2.16 Server Hostname: localhost Server Port: 80 Document Path: / Document Length: 7483 bytes Concurrency Level: 20 Time taken for tests: 118.087 seconds Complete requests: 1000 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Total transferred: 8032000 bytes HTML transferred: 7483000 bytes Requests per second: 8.47 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 2361.734 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 118.087 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 66.42 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 1 4.0 0 33 Processing: 1256 2355 234.1 2284 3604 Waiting: 1256 2328 232.5 2264 3604 Total: 1256 2356 234.1 2284 3604 Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 2284 66% 2328 75% 2412 80% 2500 90% 2666 95% 2768 98% 2877 99% 3204 100% 3604 (longest request)