rss-test-digitalocean.txt

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<title>The DigitalOcean Blog</title>
<description>
The latest from DigitalOcean, the developer cloud for modern apps.
</description>
<link>https://www.digitalocean.com</link>
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<lastBuildDate>Fri, 17 Dec 2021 18:31:29 GMT</lastBuildDate>
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<title>
Meet the Navigators: DigitalOcean’s inaugural class of 2021
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<description>
DigitalOcean would not be where it is today without our community of developers, entrepreneurs, and builders. This year, we set out to further strengthen and support that community through our Navigators program, and we’re thrilled to honor our 2021 inaugural class of Navigators. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/meet-the-navigators-2021
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<category>developer-relations</category>
<dc:creator>mason-egger</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>DigitalOcean would not be where it is today without our community of developers, entrepreneurs, and builders. This year, we set out to further strengthen and support that community through our <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/digitalocean-navigators">Navigators program</a>, and we’re thrilled to honor our 2021 inaugural class of Navigators. </p><p>The Navigators program supports and rewards individuals who create content, code, and community engagements related to DigitalOcean’s products and services in order to help other developers reach the next steps of their journeys. Developers from around the world apply to be a part of the Navigators program. These developers already create content, community, and code contributions and if chosen are rewarded with things like cross-promotion via DigitalOcean’s networks, early access to products and features, direct links to DigitalOcean developer advocates, engineers, and product managers, invitations to speak at events, and more. </p><p>Chosen individuals are leaders in the developer community — <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials">writing tutorials</a>, engaging our <a href="https://www.meetup.com/pro/digitalocean">meetup community</a> of over 60,000 members, or contributing to other types of content like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalOceanVideos">webinars and tech talks</a>. They love to help others learn and build and are champions of inclusion. Our Navigators are immersed in the developer ecosystem and have found success all over the world helping others learn and grow.</p><p>In our first year, our Navigators have already had a substantial impact on our community. Here are a few of the highlights:</p><ul><li>Navigators made appearances on our weekly web show <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/cloud-chats">Cloud Chats</a></li><li>Navigators assisted with Hacktoberfest by organizing events, writing tools, and more</li><li>An <a href="https://books.pmbanugo.me/serverless-app-platform">eBook</a>, written by Navigator Peter Mbanugo, was created to help developers build a serverless app platform on Kubernetes using DigitalOcean Kubernetes service</li><li>A new hire: Navigator Miguel Hernandez was hired as a Software Engineer on our Web Development and Community Platform team</li></ul><h2>Meet our Navigators</h2> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/7d1dc0f0-05da-4b48-b4b2-fbf1e94c2f7c_2021-navigators.jpg?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p><strong>Americas</strong></p><p>Fernando Pimenta (<a href="https://github.com/fcpimenta">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/fcpimenta12">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://br.linkedin.com/in/fernandopimenta">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Guy Barrette (<a href="https://github.com/guybarrette">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/guybarrette">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/guybarrette/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Christina Gorton (<a href="http://github.com/cmgorton">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/coffeecraftcode">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinagorton">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>James Simpson (<a href="https://github.com/goldfire">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/GoldFireStudios">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsimp/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Caleb Lemoine (<a href="https://github.com/circa10a">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleblemoine/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Michael Herman (<a href="https://github.com/mjhea0">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/mikeherman">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjhea0/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Bret Fisher (<a href="https://github.com/bretfisher">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/bretfisher">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretefisher">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p></p><p><strong>EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa)</strong></p><p>Denislav Gavrilov (<a href="https://github.com/asciiden">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/asciiden">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/denislav-gavrilov-63a946155/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Peter Mbanugo (<a href="https://github.com/pmbanugo">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/p_mbanugo">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pmbanugo/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Mouhsen Ibrahim (<a href="https://github.com/mohsensy">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/mouhsen_ibrahim">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mouhsen-ibrahim-670b13112/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Nkansah Rexford (<a href="https://twitter.com/nkansahrexford">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/khophi">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Ahmed Fathy (<a href="https://github.com/clivern">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/ClivernCo">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedfath">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Timothy Ovie (<a href="https://twitter.com/timothy_ovie">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-ovie-3237aa166">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Ahmad Awais (<a href="https://github.com/AhmadAwais">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MrAhmadAwais/">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/MrAhmadAwais/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Maedah Batool (<a href="https://github.com/MaedahBatool">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaedahBatool">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maedahbatool/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Amey Sunu (<a href="http://github.com/ameysunu">GitHub</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/ameysunu">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://linkedin.com/in/amey-sunu-187103171">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Simon Bennett (<a href="https://github.com/Mrsimonbennett">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://github.com/Mrsimonbennett">Twitter</a>)</p><p></p><p><strong>APAC (Asia Pacific)</strong></p><p>Peter Hsu (<a href="https://github.com/PeterDaveHello">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterDaveHello">Twitter</a>)</p><p>Jasmin Virdi (<a href="https://github.com/Jasmin2895">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/jasmin_virdi">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasminvirdi/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Siddharth Dayalwal (<a href="https://github.com/siddharthdayalwal">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/siddharth_hacks">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthdayalwal/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Soumallya Dev (<a href="https://github.com/soumallyadev07">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/soumallya-dev">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Manisha Singh (<a href="http://github.com/manisha-27">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Manisha87672782">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/manisha-singh-a3471616b/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Ahmad Awais (<a href="https://github.com/AhmadAwais">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MrAhmadAwais/">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/MrAhmadAwais/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Maedah Batool (<a href="https://github.com/MaedahBatool">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MaedahBatool">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maedahbatool/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Aaishika S Bhattacharya (<a href="https://www.github.com/aaishikasb">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://www.twitter.com/aaishika">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaishika">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p>Ignacio Van Droogenbroeck (<a href="https://github.com/xe-nvdk">GitHub</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hectorivand">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hectorivand/">LinkedIn</a>)</p><p><br />If you’re interested in learning more about our Navigator Program or joining our Navigators in 2022, you can <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/digitalocean-navigators">find more information and apply here</a>. </p>
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<title>
3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors available at DigitalOcean
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<description>
We are excited to announce the introduction of the latest generation of Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (code name Ice Lake) at DigitalOcean. These latest generation processors offer significant performance improvements compared to their predecessors (up to a 46% improvement, according to Intel), enabling you to deliver rich experiences to your customers.  
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/3rd-gen-intel-xeon-scalable-processors-available
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<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>harsh-banwait</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>We are excited to announce the introduction of the latest generation of Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (code name Ice Lake) at DigitalOcean. These latest generation processors offer significant performance improvements compared to their predecessors (up to a <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/xeon/3rd-gen-xeon-scalable-processors-brief.html">46% improvement, according to Intel</a>), enabling you to deliver rich experiences to your customers.  </p><p>DigitalOcean regularly invests in our underlying infrastructure in order to provide you with modern hardware and realize our mission to simplify cloud computing. The introduction of 3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors is our most recent investment into ensuring we provide our customers with excellent computing power. </p><p>The latest generation of Intel Xeon Scalable processors are currently available for the following Droplet types in the SFO3 data center and will be rolled out to other Droplet types and data centers over time. </p><ul><li>CPU-Optimized Droplets</li><li>Memory-Optimized Droplets</li><li>Premium Intel Droplets</li></ul><p>DigitalOcean is committed to continually improving the servers our Droplets run on, and as we augment our current server fleet, customers will experience the improved performance of these newer processors. While customers do not choose the processor their Droplet runs on, from today, some Droplets created in SFO3 will run on 3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, and as we continue to deploy more, this will increase the likelihood of new Droplets running this generation. </p><p>3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are also supported for other products such as DigitalOcean Kubernetes, and Managed Databases. </p><h2>More speed, same price</h2><p>There is no change to the pricing for Droplets with the introduction of 3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. This allows you to deliver faster customer experiences without increasing your costs. </p><p>We hope you are excited about the introduction of 3rd gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. If you would like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean for your business, then please <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/">contact our sales team.</a> New to DigitalOcean? <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/try/free-trial-offer">Sign up for an account</a> here to get started today. </p><p>Happy coding,</p><p>Harsh Banwait</p><p>Senior Product Manager @ DigitalOcean</p>
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<title>
DigitalOcean’s response to the Log4j security vulnerability
</title>
<description>
DigitalOcean has been monitoring the Log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) and has been testing across all of our products to validate any potential exposure or risks of this vulnerability. We strongly encourage you to review all of your projects and visit our Community FAQ with updated vulnerability guidance. We wanted to provide you with an update on our review by product as the information is available:
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/digitaloceans-response-to-the-log4j-security-vulnerability
</link>
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digitaloceans-response-to-the-log4j-security-vulnerability
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<category>trust-security</category>
<dc:creator>digitalocean</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<p>DigitalOcean has been monitoring the Log4j vulnerability (<a href="https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-44228">CVE-2021-44228</a>) and has been testing across all of our products to validate any potential exposure or risks of this vulnerability. We strongly encourage you to review all of your projects and visit our <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/what-should-i-do-to-protect-against-cve-2021-44228-log4shell-vulnerability-with-apache-log4j">Community FAQ</a> with updated vulnerability guidance. We wanted to provide you with an update on our review by product as the information is available:</p><h2>Droplets</h2><ul><li>Droplets are not vulnerable to the Log4j security vulnerability. The Droplet team reviewed its tech stack, found one area of concern, and issued a patch to close the concern.</li><li>The Droplet team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Marketplace</h2><ul><li>Marketplace will be notifying all Marketplace vendors of this vulnerability and will be disabling new 1-Click App deployments temporarily for those vendors that report they are using the vulnerable version of Log4j.</li><li>We are working with Marketplace vendors to make sure the vulnerabilities are fixed prior to reenabling those 1-Click App deployments.</li></ul><h2>Kubernetes</h2><ul><li>Kubernetes <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> Log4j. Therefore, no additional patches or mitigation activity is required at this time. </li><li>The Kubernetes team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>App Platform</h2><ul><li>App Platform <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> Log4j. However, we recognize that customers may run vulnerable applications. We encourage you to review the applications you run for potential impact information on this vulnerability.</li><li>The App Platform team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Spaces</h2><ul><li>Spaces <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> Log4j. Therefore, no additional patches or mitigation activity is required at this time. </li><li>The Spaces team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Volumes</h2><ul><li>Volumes <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> Log4j. Therefore, no additional patches or mitigation activity is required at this time. </li><li>The Volumes team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Images (Snapshots, Backups, and Custom Images)</h2><ul><li>The Images team is working on migrating systems to Log4j 2.16.0 and have put mitigating controls in place to prevent exposure while code modifications are made.</li><li>The Images team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Managed Databases</h2><ul><li>Managed Databases <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> Log4j. Therefore, no additional patches or mitigation activity is required at this time.</li><li>The Managed Databases team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul><h2>Networking</h2><ul><li>Networking <strong><em>does not use</em></strong> a vulnerable version of Log4j. Therefore, no additional patches or mitigation activity is required at this time. </li><li>The Networking team is continually monitoring the vulnerability information available for all updates to the details of the vulnerability. </li></ul>
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<title>What is SaaS? Software as a Service Explained</title>
<description>
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model in which the software application is provided by a third-party vendor over the internet. SaaS applications are built in cloud infrastructures and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. With SaaS, users have access to software provided by third-party vendors but are not in charge of the production, maintenance, or modification of that software. Users are only exposed to the interface they interact with.
</description>
<link>https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/what-is-saas</link>
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<category>cloud-education</category>
<dc:creator>brittany-king</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<p>Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model in which the software application is provided by a third-party vendor over the internet. SaaS applications are built in cloud infrastructures and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. With SaaS, users have access to software provided by third-party vendors but are not in charge of the production, maintenance, or modification of that software. Users are only exposed to the interface they interact with.</p><p>SaaS applications are popular among businesses and general users, and a variety of familiar applications are readily available. Examples of SaaS products include Google Docs, Slack, Adobe Creative Suite, and Office 365. SaaS applications are usually offered on a subscription model, allowing flexibility in pricing. Many vendors offer free, premium, and enterprise versions of their applications so they can be accessible at a variety of price points. Many marketing automation platforms, accounting tools, and productivity tools are SaaS applications.</p><h2>SaaS vs. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. FaaS</h2><p>SaaS is one delivery model for cloud computing, but it’s not the only option. There are a few different ways services can be delivered, including Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Functions as a Service (FaaS). There are key differences to each delivery model and pros and cons for each depending on the user’s needs. </p><p>IaaS models provide on-demand computing resources over the internet, including networking, storage, and other infrastructural components. With IaaS, users have complete control over their infrastructure and the software and tools associated with their tech, but they don’t have to control or manage the physical infrastructure, like bare metal servers or data centers.</p><p>With PaaS, users no longer have to manage the operating system, runtime, or other infrastructural components of their application that they would need to manage with IaaS. PaaS provides a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">fully managed solution</a> for developers looking to launch applications quickly. When developers choose to use PaaS, they can focus on their development work and let the provider manage backend services and system administration. </p><p>Serverless architecture or Functions as a Service (FaaS) is used for specific functions that are event-driven and can be fully managed by the cloud provider. They execute on code written by the user and are triggered by a specific event. The results of that execution are then sent to the user. This allows businesses to pay per request rather than for an entire ongoing structure.</p><p>SaaS goes further and provides the user with an interface that is easy to use without the user having to worry about any backend components. SaaS applications are popular because of their simplicity and accessibility. Many consumers are familiar with SaaS applications as they are popular ways to deliver software. </p><h2>SaaS architecture</h2><p>With SaaS products, the end-user utilizes a straightforward interface to manage their needs. Users have no insight or control over any backend architecture, storage, or other components. </p><p>When developers create SaaS products, they often use multi-tenant architecture to set up their infrastructure. With a single tenancy model, each customer has their own software instance. With a multi-tenant architecture, users share certain aspects of the application while keeping access to its own data private. Multi-tenancy is more commonly used for SaaS applications because it allows the developer to easily manage things like updates and security for the entire user base, and it’s more cost-effective. </p><p>There are a few different types of multi-tenancy models, all with different benefits, levels of complexity, and costs associated with them. Some models use a single application and database schema, allowing for easy scaling but ultimately increasing costs. Others use a single application, but multiple database schemas, allowing each tenant to have an individual database. This option works well when the data from different tenants needs to be treated differently. Providers can also host data in multiple databases and parse data out by different rules. </p><p>Choosing which setup works best for you depends on your application. Single-tenant SaaS applications typically have a higher cost, and more maintenance needs, but is the better option for customers who need flexibility in their environment or have very specific requirements for their use case. Multi-tenant saves time and ultimately money, but can have more downtime and disruptions, and isn’t as customizable as single-tenant applications.</p><h2>Advantages of SaaS</h2><p>There’s a reason SaaS is a popular software delivery method. There are tremendous advantages to building and using SaaS applications. For customers, SaaS offers easier access to complicated tech. Instead of installing, maintaining, and updating software housed on devices, users can access the software over the internet. Customers can access the application from anywhere and more easily scale up and add more users if necessary. Many SaaS platforms offer detailed analytics and advanced security as well. </p><p>For the developer, building SaaS offers the opportunity for a large customer base, as the application is available to almost anyone. Building cloud applications can save upfront costs since you only pay for the data and bandwidth you need. SaaS applications are also often easier to update and maintain since developers can make one adjustment and push it across the user base.</p><p>Developers taking advantage of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/saas/">cloud solutions like DigitalOcean</a> to build their SaaS applications benefit from the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/how-to-scale-your-saas-product-without-breaking-the-bank/">flexibility offered to scale as needed</a>, as well as options for simplifying infrastructure management and other time-saving tools. </p><p>Many companies choose to work with a cloud provider for increased simplicity and lower cost because of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/">great network bandwidth pricing</a>. For example, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://kea.ai/">kea AI</a>, a SaaS AI startup that allows restaurants to take orders over the phone through kea’s virtual cashiers, used DigitalOcean’s cloud solutions to scale through Series A funding and beyond. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/customers/kea/">Read their story here</a>.</p><h2>Things to consider</h2><p>When deciding if a SaaS application is best for your business and goals, several things are important to consider:</p><p><strong>Regulation:</strong> </p><p>Most SaaS applications use cloud computing for infrastructure, which means that it’s essential to consider how data is collected and stored and what regulations you may be facing with your customer data. Some industries have strict regulations about the storage and use of customer data and may not allow customer data to be stored in public clouds. Organizations also need to consider the data protection and privacy laws in the location where their services are used. </p><p><strong>Security and data considerations: </strong></p><p>Cloud services are open to some additional security threats that aren’t as common in traditional on-site data centers because of things like their use of APIs or cloud-based credentials. Consider how your application and the vendors you work with secure data. It’s also important to find out what backup assurances are provided, as it’s possible to lose stored data in the cloud for a variety of reasons. Providers may also use data for things like understanding the use of their product, selling or personalizing ads, or training machine learning algorithms. Find out a provider’s policies for using and deleting data before giving them access.</p><p><strong>Vendor lock-in:</strong></p><p>If you’re using a SaaS provider for your application, it can be challenging to change providers. Depending on the service, it could mean massive migrations, loss of data, or completely new setups. When choosing a SaaS vendor, you should ensure the solution has the tools you need for your current setup and any future needs to avoid the hassle of switching providers in the future.</p><p><strong>Loss of user control and visibility: </strong></p><p>With the ease of SaaS comes a loss of control. Users receive an interface that’s often easy to use and effective but has significant limitations in customization and no access to the backend infrastructure. Users may need to wait months or years for the SaaS provider to add new features that would help their business and have little visibility into product changes. </p><p><strong>Customer support:</strong></p><p>The customer support provided by SaaS companies can vary dramatically, from basic documentation and user forums to dedicated support teams who can troubleshoot your specific problems. When choosing a SaaS solution, users should assess the support provided and decide how much problem-solving they can achieve internally versus how much hands-on support they would like.</p><p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p><p>SaaS pricing is often billed monthly, but certain SaaS subscriptions may lock users into an initial year-long contract or offer discounts for quarterly or annual payment plans. Pricing itself can be a flat fee or may go up and down with usage, for example, the number of emails sent in a month. Users should pay close attention to how pricing may fluctuate over time and what add-ons, such as premium support, may not be included with the base rate.</p><h2>Build better with DigitalOcean</h2><p>Interested in learning more about building SaaS applications with DigitalOcean? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">Explore what you can do</a> with DigitalOcean’s simple solutions and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/">predictable pricing model</a>. </p>
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<title>Coming together for good at DigitalOcean</title>
<description>
DigitalOcean is a values-driven organization. In addition to our mission to simplify cloud computing, we seek to foster community and spread love within the global developer and entrepreneurial communities. These past two years have been a challenge, but we’re proud of the way in which DigitalOcean has come together for good. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/giving-tuesday-2021
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">giving-tuesday-2021</guid>
<category>culture</category>
<dc:creator>admas-kanyagia</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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<p>DigitalOcean is a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/about/">values-driven organization</a>. In addition to our mission to simplify cloud computing, we seek to foster community and spread love within the global developer and entrepreneurial communities. These past two years have been a challenge, but we’re proud of the way in which DigitalOcean has come together for good. </p><p>Over the past few years, a culture of giving has become ingrained in our organization’s DNA. We’re excited about what we’ve accomplished and thrilled to continue our efforts into 2022 and beyond. I’m thrilled to join DigitalOcean as the new VP of Social Impact, to our team to help guide our actions and strategically supplement the work we began.</p><p>This Giving Tuesday, we’d love to highlight a few of the ways we’ve come together to make a difference in our communities.  </p><h2><strong>Hollie’s Hub for Good</strong></h2><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/hollies-hub-for-good">Hollie’s Hub for Good</a> began in 2020 as a way for DigitalOcean to invest back into and support our global community. This community is full of inventors and entrepreneurs who use their talents to make the world a better place, finding ways to improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth. We’re proud to be a part of their stories.  For nonprofits who need resources or visibility into their efforts, DigitalOcean provides infrastructure credits, cash donations through the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://digitalocean.brightfunds.org/funds/hub-for-good/">Hollie’s Hub for Good Fund</a>, and visibility through a resource hub. </p><p>In early 2021, we announced our commitment to join the Pledge 1% movement as part of our IPO. We are allocating 1% of our pre-IPO equity valuation, around $50 million, to expand our Hollie’s Hub for Good over the next 10 years. </p><p>Some of the Hollie’s Hub for Good projects that we’ve continued to support include:</p><p><strong><a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://questagame.com/">QuestaGame</a> </strong>is a global social enterprise that believes in working (and playing) together to protect life on our planet for a sustainable future. They are using Droplets to support their gaming app that allows citizen scientists to improve the health of their local environment and of the planet as a whole. </p><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://evelist.org/"><strong>EVE list</strong></a> is working to close the gender gap in the workplace by offering content, equipping tools, and a global community to professional women looking to advance their career and their allies dedicated to fostering inclusive culture. They are using MySQL and Droplets to support their website. </p><p><a href="https://trustedworld.org/"><strong>Trusted World</strong> </a>is addressing situational poverty by providing a more effective donation process while tapping into a naturally built distribution system -- first responders, social workers, case managers, crime victims advocates, school counsellors, etc. They are using Droplets for web based applications that can be downloaded on a police officer&#39;s cell phone or car computer and they can order resources from Trusted World, while on call. </p><h2><strong>Partnerships with builders making an impact</strong></h2><p>DigitalOcean is committed to supporting a wide range of initiatives, and another project DigitalOcean supports is <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://bigbluebutton.org/">BigBlueButton</a>, an open-source virtual classroom that enables teachers to engage remote learners effectively. BigBlueButton came to DigitalOcean in 2020 in order to scale quickly, as schools around the world shuttered their doors and increasingly relied on providers like BigBlueButton to connect with their students. </p><p>Since BigBlueButton is an open-source project, its features are developed by a worldwide community of teachers, commercial companies, and educational organizations.  The project focuses on deep integration with popular learning management systems, tools to engage students for online learning, and analytics to guide the teacher in delivering effective online classes. To date, over half a billion minutes of online classes have been hosted by BigBlueButton on DigitalOcean. </p><p>Today, DigitalOcean is pleased to share that it has furthered its support of BigBlueButton by donating $25,000 to the project, which will help them promote awareness and advocacy, foster and recognize research, introduce contribution awards, and support more collaboration amongst the community, all benefiting teachers worldwide.</p><h2><strong>Employee-led commitments</strong></h2><p>This year, DigitalOcean launched a charitable match program for employees and committed to matching up to $150,000 of qualifying employee donations. DigitalOcean employees donated to causes close to their hearts and were able to see their impact double throughout the year.  </p><p><em>“I have worked with Philadelphia Futures for a number of years and seen the impact their program has on students preparing for, matriculating to, and graduating from college. This program is near and dear to my heart as a first-generation-to-college student myself. I know how important having support structures can be for success. Futures provides structure, mentoring, and care to ensure students succeed. Sponsoring a student guarantees that Futures has the funding necessary to support that student from 9th grade through college graduation. Having DO match that donation means two students are fully funded for their journey. Supporting the next generation is a great way to invest in the future.” — Tim, Director Security</em></p><p><em>“Support Our Scholars is a wonderful local organization that helps disadvantaged young women succeed in college. Only about a third of low-income students who enroll in a four-year college program graduate. SOS has a 93% graduation rate for scholars. I started volunteering with SOS in early 2020 (before the pandemic) when I was paired with a young woman heading off to study pre-med at Northwestern. Over the past two years, I&#39;ve seen firsthand the challenges low-income students face in college and how vital a financial and emotional safety net can be. I am so grateful for DigitalOcean&#39;s charitable match program because I am able through it to give even more to this wonderful organization and the ambitious, deserving young women it serves.” - Sydney, Senior Product Manager</em></p><p><em>“I felt helpless watching India battle the worst COVID crisis this spring. Being so far away from India, I was exploring options that can directly have an impact on the relief efforts. I chose to donate to AID because I know that the volunteers work directly with communities that need the most help. DigitalOcean matched my contribution and I feel that my employer is a partner in supporting causes that are important to me. Can&#39;t thank DO enough for the generous program!” — Pragya, Senior Product Marketing Manager</em></p><p><em>“I chose to donate to Wreaths Across America (WAA). WAA has a mission to remember, honor, and teach. We remember and honor our local veterans who have passed away by placing wreaths upon their graves at Christmas time and during the rest of the year by honoring our veterans wherever we see them and teaching others about the price of freedom. Both my father and my son are Navy veterans with many other veteran members in my family, so remembering and honoring their service and sacrifice are very important to me.” — Robin, Senior Tax Accountant, Indirect Tax</em></p><p></p><p>Are you a nonprofit actively fighting to improve health and education, reduce inequality, or spur economic growth? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/hollies-hub-for-good#anchor--register-your-project">Register your project</a> on Hollie’s Hub For Good. </p><p>We can’t wait to continue these efforts into the next year and find new ways to impact our community for good —and we encourage you to find a way to make a difference in yours too. Expect to hear more from us in the new year on our growing social impact program!</p>
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<item>
<title>
Latest products and features at DigitalOcean: November 2021 
</title>
<description>
November was a special month for DigitalOcean as we hosted our deploy conference and got an opportunity to connect with the global community of builders. If you missed the event, you can watch the sessions on-demand at any time to sharpen your cloud native skills. On the product front, we released some critical features, such as upgraded Load Balancers that help you scale confidently. Here’s a summary of the releases we rolled out in November. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/latest-products-features-at-digitalocean-november
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">latest-products-features-at-digitalocean-november</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>pragya-pandey</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>November was a special month for DigitalOcean as we hosted our deploy conference and got an opportunity to connect with the global community of builders. If you missed the event, you can watch the sessions <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://deploy.digitalocean.com/">on-demand</a> at any time to sharpen your cloud native skills. On the product front, we released some critical features, such as upgraded Load Balancers that help you scale confidently. Here’s a summary of the releases we rolled out in November. </p><h2><strong>Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)</strong></h2><p></p><p><strong>Scale your apps confidently with upgraded Load Balancers</strong></p><p>We are excited to announce that we have made major upgrades to our Load Balancer! With this release, DigitalOcean Load Balancer can easily handle up to one million requests per second or one million simultaneous connections. Learn more about this update in our <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/scale-with-upgraded-load-balancers">blog</a> and <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/">documentation</a>. Here’s a quick video that shows how easy it is to spin up the new load balancers. </p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToEzUxfo6XI" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ToEzUxfo6XI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p></p><p><strong>New base images available in control panel and via API</strong></p><p><a href="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f35/release-notes/">Fedora 35</a> and <a href="https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21951">Ubuntu 21.10</a> base images are now available in the control panel and via the API. You can take advantage of the latest features and capabilities in these versions when using these images for your app.</p><h2><strong>Platform as a Service (PaaS)</strong> </h2><p><strong>App Platform now supports forwarding application runtime logs to Logtail</strong></p><p>DigitalOcean App Platform allows you to <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/how-to/enable-log-forwarding/">forward logs</a> to external log providers for better analysis and retention. We’ve now added support for Logtail as a log destination, and we’ll be adding more log providers in the future.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/5ff08f02-f69c-45c0-96b2-46d4488b6813_log+forwarding.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p><strong>New marketplace apps</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/wireguardian-vpn-access-server">Wireguardian VPN Access Server</a>: Wireguardian is a cloud-first VPN access server built on top of the Wireguard protocol. It is built to securely connect your hybrid workforce up to 10x faster.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/airbyte">Airbyte</a>: Replicate your data in minutes with pre-built and custom connectors. Meet all your specific needs with the flexibility of open-source.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/netmaker">Netmaker</a>: Netmaker enables many scenarios such as connecting DigitalOcean resources across multiple regions into a single VPC and connecting DigitalOcean Droplets to DOKS.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/node-army">node-army</a>: Use builds and images ready for you to associate your passwords and SSH Keys. </li></ul><h2><strong>Developer experience </strong></h2><p></p><p><strong>Updates to DigitalOcean Command Line Interface (CLI)</strong> </p><p>We have released a new version of <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/">doctl</a>, the official DigitalOcean CLI:</p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/tag/v1.67.0">v1.67.0<strong></strong></a><strong> -</strong> This release updates <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/godo/releases">godo</a> to support new App Platform features.</p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/tag/v1.66.0">v1.66.0<strong></strong></a><strong> - </strong>This release contains a number of new features, including support for PowerShell completion and a new <em>--upsert</em> flag for the <em>doctl apps create</em> command that updates the app in the given app spec if it already exists.</p><p></p><p><strong>Updates to DigitalOcean Terraform Provider</strong></p><p><a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/digitalocean/digitalocean/latest">V2.16.0</a> - This release adds support for:</p><ul><li>Scaling load balancers using the <em>size_unit </em>field.</li><li><em>source_kubernetes_ids</em> and <em>destination_kubernetes_ids</em> attributes for Kubernetes firewall rules.</li></ul><p>It also includes bug fixes.</p><p><a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/digitalocean/digitalocean/2.15.0">V2.15.0</a> - This release adds support for:</p><ul><li>Disabling automatic DNS record creation when using Let’s Encrypting certificates.</li><li>Revoking OAuth tokens when credentials are destroyed. </li></ul><p>It also includes bug fixes.</p><p>You can check out the <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/">release notes</a> to get up-to-date information about product updates and read about <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/latest-products-and-features-october-21">updates from the previous month here</a>. </p><p>We hope you’ll give these new products and updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please <a href="https://ideas.digitalocean.com/">submit your feedback</a>. And if you have any questions, please feel free to <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions">ask them here</a>. </p><p></p><p>Until next month,</p><p>Happy coding! </p><p>Pragya Pandey</p><p>Sr. Product Marketing Manager</p>
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<item>
<title>An amazing month of open source love</title>
<description>Hacktoberfest 2021 Recap</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/hacktoberfest-2021-recap
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">hacktoberfest-2021-recap</guid>
<category>community</category>
<dc:creator>phoebe-quincy</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<h1>Hacktoberfest 2021 Recap</h1><p></p><p>Every October, DigitalOcean demonstrates our love for the open source community with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/">Hacktoberfest,</a> a month-long event where developers of all skill levels donate their time to support open source projects. Developers everywhere rely on projects that the open source community pours their energy into maintaining. Our goal with Hacktoberfest is to give back to those pillars of the developer community and help keep their important open source projects up and running.</p><p>Hacktoberfest launched in 2013 with 700 participants. Hacktoberfest 2021 had more than 141,000 participants contributing to the open source projects they love. We are incredibly proud of how much Hacktoberfest has grown over the years, and in 2021 we were especially pleased with how the global open source community came together to create quality submissions and show their thanks to maintainers. <br /><br />Hacktoberfest couldn&#39;t happen without the participation and contributions of the community, but it wouldn&#39;t be possible at all without the generous support of our partners. A special thanks to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://hacktoberfest.appwrite.io/">Appwrite</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://www.oneapi.io/">Intel</a>, and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://deepsource.io/hacktoberfest/">DeepSource</a> for their in-depth partnership, and a big thanks to our community partners such as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://github.com/">GitHub</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://about.gitlab.com/">GitLab</a>, and many more who love open source just as much as we do.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/540fb3e6-e17b-4598-b4ed-02c4634613f8_all-partners.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <h2>Hacktoberfest 2021 by the numbers</h2><p>Hacktoberfest 2021 maintainers reported higher quality contributions from Hacktoberfest participants (more on this below), which resulted in valuable support for the open source community, and we believe this contributed to lower participation. However, when we take a look at the data from Hacktoberfest, we can see how rich and thriving the open source community is and what a positive impact the community’s contributions have made. </p><h3>Contributions</h3><p>Using a range of coding languages, thousands of Hacktoberfest participants submitted 294,451 accepted pull/merge requests in support of open source projects.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/23a03fbc-c360-44a2-85bb-44636759fd46_accepter+PRs.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/8cacb923-67fd-4cd4-9381-1a71540d97ac_users+accepted+PRs.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <h3>Participants</h3><p>People of all experience levels come together from all over the world for Hacktoberfest, a truly global celebration of open source.</p><ul><li>Completed users: 46,676</li><li>Countries represented by registered users: 194</li><li>Countries represented by completed users: 147</li></ul> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/bec167e8-dae0-4777-a190-bcc8a228dc47_top+countries.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p></p><p>We made some changes to Hacktoberfest this year to better meet our commitment to maintainers. The popularity of Hacktoberfest over the years—and the excitement of earning a limited edition Hacktoberfest t-shirt resulted in low-quality pull requests, which created extra work for maintainers.</p><p>This year, we tightened our rules for submissions and were more consistent with enforcement, ensuring that maintainers saw higher-quality pull/merge requests and had a smoother experience overall. Here are some of the changes we made for Hacktoberfest 2021: </p><ul><li>Shifted the focus of the program away from the t-shirt as a reward, reducing the number of folks creating spam to simply get the shirt</li><li>Provided improved guidance on how to make a quality contribution during the registration process and on the website </li><li>Took a stronger position on what repositories are and aren&#39;t aligned with our values, excluding those that were encouraging low-effort contributions</li></ul><p>Maintainers didn’t have to deal with as much spam this year as a result of these changes—and they were pretty happy about it! Here are some of the things we heard throughout the month:</p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/ThisDotMedia/status/1460324484888641536?s=20"><img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/91a8853d-7546-48a8-8626-2ebd90f5d25c_IMG_4685.jpg?auto=compress,format&rect=0,0,1284,1347&w=1284&h=1347" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/mayank0255/status/1454892085463580681?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/7d4ee498-4f09-48af-a41c-1faf0cae02df_IMG_4692.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/nhcarrigan/status/1443695497038884870?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/e580ac02-6f55-423f-aed7-399e29e7431d_IMG_4691.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://ttps://twitter.com/martinwoodward/status/1447863800691142656"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/f8fbf9c8-6673-4434-9dd9-f22275966989_IMG_4690.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p>With more support and instruction on how to produce a high-quality contribution, first-time Hacktoberfest contributors were more confident on the whole. </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/iprankurpandey/status/1447123923481481217?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/70932d93-9b65-428d-ae30-ddea57e9a9f7_IMG_4689.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/amrita_kesh/status/1458037023000825861?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/33521051-df75-4e17-b9a1-580f03707067_IMG_4688.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/rebeccakeyphd/status/1449525838060339206?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/ab75ecfd-c41f-4be8-92c9-b89449d172c9_IMG_4687.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <p class=" block-img"> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://twitter.com/pranjaypoddar/status/1447642902360776704?s=21"><img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/cb3b42bb-497a-4df8-a72a-02f202942b49_IMG_4686.jpg" alt="" copyright=""></a> </p> <h3>Hacktoberfest Stories</h3><p>We love hearing from Hacktoberfest participants—their ideas, their expectations, their hopes, and their experiences. Share your Hacktoberfest experience online any time by tagging us @DigitalOcean or using #hacktoberfest. </p><p>It can be hard to catch all the great things happening in open source during October so we’re sharing a few stories we didn’t want you to miss. </p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/cb7e133d-b1e6-4e0c-8514-901981176ad7_boa.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p><strong>Boa Constrictor, a Maintainer Story </strong></p><p>Andrew Knight is a software engineer who writes the blog <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://automationpanda.com/">Automation Panda </a>and is also a maintainer of the open source project, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://q2ebanking.github.io/boa-constrictor/">Boa Constrictor</a>, a .NET Screenplay Pattern that helps with Web UI and REST API test automation. </p><p>“<em>Hacktoberfest 2021 was a smashing success for Boa Constrictor! We completed 41 pull requests with 151 commits and over 10K new lines of code from 11 total contributors. Here&#39;s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://automationpanda.com/2021/11/09/boa-constrictors-awesome-hacktoberfest-2021/">a summary</a> of everything we accomplished together.” </em></p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/1577568c-d7e1-4ed5-a052-4c592a7ea885_appwrite.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p><strong>Appwrite, a Premium Partner Story</strong></p><p>Appwrite has deep roots in Hacktoberfest. The company started as an open source project that saw over 200 contributions from developers during Hacktoberfest 2019, laying the foundation of a budding organization. Just two years later, Appwrite is a premium partner of Hacktoberfest 2021 helping to grow the open source community while jumping into the action themselves. The Appwrite team posted 280 of their own issues for Hacktoberfest contributors to dive into and propelled 449 participants to submit 1237 pull requests. </p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/www-static/6f36baa8-80f7-4b5c-97be-9ec0812f43c8_IMG_1DCE5A6EACD4-1.jpeg" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p>Estee Tey, a <strong>Contributor Story:</strong> </p><p>Hacktoberfest 2021 was Estee Tey’s second Hacktoberfest and she had set big goals for herself to go from non-technical contributions like documentation edits to more technically demanding ones. </p><p><em>“It was really interesting to explore different codebases and also communicate with the project maintainers to agree on a solution to achieve together. There were some hurdles in setting up some of the projects, but that&#39;s part and parcel for most newcomers onboarding dev projects.” </em></p><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://esteetey.dev/my-second-attempt-at-hacktoberfest-2021-edition">Read more about her journey with Hacktoberfest</a></p><h2>Looking ahead to next year</h2><p>As always, we’re honored and humbled that so much of the DigitalOcean Community shows up year after year to support open source projects. We’re always working to improve the Hacktoberfest experience for maintainers, contributors, and sponsors by listening carefully to our expanding community. Join the conversation on our <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" href="https://discord.gg/MvuBwA2C">Hacktoberfest discord server</a>.</p><p>There’s much more open source love to come from us at DigitalOcean—so stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you next year!</p><p>Phoebe Quincy, Senior Community Relations Manager | Open Source Programs<br /></p>
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<title>
Boost your cloud native skills with these sessions from deploy
</title>
<description>
As we wrap up another incredible deploy conference, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite moments from the week. We’re so thankful for this global community of builders — from entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, and more — that joined us to learn about all things cloud native. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/deploy-2021-recap
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">deploy-2021-recap</guid>
<category>community</category>
<dc:creator>digitalocean</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>As we wrap up another incredible deploy conference, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite moments from the week. We’re so thankful for this global community of builders — from entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, and more — that joined us to learn about all things cloud native. </p><p>DigitalOcean has spent the last ten years simplifying cloud computing so that builders around the world can participate and thrive in this software community. This week, we engaged with fellow builders and learned from experts in the field who shared how their scrappy teams continue to keep cloud computing simple while still growing and scaling their businesses.</p><p>We kicked things off with a keynote from Yancey Spruill, CEO of DigitalOcean, as he shared his thoughts on the critical role software developers play in business strategies. He also gave insight into what’s next for DigitalOcean, specifically in serverless offerings through the acquisition of nimbella, as DigitalOcean seeks to provide more choice to application builders while maintaining simplicity and price predictability.</p><p>And we heard from Admas Kanyagia, VP of Social Impact at DigitalOcean, on her vision for giving back through programs like Hollie’s Hub for Good, the Pledge 1% movement, and more.</p><p>If you weren’t able to attend, we’ve got you covered. You can find recordings of all the sessions <a href="http://deploy.digitalocean.com">on our website</a>. Some of the highlights are:</p><h2><strong>All things Kubernetes</strong></h2><p>In her session, 3 Ways to Spin Up a Kubernetes Cluster, Kim Schlesinger, Developer Advocate, DigitalOcean, explained three different strategies for creating a Kubernetes cluster and unpacked the pros and cons of each. Check out her session to learn how to create a repeatable Kubernetes deployment process for all of your infrastructure needs. Sachin Jha took it a step further in his talk, Should Startups Adopt Kubernetes? Why, How, &amp; When To Adopt, and described how to determine the right time to adopt Kubernetes to help scale the business.</p><h2><strong>Strategies for scaling businesses</strong></h2><p>In their session, From 0 to 3 Million+ Deployments: Scaling App Platform on Kubernetes, Sr. Software Engineers at DigitalOcean Nicholas Tate and Kamal Nassar walked us through how they handled the immense growth of DigitalOcean’s App Platform. They explained how they scale efficiently when the user base expands and overcome the challenges that often come with growth.</p><p>Finally, Roxie Elliot, Director, Content Marketing, DigitalOcean, dove into highlights from our recent <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/currents/november-2021/">research report</a> and explained how businesses of all sizes use cloud services, their pain points, and how cloud-native businesses are distinct from other companies.</p><h2><strong>Compelling customer stories</strong></h2><p>One of the best things about building a community like this is the chance to learn from each other. Through a variety of customer stores, we were able to explore real-life examples of businesses finding simple solutions to complex problems through cloud computing. We heard from brands like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/customers/atom-learning/">Atom Learning</a>, who used DigitalOcean’s simple solutions to efficiently scale and meet growing needs, EMR-Bear, who took the stress out of infrastructure management with managed solutions, and more.</p><p>We hope to see you at the next deploy conference! Visit the deploy website to watch content on-demand. To stay in the loop with the latest event information, visit <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community">DigitalOcean’s community site</a>.</p>
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<title>
Announcing Currents: DigitalOcean's research report on SMBs and the cloud
</title>
<description>
DigitalOcean is excited to announce the launch of our latest edition of Currents, DigitalOcean’s research report on all things cloud. For this edition of Currents, we wanted to do a deep-dive into how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) around the globe are leveraging cloud solutions, their unique challenges, and how tech-focused and traditional SMBs differ in their technology needs. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/currents-smb-cloud-research-2021
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">currents-smb-cloud-research-2021</guid>
<category>news</category>
<dc:creator>roxana-elliott</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>DigitalOcean is excited to announce the launch of our latest edition of Currents, DigitalOcean’s research report on all things cloud. For this edition of Currents, we wanted to do a deep-dive into how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) around the globe are leveraging cloud solutions, their unique challenges, and how tech-focused and traditional SMBs differ in their technology needs. </p><p>To achieve this, we worked with research agency AspenFinn to conduct a survey with 2,400 IT decision makers who work in companies of all sizes and industries and compared responses across three distinct groups–enterprises, tech-focused SMBs, and traditional SMBs. Enterprises were classified as companies with over 500 employees, while tech-focused SMBs are companies with under 500 employees who deliver technology products to their customers, and traditional SMBs are companies with under 500 employees who deliver non-technology products to their customers. We asked additional questions around how businesses self-classify and if they consider themselves a startup or cloud native business.</p><p>The findings demonstrate that while cloud solutions are important to many types and sizes of businesses, there are barriers to adoption when it comes to cloud solutions, and many small businesses do not have dedicated staff to manage their cloud infrastructure. We also found several key differences in how enterprises, tech-focused SMBs, and traditional SMBs approach technology and what they are looking for in their cloud solutions. </p><p>Highlights of the findings include:</p><ul><li><strong>There is a cloud knowledge gap between traditional SMBs and enterprises.</strong> For example, 48% of respondents from traditional SMBs are not familiar with the term “cloud native,” compared to the 5% of respondents from enterprises who are not familiar with the term. Meanwhile, 56% of respondents from traditional SMBs are not familiar with the term “digital native,” compared to the 18% of respondents from enterprises who are not familiar. <br /></li><li><strong>Businesses of all sizes relied on the cloud to get through the pandemic peak -- and adoption isn’t slowing down any time soon. </strong>Of the respondents who reported increased cloud usage in 2020 due to COVID-driven digital acceleration, 82% of traditional SMBs, 83% of tech SMBs, and 92% of enterprises said their cloud usage has continued to increase this year. Sixty-nine percent of respondents believe the cloud has helped their business recover from the ongoing pandemic. Businesses of all sizes say coping with the impacts of COVID-19 is the biggest challenge they face right now, but for traditional SMBs, keeping up with the technology curve is just behind.<br /></li><li><strong>Different sized businesses need different cloud architectures to meet their needs.</strong> Multi- and hybrid cloud adoption is more prevalent among enterprises (44% multi-cloud, 44% hybrid cloud) and tech SMBs (40% multi-cloud and 36% hybrid cloud), while traditional SMBs are more likely to have a single cloud (46%). Additionally, traditional SMBs often start with on-premise infrastructure and graduate to the cloud (51%) compared to enterprise and tech-focused SMBs, who are equally likely to be hybrid or completely cloud-based from the start (65% of enterprises, 64% of tech-focused SMBs). Tech-focused SMBs are most likely to consciously seek out a multi-cloud architecture to meet their needs. </li></ul><p>To read and download the full report, including additional insights, full research methodology, and regional breakdowns, <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/currents/november-2021/">visit this page</a>. </p><p>DigitalOcean provides a simple to use cloud solution with transparent pricing for small and medium-sized businesses all over the globe. If you’re an SMB interested in trying DigitalOcean’s simple to use cloud solutions, <a href="https://cloud.digitalocean.com/registrations/new">sign up for an account today</a>. </p>
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<title>What is PaaS? Platform as a Service Explained</title>
<description>
Platform as a service, or PaaS, is a category of cloud computing that allows developers to use deployment platforms to build, deploy, and scale their applications. When a developer uses PaaS, all they have to consider is their code. With PaaS, the cloud provider provides all the backend infrastructure, including networking, middleware, servers, storage, virtualization, the OS, and the runtime environments. This means that users can expect pre-configured runtime environments and predictable scaling, storage, and security options. Users have access to certain libraries, tools, and configuration settings, but they can’t modify the underlying operating system or network settings.
</description>
<link>https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/what-is-paas</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">what-is-paas</guid>
<category>cloud-education</category>
<dc:creator>brittany-king</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Platform as a service, or PaaS, is a category of cloud computing that allows developers to use deployment platforms to build, deploy, and scale their applications. When a developer uses PaaS, all they have to consider is their code. With PaaS, the cloud provider provides all the backend infrastructure, including networking, middleware, servers, storage, virtualization, the OS, and the runtime environments. This means that users can expect pre-configured runtime environments and predictable scaling, storage, and security options. Users have access to certain libraries, tools, and configuration settings, but they can’t modify the underlying operating system or network settings.</p><p>PaaS can be a good choice for developers who don’t need to customize their underlying infrastructure or who want to focus their attention on development rather than DevOps and system administration. PaaS products are very powerful and make it easier to scale, rapidly iterate, and quickly deploy. </p><p></p><h2><strong>PaaS vs. IaaS vs. SaaS vs. FaaS: What’s the difference?</strong></h2><p>It’s hard to think about PaaS without also considering the other delivery models for cloud computing, specifically Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and Functions as a Service (FaaS). There are fundamental differences to each delivery model and pros and cons for each depending on the user’s needs.</p><p>IaaS models provide on-demand computing resources over the internet, including networking, storage, and other infrastructural components. With IaaS, users have complete control over their infrastructure and the software and tools associated with their tech. Still, they don’t have to control or manage the physical infrastructure, like bare metal servers or data centers.</p><p>With IaaS, users can choose the level of control over their infrastructure, but they don’t have to control or manage the physical hardware. Developers can set up their infrastructure and decide what layers of abstraction they want. To make maintaining their application easier, they can layer in things like load balancers or even managed services like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/">Managed Kubernetes</a>. </p><p>With PaaS, users no longer have to manage the operating system, runtime, or other infrastructural components of their application that they would need to manage with IaaS. PaaS provides a <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">fully managed solution</a> for developers looking to launch applications quickly. When developers choose to use PaaS, they can focus on their development work and let the provider manage backend services and system administration. </p><p>SaaS goes further and provides the user with an interface that is easy to use without the user having to worry about any backend components. SaaS applications are popular because of their simplicity and accessibility. Many consumers are familiar with SaaS applications as they are popular ways to deliver software. </p><p>Serverless architecture or Functions as a Service (FaaS) is used for specific functions that are event-driven and can be fully managed by the cloud provider. They execute on code written by the user and are triggered by a particular event. The results of that execution are then sent to the user. This allows businesses to pay per request rather than pay for an entire ongoing structure.</p><p></p><h2><strong>The details: how PaaS architecture works</strong></h2><p>PaaS platforms provide and manage all the infrastructural components needed to build applications with cloud computing. This means that the underlying infrastructure (such as the operating system and other software) is installed, configured, and maintained by the provider while allowing the user to have access to languages, libraries, tools, and services for application development, as well as a certain degree of control over configuration settings. Developers are able to configure their applications through a straightforward interface.</p><p>PaaS allows users to focus their efforts on developing and deploying apps in a tested and standardized environment. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform">DigitalOcean App Platform</a> is an example of a PaaS offering. It allows users to build, deploy, and scale apps and static sites quickly and easily while handling provisioning and managing infrastructure, databases, operating systems, application runtimes, and more.</p><p>Scaling in IaaS often requires extra work from the developers to maintain continuity while scaling, or may require some downtime while the scaling takes place. PaaS offerings create a layer of abstraction between developers and their cloud infrastructure, simplifying the experience and allowing for a zero-downtime scaling method. Many PaaS solutions also offer auto-scale functionalities that enable users to specify the parameters or events that trigger the PaaS system to scale automatically.</p><p>Developers may choose a PaaS option to focus more on the coding and development of their applications while saving time and money managing infrastructure. PaaS platforms also make it easy for developers to maintain and scale their applications and allow them to easily create and delete resources — great for things like proof of concept needs and saving costs when you only pay for the time your application was in use. PaaS platforms often offer a variety of API integrations, and there are multiple <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/marketplace/">marketplaces available</a>, making it easy to incorporate other technologies into an application.  </p><p></p><h2><strong>PaaS has many uses</strong></h2><p>Developers who don’t need to customize their underlying infrastructure and want a fast, easily managed, and readily scalable way to develop their application often choose PaaS. PaaS is a great way to host <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/web-mobile-apps/">mobile and web applications</a> and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/website-hosting/">static sites</a>. Often, developers want to spend their time and energy working on their idea — whether that’s a mobile app or a website or blog. PaaS offerings allow developers to boost productivity and spend their time on what matters most to them. Developers can also build APIs or run background workers on PaaS platforms, freeing up time and resources.</p><p>Additionally, developers can choose a fully managed database for their applications so that they don&#39;t need to worry about managing their databases. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/">DigitalOcean’s Managed Databases</a> is a fully managed solution that takes away the complexities of database management and handles things like set up, scaling, updates, and backups automatically. Stringent security policies for PaaS providers and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/new-in-digitalocean-app-platform-enhanced-security-insights-and-dbaas-integration/">additional security features </a>can offer another level of comfort for users.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Purpose-build PaaS</strong></h2><p>Some PaaS providers build their software for specific uses or types of applications. For example, PaaS for Artificial Intelligence (AiPaaS) often includes pre-trained machine learning models and APIs for various common uses. AiPaaS makes it easier for teams to build AI applications without the massive computing and hardware costs while saving time with pre-built services. Communications platform as a service (cPaaS) focuses on voice, video, and text messaging capabilities. Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) provides an easier, more comprehensive way for users to integrate with APIs and connect data across public and private clouds and even on-premises environments. Finally, mobile platform as a service (mPaaS) focuses on application development for mobile devices.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Benefits of using PaaS</strong></h2><p>PaaS is a popular option for many developers and businesses, especially those that need the ability to iterate and pivot quickly as they develop new applications. Some benefits of PaaS are:</p><ul><li>Faster time to market: PaaS offerings are built for speed. Developers can iterate and deploy more quickly and efficiently.</li><li>Scalability: Easily scaling applications with little-to-no downtime can make all the difference for a business experiencing high growth.</li><li>Flexibility: Most common programming languages and frameworks are supported by PaaS offerings, meaning you don’t have to learn a new skill to get started. You have the flexibility to choose the language and framework you&#39;re most comfortable with to develop your application.</li></ul><h2><strong>Considerations when exploring PaaS solutions</strong></h2><p>PaaS is a fantastic solution for those looking to deploy their applications quickly without worrying about infrastructure, and users of all kinds can benefit from the power and flexibility it provides. However, when deciding what solution is best for your business and goals, several factors are essential to consider:</p><p><strong>Loss of user control and visibility: </strong></p><p>PaaS is optimized for ease of code deployment rather than deep customization of the underlying infrastructure. If users need more visibility and control into the infrastructure, PaaS may not be the right solution. Teams that want complete control over their production environment and the design and behavior of their infrastructure should consider using an <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/">IaaS solution</a>.</p><p><strong>Vendor lock-in:</strong></p><p>It can be challenging to migrate applications built on PaaS platforms. Using open-source cloud solutions makes it easier to migrate computing operations from one provider to another. </p><p><strong>Cost:</strong></p><p>PaaS may seem expensive in the beginning. While it is initially more costly to use a PaaS solution than to build something yourself on an IaaS solution, users often find they save money with PaaS over time, especially accounting for hours spent managing the infrastructure of applications.</p><p><strong>Regulation: </strong></p><p>PaaS uses cloud computing for its infrastructure, which means that it’s essential to consider how data is collected and stored and what regulations you may be facing with your customer data. Some industries, like healthcare and finance, have strict rules about storing and using customer data and may not allow customer data to be held in public clouds. Organizations also need to consider the data protection and privacy laws in the location where their services are used. </p><p><strong>Security and data considerations: </strong></p><p>All the major cloud providers are regulated and have strict security requirements, along with entire security teams and other experts dedicated to keeping information safe. Still, cloud services are open to some security threats. While these instances are extremely rare, it’s a good idea to find out how the cloud service provider secures data and how they recommend customers further secure their data. </p><p>Providers may also use your data for things like understanding the use of their product, selling or personalizing ads, or training machine learning algorithms. Find out what a provider’s policies are for using and deleting data before giving them access.</p><p>Interested in learning more about PaaS and if it’s the right solution for your business? DigitalOcean offers a variety of simple products that meet developer needs. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">Explore what you can do</a> with <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">DigitalOcean’s App Platform</a>. </p>
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<title>
Scale your apps confidently with upgraded Load Balancers
</title>
<description>
One of the critical components that’s required to deliver superior customer experiences is a reliable load balancer. Load balancers distribute traffic across your infrastructure and enable you to improve and manage availability, performance, and reliability. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/scale-with-upgraded-load-balancers
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">scale-with-upgraded-load-balancers</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>rafael_rosa</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>One of the critical components that’s required to deliver superior customer experiences is a reliable load balancer. Load balancers distribute traffic across your infrastructure and enable you to improve and manage availability, performance, and reliability. </p><p>DigitalOcean customers are no different, and many of them rely on our managed Load Balancer service to run and scale their apps. We are excited to announce that we have made <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/">major upgrades to our Load Balancer</a>! With this release, DigitalOcean Load Balancer can easily handle up to one million requests per second or one million simultaneous connections.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/88628a52-956b-4687-89ad-97dc774ac37f_Graph-Image_3+copy.jpg?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p>This upgrade gives DigitalOcean customers more flexibility in choosing the right sized Load Balancer for your apps.</p><p>You determine how much traffic your Load Balancer can handle by picking the appropriate number of nodes. You can start with 1 node and scale up to 100 nodes. Each node increases the capacity of the load balancer as follows:</p><ul><li>10,000 Request Per Second or RPS </li><li>10,000 Simultaneous connections</li><li>250 New SSL connections per second </li></ul><p>We understand that traffic to your apps can go up or down, with some apps, such as an ecommerce app during the holidays, experiencing significant surges. With this in mind, we have designed the load balancer so that you can quickly resize it to meet your needs. You can increase the capacity of your Load Balancer by adding more nodes or decrease its capacity by removing nodes. Here’s a short video that shows how easy it is to spin up the new Load Balancers.</p> <div data-oembed="https://youtu.be/ToEzUxfo6XI" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ToEzUxfo6XI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>Beyond the flexibility of choosing the right size for your Load Balancer, we are keeping many of the features we had in place, including our easy integration with <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/">Let&#39;s Encrypt</a>, which lets you create SSL certificates for <strong>free</strong>, and we make sure they get renewed automatically. We recently enabled the option to create wildcard certificates, so you can have any subdomain automatically covered! You can read more about configuring SSL termination <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/how-to/ssl-termination/#ssl-certs-0">in the official documentation</a>.</p><p>You can use Load Balancers with <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/how-to/create/">Droplets (Linux-based virtual machines)</a> as well as <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/add-load-balancers/">DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes. </a></p><p></p><h2>Pricing</h2><p>The pricing for Load Balancers is based on its size, and is determined by the number of nodes you assign to it. Each node costs $10 per month. For example, if you create a Load Balancer with five nodes, then your monthly price will be $50. The price of the Load Balancer is not affected by the number of targets (e.g. Droplets, DigitalOcean Kubernetes nodes) it has. </p><p>DigitalOcean Load Balancers by themselves don’t generate bandwidth charges, as they are bandwidth neutral. Click here to <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/#bandwidth">learn more</a>.</p><p>The upgraded Load Balancers are available starting today across all regions, except AMS2, NYC2, SFO1. Existing Load Balancers will be converted into the new version with no loss in features or performance and keeping the same price.</p><p>We hope that you are excited about this release and will give the upgraded Load Balancers a try. Check out the <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/load-balancers/">docs</a> for more information. If you would like to have a conversation about using the upgraded Load Balancers for your business or if you need a Load Balancer with over 100 nodes, then <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/">please contact our sales team</a>.</p><p>Lastly, we have <a href="https://deploy.digitalocean.com/home">deploy</a>, DigitalOcean&#39;s signature user conference next week, which focuses on celebrating, educating, and connecting awesome builders from all over the world. Make sure to join us to learn more exciting news from your favorite builders.</p><p>Happy coding,</p><p>Rafael Rosa</p><p>Lead Product Manager @ Digitalocean </p><p></p>
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<title>
What is IaaS? Infrastructure as a Service Explained
</title>
<description>
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud delivery model that provides on-demand computing resources over the internet, including networking, storage, and other infrastructural components. IaaS allows users to develop, grow, and scale without buying and maintaining physical hardware. The power and flexibility of IaaS enable it to support a wide variety of businesses, developers, researchers, and other individuals who want control over their infrastructure and the software inside that infrastructure. 
</description>
<link>https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/what-is-iaas</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">what-is-iaas</guid>
<category>cloud-education</category>
<dc:creator>brittany-king</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/a-general-introduction-to-cloud-computing">cloud delivery model</a> that provides on-demand computing resources over the internet, including networking, storage, and other infrastructural components. IaaS allows users to develop, grow, and scale without buying and maintaining physical hardware. The power and flexibility of IaaS enable it to support a wide variety of businesses, developers, researchers, and other individuals who want control over their infrastructure and the software inside that infrastructure. </p><p>Before IaaS, businesses would have to purchase and maintain their hardware and software for their computing needs. This was expensive to implement, with a high purchase cost of the hardware, and costly to maintain, requiring individuals with technical expertise to dedicate significant amounts of time to the upkeep of the physical infrastructure. Scaling apps was also difficult because companies were often constrained by the capacity of their on-premise infrastructure. IaaS helps lower IT costs significantly, allowing organizations to reallocate that money to development. It’s also flexible enough to allow businesses to scale, promoting rapid growth alongside financial savings. </p><p></p><h2><strong>IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS: What’s the difference?</strong></h2><p>There are several delivery models for cloud computing, typically done through Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS). There are fundamental differences to each delivery model and pros and cons for each depending on the user’s needs. </p><p>With IaaS, users can choose the level of control they have over their infrastructure, but they don’t have to control or manage the physical hardware. Developers can set up their infrastructure and decide what layers of abstraction they want. To make maintaining their application easier, they can layer in things like load balancers or even managed services like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/">Managed Kubernetes</a> or <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/">Managed Databases</a>. </p><p>With PaaS, users no longer have to manage the operating system, runtime, or other infrastructural components of their application. PaaS is great for developers who don’t need to customize their underlying infrastructure, as it provides a <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">fully managed solution</a>. When a developer chooses to use PaaS, all they have to consider is their code. They can focus on the development work they are trying to do and let the provider manage backend services and system administration. Once they upload their code and their application is live, their job is done. PaaS products are very powerful and make it easier to scale, rapidly iterate, and quickly deploy. </p><p>SaaS is a software delivery model in which a third-party vendor provides the software application over the internet. SaaS applications are typically built inside cloud infrastructures and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. With SaaS, users have access to software provided by third-party vendors but are not in charge of the production, maintenance, or modification of that software. Users are only exposed to the interface they interact with.</p><p></p><h2><strong>IaaS Architecture</strong></h2><p>IaaS is broken into three main components: compute, network, and storage. With these offerings, users have the building blocks they need to create their customized systems, as complicated or powerful as they need, and the ability to scale up and down based on current needs. </p><p><strong>Compute</strong></p><p>Foundational IaaS computing resources begin with servers. Servers are powerful computers that tend to have hundreds of Central Processing Units (CPUs), hundreds or thousands of gigabytes (GBs) of Random-access memory (RAM), and thousands of GBs of storage. Servers are expensive to buy and costly and difficult to maintain. IaaS providers maintain datacenters that house the physical, bare-metal servers. These physical servers can be partitioned using a hypervisor into smaller “virtual machines”. These virtual machines can run their OS and applications independently while sourcing power from the bare-metal server. </p><p>There are different ways to set up a virtual machine (VM), and the architecture you choose will depend on your needs and the level of abstraction you prefer. For example, developers can </p><p>Use Kubernetes to containerize their code so that namespaces, which are like smaller, lighter VMs, serve only one purpose, like running an application. Kubernetes then orchestrate or manage those containers for the developer, managing traffic and automatically scaling the application up and down as needed. Compute offerings often include optional add-ons like load balancing, which automatically distributes network traffic to prevent system overload. </p><p>When users purchase a virtual machine through an IaaS provider, they choose the operating system, often referred to as an image, and applications run on that machine. Developers can easily scale vertically by adding more CPU if their VMs don’t have enough processing power or scaling horizontally to increase instances and handle more load. Virtual machines can often be quick and easy to set up. For example, <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/">DigitalOcean’s virtual machines, Droplets</a>, can be spun up in under a minute.</p><p><strong>Storage</strong></p><p>Storage options are threefold: file storage, object storage, and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/object-storage-vs-block-storage-services">block storage</a>. </p><p>File storage is similar to what we have on our computers at home and stores data as a single entity into a file. The files can exist within each other as other data, so it’s hierarchical. For example, a path for file storage could be “/home/photos/selfie.jpg”. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/object-storage-vs-block-storage-services">Object storage</a> instead takes saved data as a single entity and appends metadata and an identifier. Object storage deals with whole objects stored over the network. These objects could be things like an image file, logs, or HTML files. Object storage is the most popular option because of its simplicity and cost savings. Block storage is likely underneath the file or object storage. Block storage services are relatively familiar. They provide access to a traditional block storage device over the network and attach it to your virtual machine. It takes data and saves it as blocks of actual bytes or bits. It has advantages over the other two by being faster to transfer data but not user friendly unless abstracted by a file system like in your computer that uses it.</p><p><strong>Network</strong></p><p>The <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-networking-terminology-interfaces-and-protocols">network</a> function talks to the storage function, other VMs, containers, other servers, the internet, the intranet, and other components. It&#39;s how information is transferred through the architecture regardless of endpoints. Users will need different networking bandwidths depending on the amount of data transmitted between computing resources. </p><p></p><h2><strong>Benefits of IaaS</strong></h2><p>Iaas is a popular option for all kinds of businesses, especially new businesses, because it allows them to scale up and down as needed and avoid the hassle and cost of maintaining servers themselves. </p><p>There are several advantages to IaaS:</p><ul><li>Cost: Users can avoid the upfront costs and significant overhead of buying and maintaining their physical datacenters. They can pay only for what they need every month, meaning costs will go up and down with usage. </li><li>Scale: IaaS allows users to scale easily and quickly as demand increases, either automatically or with minimal management and resources.</li><li>Availability: Having multiple datacenters to choose from allows users to host their applications closer to their end customer, decreasing latency and providing a better customer experience.</li><li>Increased stability and reliability: With IaaS, users don’t have to worry about technical maintenance, software updates, or troubleshooting equipment issues. IaaS providers also give users an uptime guarantee, so they know their services will always be available.</li><li>Disaster recovery: The ability to recover or access applications should there be a disaster or an outage without the high costs of extra tech and staffing.</li><li>Speed and flexibility: Users can have an IaaS application up and running in a matter of minutes and quickly can scale up and down based on demand and business growth. Flexibility allows developers to quickly test new ideas and pivot when necessary.</li></ul><p></p><h2><strong>Who uses IaaS?</strong></h2><p>IaaS has multiple applications that span industries, company sizes, and business needs. Startups and small companies may prefer IaaS to avoid the high costs of purchasing and maintaining hardware and software, and companies experiencing rapid growth like the scalability of IaaS. Larger companies may want the ability to buy only the space they will use. They also often use IaaS for redundancy in their setup and to take advantage of the high availability of public cloud providers. </p><p>Some common use cases for IaaS are:</p><p><strong>Website hosting:</strong> IaaS provides flexible hosting options for developers looking to get their <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/website-hosting/">websites up and running</a> quickly and reliably. Using cloud services also allows builders to easily maintain and scale their sites as they grow.</p><p><strong>Startups: </strong>IaaS allows startups and other small businesses to avoid the high cost of purchasing and maintaining physical hardware to sustain a cool new idea. A startup in a rapid growth period can enjoy the scalability of IaaS.</p><p><strong>Testing and development: </strong>IaaS allows teams to quickly set up and tear down testing and development environments, allowing new applications to make it to market more quickly.</p><p><strong>Storage and backup: </strong>Using IaaS for data storage and backup allows an organization to maintain resiliency without the significant overhead of additional on-site hardware. Using an IaaS provider can also help the team manage legal and compliance requirements that may otherwise be difficult to understand or implement.</p><p><strong>Building and maintaining web applications: </strong>IaaS provides the infrastructure needed to support <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">web applications</a>, such as storage, servers, and networking resources. Web applications can be quickly deployed on IaaS and then can continue to scale up and down with demand, providing reliability for the platform and cost savings for the team. </p><p><strong>High-performance computing needs: </strong>Organizations can solve complex problems and conduct detailed research and data analysis using supercomputers and computer grids or clusters. IaaS can provide the infrastructure to maintain those needs. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/gaming-development/">Game developers</a> and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/solutions/streaming/">streaming services</a> also utilize IaaS for flexibility, maintaining low latency, and saving bandwidth.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Considerations when using IaaS</strong></h2><p>IaaS is a fantastic solution, and users of all kinds can benefit from the power and flexibility it provides. When exploring IaaS as the solution for your application, there are a few considerations to take into account. </p><p><strong>Regulation</strong></p><p>Some industries, such as healthcare or the financial industry, have strict regulations about the storage and use of customer data and may not allow customer data to be stored in public clouds. Organizations also need to consider the data protection and privacy laws in the location where their services are used. </p><p><strong>Security</strong></p><p>All the major cloud providers are regulated and have stringent security requirements, along with entire security teams and other experts dedicated to keeping information safe. Still, cloud services are open to some security threats. While these instances are extremely rare, it’s a good idea to find out how the cloud service provider secures data and how they recommend customers further secure their data.</p><p>Additionally, customers running legacy apps in the cloud may find that the infrastructure is not designed to secure the legacy apps, possibly leading to new security issues. This is highly variable and would depend on the technology being used.</p><p><strong>Data loss</strong></p><p>While extremely rare, cloud services can permanently lose stored data due to physical disasters, bugs, user-generated errors, or other issues, just like physical devices. When choosing an IaaS provider, find out what backup services they offer and if there’s an extra cost for those services. You may also run backups yourself.</p><p><strong>Data persistence</strong></p><p>Providers may use data for various things, like understanding the use of their product, selling or personalizing ads, or training machine learning algorithms. Find out what a provider’s policies are for using and deleting data before giving them access.</p><p><strong>Vendor lock-in</strong></p><p>Users of proprietary cloud services may be at more risk for vendor lock-in. Using open-source cloud solutions makes it easier to migrate computing operations from one provider to another. </p><p><strong>Loss of user control and visibility</strong></p><p>Using third-party computing resources makes it difficult for users to have complete visibility and control over their computing environments. Implementing monitoring and analytics tools that update users on infrastructure performance mitigates some risk. </p><p></p><h2><strong>What to look for in a provider</strong></h2><p></p><p><strong>A great support team</strong></p><p>Customer support should be easily reachable by phone, email, or chat. An <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/">extensive knowledgebase</a> is excellent, but make sure that there’s someone to reach out to if you need additional guidance, and make sure that person is knowledgeable and available.</p><p><strong>A variety of options</strong></p><p>Can you get both <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/">managed</a> and unmanaged products? Even if you don’t need managed services now, you should have the option to use managed products in the future if your needs change as you grow. Can you easily integrate with other systems and software? Does the provider have a strong record of partnerships across the industry? A provider that offers a variety of solutions and integrations is crucial as you seek solutions for your needs. </p><p><strong>Quality hardware and security</strong></p><p>It’s essential to use a provider that maintains high-quality tech and hardware. You need dependable servers and networks. You also need layered security that you can trust and will help you meet compliance standards.</p><p><strong>Local datacenters</strong></p><p>The closer your datacenter is to you or your users, the better. Look for a provider that has datacenters all over the world.</p><p><strong>Reliability</strong></p><p>What does your provider have in place for backup and recovery? Can they ensure continuous operation and resiliency in case of emergencies? They should clearly articulate their backup plans and provide clearly defined SLAs.</p><p><strong>Scalability</strong></p><p>How fast can you spin up a virtual machine? Can you pause, update or duplicate on demand? Can you scale up and scale down seamlessly? Your provider should be able to support scaling up and down either through a managed application or through a minimal manual effort from your team. </p><p></p><h2><strong>IaaS Pricing</strong></h2><p>Though IaaS can provide services at significantly lower costs than owning and managing a datacenter, prices often increase with usage. Check the billing details to learn how pricing is handled and if you can set caps or notifications for overages, and how billing details are communicated. Some providers’ billing details aren’t always easy to understand. Billing can even be unpredictable and jump more than expected with usage. Look for a provider that <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/">clearly explains the pricing model</a> and offers predictable pricing.</p><p>Common IaaS pricing generally follows one of these models:</p><p><strong>Subscriptions:</strong> Some providers offer discounts for customers who commit to longer contract terms. Pricing for subscription-based services can be more favorable but also locks you into a vendor for a set amount of time, which can be a disadvantage if your needs change or your experience with that vendor is not up to your expectations.</p><p><strong>Pay-as-you-go:</strong> The most common way for traditional IaaS providers to bill is by the hour/second, and users are only charged for what they use. This is beneficial in that generally, a pay-as-you-go model enables you to switch cloud providers easily if needed, and your bill may go up and down depending on usage. However, it can also lead to unexpected increases in cost if usage goes up and pricing models are not always clear.</p><p>Interested in learning more about IaaS and if it’s right for your business? DigitalOcean offers a variety of simple solutions and products that meet developer needs. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">Explore what you can do</a> with DigitalOcean’s IaaS offerings and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/">predictable pricing model</a>. </p><p></p>
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<title>
Latest products and features at DigitalOcean: October 2021 
</title>
<description>
October was a busy month for DigitalOcean as we hosted our eighth annual Hacktoberfest, participated in KubeCon 2021, and launched several key features such as the new control plane in Managed Kubernetes that are critical to building scalable and highly available apps. We’re now gearing up for our virtual conference, deploy on Nov 16th and 17th and hope you’re able to join us.
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/latest-products-and-features-october-21
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">latest-products-and-features-october-21</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>pragya-pandey</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>October was a busy month for DigitalOcean as we hosted our eighth annual <a href="https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/">Hacktoberfest</a>, participated in <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/dive-into-kubernetes-with-digitalocean-at-kubecon/">KubeCon 2021</a>, and launched several key features such as the new control plane in Managed Kubernetes that are critical to building scalable and highly available apps. We’re now gearing up for our virtual conference, <a href="https://deploy.digitalocean.com/">deploy</a> on Nov 16th and 17th and hope you’re able to join us.</p><p>Below is a summary of product releases that we rolled out in October.</p><h2>Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)</h2><p><strong>Programmatically gain insights into apps with new Monitoring API</strong></p><p>DigitalOcean provides a monitoring service that enables you to track infrastructure metrics like memory usage, disk usage, load average – all at no additional cost to DigitalOcean users. We’re excited that now you can access monitoring metrics and insights data through our <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/monitoring-api-programmatic-insights">new Monitoring API</a>.</p><p><strong>Disable Automatic DNS A record creation</strong></p><p>You <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/release-notes/#october-12">can now disable</a> automatic <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/dns/how-to/manage-records/#a-records">DNS A record</a> when Let’s Encrypt Certificates are added through forwarding rules on a LoadBalancer. This provides flexibility to independently manage your DNS records as an alternative to the existing automated record creation.</p><h2>Cloud Native </h2><p><strong>Managed Kubernetes High Availability Control Plane</strong></p><p>We’re thrilled to share that we’ve redesigned the control plane of DigitalOcean Kubernetes to make it easier for you to run workloads reliably, and to provide high availability. The <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/new-control-plane-digitalocean-managed-kubernetes/">new control plane</a> with high availability is available for all users of DigitalOcean Kubernetes. This feature is currently in early availability. Watch this walkthrough video to see the new control plane in action. </p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn4zdnSiUs" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HAn4zdnSiUs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <h2>Platform as a Service (PaaS)</h2><p><strong>App Platform: Log forwarding, deployment progress indicators and more</strong></p><p>We’re excited to announce that <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">App Platform</a> now supports forwarding the application logs to external logging systems so that you can analyze all the events related to your app in a centralized platform and take advantage of log provider capabilities such as search, indexing and retention. Read more about all the App Platform updates in <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/app-platform-log-forwarding-deployment-progress">this blog</a>. Check out this video to learn how you can set up log forwarding.</p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNrHWNU6FPk" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNrHWNU6FPk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p><strong>Marketplace 1-Click Apps integrate with Managed Databases</strong></p><p><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/">DigitalOcean Marketplace</a> offers many 1-Click Apps that you can use to spin up servers of your preferred configurations in seconds. These 1-Click Apps can now seamlessly integrate with DigitalOcean Managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Redis database if the app vendor opts in. For guidance on how vendors can opt-in, refer to <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/marketplace-partners#getting-started-creating-your-droplet-based-1-click-app">this page</a>.</p><p><strong>New marketplace apps</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/triliovault-for-kubernetes">TrilioVault</a>: TrilioVault for Kubernetes (TVK) is a cloud-native, application-centric data protection platform that was designed from the ground-up to support the scale, performance and mobility requirements of Kubernetes container environments across any public or hybrid cloud environment.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/helpy-pro-k8s">Helpy Pro K8s</a>: Helpy Pro is the <a href="https://helpy.io/">self-hosted customer support platform</a> engineered for companies that are serious about security, privacy, and compliance. Designed for on-premise and private instance deployments, Helpy Pro lets you avoid vendor lock-in, own your data, and integrate with the tools you already use to keep your data safe.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/jetbackup-5">JetBackup 5</a>: Take the hassle out of critical backups management with <a href="https://www.jetbackup.com/">JetBackup</a>’s fastest, most secure, versatile, and reliable version yet: JetBackup 5. Customize your own incremental backups with a variety of supported destinations and up to 10 concurrent account backups, restores, and downloads.</li><li><a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/everlife-ai">Everlife.AI</a>: Create a LIFIE, ann immutable Avatar of yourself. Your Avatar can connect, collaborate and evolve with millions of other Avatars on the network and earn in EVER tokens for the work they do.</li></ul><h2>Developer experience </h2><p><strong>Updates to DigitalOcean Command Line Interface (CLI) </strong></p><p>We have released a new version of <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/">doctl</a>, the official DigitalOcean CLI:</p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl/releases/tag/v1.65.0">v1.65.0<strong></strong></a><strong> - </strong>This release includes a number of new features:</p><ul><li>The <em>--ha</em> flag was added to the<em> kubernetes cluster create </em>sub-command to optionally create a cluster configured with a highly-available control plane. This feature is in early availability</li><li>The <em>kubernetes cluster</em> sub-commands now include a “Support Features” field when displaying version options</li><li>The <em>--disable-lets-encrypt-dns-records</em> flag was added to the <em>compute load-balancer create</em> sub-command to optionally disable automatic DNS record creation for Let’s Encrypt certificates that are added to the load balancer</li></ul><p><strong>Updates to DigitalOcean Terraform Provider</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/digitalocean/digitalocean/2.12.1">v2.12.1</a> - This release adds CORS support for apps on App Platform and the ability to </li><li>create monitoring alerts.</li><li><a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/digitalocean/digitalocean/2.13.0">V2.13.0</a> - This release adds support for retrieving the CA certificate for database clusters. It also includes bug fixes.</li><li><a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/digitalocean/digitalocean/latest">V2.14.0</a> - This release adds support for the high availability <em>(ha)</em> attribute when creating Kubernetes clusters.</li></ul><p>You can check out the <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/release-notes/">release notes</a> to get up to date information about product updates, and read about <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/latest-products-features-at-digitalocean-september">updates from the previous month here</a>. </p><p>We hope you’ll give these new products and updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please <a href="https://ideas.digitalocean.com/">submit your feedback</a>. And if you have any questions, please feel free to <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions">ask them here</a>. </p><p>Until next month,</p><p>Happy coding!</p><p>Pragya Pandey</p><p>Sr. Product Marketing Manager</p><p></p>
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<title>
Don’t fear the cloud! Three steps to simplify cloud computing
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<description>
Getting started with cloud computing can be a huge undertaking. From choosing a provider to deciphering cloud delivery models, or considering migration options and choosing a backend architecture, it can feel overwhelming and — dare we say it — downright scary. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/simplify-cloud-computing
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">simplify-cloud-computing</guid>
<category>cloud-education</category>
<dc:creator>brittany-king</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Getting started with cloud computing can be a huge undertaking. From choosing a provider to deciphering cloud delivery models, or considering migration options and choosing a backend architecture, it can feel overwhelming and — dare we say it — downright scary. </p><p>It doesn’t have to be. As you think about what’s next for that great idea you have — whether you’re just getting started, migrating from one provider to another, or transitioning from physical hardware to the cloud— you can break down your decision-making process into three simple steps. </p><p></p><h2><strong>Step 1: Consider your goals</strong></h2><p>Why are you researching cloud offerings? What are your short and long-term goals for your idea or application? Are you building a complex application or a static website? What are your plans for scaling and growing? As you think through these questions, start documenting what you need to achieve these goals.</p><p>Document the capabilities that are essential for a provider to have, and any additional considerations that are important to you. Write down things like storage and bandwidth expectations and any additional requirements related to data and security. Consider your needs for now and how they will change in the future. Make sure your provider can support all stages of your application, from proof of concept to rapid growth and beyond.</p><p>By outlining your goals and the demands associated with those goals, you’ll be able to get a sense of your cloud computing requirements. As you’re researching cloud providers, you can compare offerings, SLAs, price points, and more in greater detail. </p><p></p><h2><strong>Step 2: Consider your resources</strong></h2><p>How big and knowledgeable is your team? Are costs a significant factor? How much time do you want to spend managing infrastructure yourself? Cloud providers have options and resources for teams of all sizes and experiences, although those offerings will vary in terms of cost and complexity. Pricing models for cloud computing can be complex. If cost is a concern, find a cloud provider that offers <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/">simple, predictable pricing</a> so you never get a surprise bill — especially in your early days.</p><p>Getting started with a virtual machine (VM) doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Keeping your long and short-term goals in mind will help you decide your initial and future configurations, and user-friendly interfaces simplify the setup, so it’s nothing to fear. For example, developers can get started with <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/">DigitalOcean’s Droplets</a> in just a few clicks. Simply choose the type and size of machine, storage options, and datacenter region that will best suit your goals (usually the one closest to you and the users you will be serving), and the VM will be ready in minutes.  </p><p>If spinning up a Droplet is a bit too complicated for you, try a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">DigitalOcean’s App Platform</a>. PaaS offerings are fully managed, offer flexible options for building all kinds of applications, and allow you to easily scale as your business grows without having to manage infrastructure yourself.</p><p>PaaS isn’t the only option for a little extra help. Managed services allow you to focus on your core business while they take care of the rest. Offerings like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/">DigitalOcean’s Managed Kubernetes</a> enable you to scale your application as-needed, saving time and money, and <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases/">DigitalOcean’s Managed Databases</a> takes the complexity out of database administration. </p><p>Many cloud providers have <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/marketplace/">marketplaces</a> where you can find apps to easily deploy on your application, sometimes with as little as one click. There are many developer tools that make it easier for you to manage your application, and there’s even a way to <a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/wordpress">deploy WordPress on your DigitalOcean Droplet </a>with one click.  </p><p></p><h2><strong>Step 3: Consider joining a community</strong></h2><p>There’s a huge developer community that’s inclusive and supportive. Individuals from all over the world often come together to collaborate, share knowledge, and even work on open source projects together.  As you wade into the world of cloud computing, consider becoming a part of this wonderful community. Take advantage of resources like <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community">DigitalOcean’s community</a>, where you can find tutorials of all kinds written by developers and for developers. </p><p>Choose a cloud provider with an excellent <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/">support team</a> who quickly answers when you need a little extra help and can provide helpful documentation when there’s a simple solution. </p><p>You can also be a part of many events and conferences, like Hacktoberfest, deploy, or KubeCon. Engage with your fellow developers and entrepreneurs while learning from each other and other experts in the field.</p><p>Cloud computing is a wonderful asset, allowing startups and enterprises alike to build and deploy products that change the world. While it can be a bit intimidating in the beginning, you’ll soon find there’s nothing to fear!</p><p>Interested in keeping it simple? <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">DigitalOcean</a> is here to help. Sign up for an account today and you can create your first virtual machine in just minutes. </p>
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<title>Vanilla Kubernetes vs Managed Kubernetes</title>
<description>
Ever wondered why the “wheel of a ship” stands as the logo of Kubernetes? The name Kubernetes originates from the Greek word κυβερνήτης, meaning helmsmen or steersmen, to represent that Kubernetes provides a way of steering a ship full of containers. Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that was designed & initially open-sourced by Google in 2014 out of the internal Google orchestrator Borg. Since its inception, the role of Kubernetes has grown exponentially in not only enterprises, but also across startups who increasingly use Kubernetes as part of their application architecture to ensure their apps are scalable and manageable. To quote the official definition:
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/vanilla-kubernetes-vs-managed-kubernetes
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">vanilla-kubernetes-vs-managed-kubernetes</guid>
<category>cloud-education</category>
<dc:creator>sachin-jha</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Ever wondered why the “wheel of a ship” stands as the logo of Kubernetes? The name Kubernetes originates from the Greek word <strong>κυβερνήτης</strong>, meaning helmsmen or steersmen, to represent that Kubernetes provides a way of steering a ship full of containers. Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that was designed &amp; initially open-sourced by Google in 2014 out of the internal <a href="https://kubernetes.io/blog/2015/04/borg-predecessor-to-kubernetes/">Google orchestrator Borg</a>. Since its inception, the role of Kubernetes has grown exponentially in not only enterprises, but also across startups who increasingly use Kubernetes as part of their application architecture to ensure their apps are scalable and manageable. To quote the <a href="https://kubernetes.io/">official definition</a>:</p><p><em>&quot;Kubernetes, also known as <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/what-is-kubernetes/#what-kubernetes-and-k8s-mean">K8s</a>, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery.&quot;</em></p><p>In the past several years, Kubernetes has become that de facto leader for container orchestration and management. A <a href="https://www.purestorage.com/content/dam/pdf/en/analyst-reports/ar-portworx-pure-storage-2021-kubernetes-adoption-survey.pdf">recent survey</a> by Pure Storage found that the top reasons for Kubernetes adoption include accelerating deployment frequency, increasing automation, and reducing IT costs. Despite its popularity, Kubernetes is a complex system, which can be a barrier for businesses looking to take advantage of its benefits. There are multiple ways that companies can leverage the power of Kubernetes, whether they have the expertise to manage it themselves or would benefit from a managed Kubernetes offering. Below we outline the different Kubernetes deployments available and the benefits of using a managed Kubernetes provider.</p><h2>What is Vanilla Kubernetes? </h2><p>“Vanilla Kubernetes” or open source Kubernetes is a term coined to describe a Kubernetes setup that is as basic as it gets–it has the main components to run Kubernetes, but not much else. A vanilla Kubernetes setup includes the control-plane nodes which run etcd, the api-server, a scheduler, and the controller-manager. It also includes worker nodes, and each node runs a kubelet, kube-proxy, and a container runtime like Docker. </p><p>While a vanilla Kubernetes installation will give users full control over their Kubernetes setup, it also requires more time to configure, since so little has been added to the backbone of Kubernetes. To operationalize a vanilla Kubernetes installation, users will need to add an ingress-managed load balancer, autoscaling, CI/CD, and install software to handle logging, monitoring, and alerting.  </p><h2>What is “managed Kubernetes”?</h2><p>Although Kubernetes is open source, many companies planning to adopt Kubernetes do not have the expertise or resources to set up and maintain the cluster themselves. Managed Kubernetes providers help those looking to use Kubernetes by providing them with the necessary support and maintenance of the Kubernetes clusters. A managed Kubernetes deployment should provide users with a hassle-free control plane, easy deployment options, and ongoing Kubernetes maintenance, enabling users to focus on their business and bringing their apps to market. </p><p>Many cloud providers offer managed Kubernetes services, but they all differ slightly in their exact configuration options and the level of support they provide to their customers. DigitalOcean’s Managed Kubernetes service is built to give users the efficiency of vanilla Kubernetes along with the simple user experience and cost savings that come with using DigitalOcean’s cloud services. </p><h2>Benefits of using DigitalOcean managed Kubernetes </h2><p>DigitalOcean Kubernetes is built to enable development teams both small and large to take advantage of this market-leading container orchestration platform without the lead time required to provision, install, and operate a cluster. Here are some of the benefits of using DigitalOcean managed Kubernetes: </p><ul><li><strong>Reduced operations overhead: </strong>Managing self-hosted clusters requires expertise, time, and resources that many small businesses lack. By using DigitalOcean Kubernetes, DigitalOcean does the heavy-lifting, continuously monitoring your Kubernetes Control Plane to make sure you are always able to access and deploy to your cluster. We manage key services and settings on your behalf so you don’t need to worry about your Kubernetes clusters going down. <br /></li><li><strong>Faster time to market: </strong>Leveraging a managed version of Kubernetes allows developers and businesses to take advantage of containerized application deployment, leading to a faster time to market. <strong><br /></strong></li><li><strong>No lock in: </strong>One common concern around using a managed version of Kubernetes is being locked-in by the managed provider to certain configurations and setups. DigitalOcean Kubernetes doesn’t lock you in, so you can build your Kubernetes cluster on DigitalOcean however you’d like, and have the flexibility to move it later if required. <br /></li><li><strong>Worry-free upgrades and patches: </strong>We schedule automatic updates of your clusters to new versions of Kubernetes, so you can utilize the latest enhancements to the orchestration platform without having to keep track of upgrades yourself. For extra protection, DigitalOcean Kubernetes uses <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/upgrade-cluster/">Surge upgrades</a>, which takes 10 nodes at a time and creates new nodes before destroying the old ones.<strong><br /></strong></li><li><strong>Predictable pricing and included control plane: </strong>DigitalOcean Kubernetes uses simple, transparent pricing so you’ll always know what you’re paying for. Additionally, DigitalOcean includes the control plane for free with your managed Kubernetes instance. <strong> </strong></li></ul><h3>Try DigitalOcean Kubernetes today</h3><p>If you’re interested in trying DigitalOcean’s managed Kubernetes for your applications, <a href="https://cloud.digitalocean.com/kubernetes/clusters/new">take DigitalOcean Kubernetes for a spin</a>. If you have questions about migrating from another cloud provider or what your total costs will be on DigitalOcean once you start scaling, you can <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/migrate/">schedule a meeting</a> with our team of experts who can help answer any questions you have.</p>
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<title>
Join us for deploy, DigitalOcean's virtual conference
</title>
<description>
Calling all developers! DigitalOcean is preparing for another deploy conference, the virtual event for global development teams. Join us on November 16th and 17th, as technical experts from DigitalOcean share practical takeaways on using cloud technologies to grow your business. With a focus on cloud native applications, you'll walk away with Kubernetes starter kits, time-saving security tips, and robust tooling setups to build your software with ease. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/deploy-october-2021
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">deploy-october-2021</guid>
<category>news</category>
<dc:creator>digitalocean</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Calling all developers! DigitalOcean is preparing for another deploy conference, the virtual event for global development teams. Join us on <a href="http://deploy.digitalocean.com">November 16th and 17th,</a> as technical experts from DigitalOcean share practical takeaways on using cloud technologies to grow your business. With a focus on cloud native applications, you&#39;ll walk away with Kubernetes starter kits, time-saving security tips, and robust tooling setups to build your software with ease. </p><p>Cloud native applications — apps that are built and run to take full advantage of all the benefits that cloud computing offers — have risen in popularity in recent years because they’re easier to scale, allowing builders to quickly and efficiently launch, support, and grow their businesses. This November, we’ll focus on how builders can accelerate the development of cloud native apps, especially among startups and small-to-medium-sized businesses. </p><h2><strong>Best practices and business growth: sessions for all builders</strong></h2><p></p><p>We’ll kick things off with a message from DigitalOcean’s CEO, Yancey Spruill, where he will share his thoughts on all the product enhancements we’ve made this year and highlight some customers who have built robust and scalable businesses on DigitalOcean. His keynote will be followed by presentations from engineers, customers, and other experts that are building technologies and businesses powered by the cloud. </p><p>Through keynotes and product demos, you’ll get the tools you need to find success with cloud services. We’ll cover a variety of topics including setting up Kubernetes clusters to best practices for critical operations like logging, security monitoring, backup, and more. You’ll hear real stories from other builders, sharing their startup journeys and how scrappy developer teams are using DigitalOcean to meet their business goals. And you’ll learn how you can build your business more efficiently with managed cloud services.</p><p>deploy runs November 16th and 17th, with a four-hour conference block on each day. Use the <a href="http://deploy.digitalocean.com/agenda">full agenda</a> to plan your day and star your favorite sessions to create a custom viewing schedule.</p><p></p><h2><strong>Content and community: get involved with other developers</strong></h2><p></p><p>Event attendees will have another opportunity to connect, converse, and collaborate with developers around the world in the deploy Discord server. Chat in real-time with attendees, speakers, and DigitalOcean executives to get insight on any of your business challenges. On conference day, we’ll open up additional rooms where you can play games and video network with other conference attendees.  </p><p>We’re thrilled to be a part of this amazing community and can’t wait to connect with everyone at the event!</p><p><a href="http://deploy.digitalocean.com">RSVP Here</a></p>
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<title>
Introducing DigitalOcean's New Chief Product Officer
</title>
<description>
​​I am honored and humbled that today I have joined DigitalOcean as its Chief Product Officer. I am excited to lead DigitalOcean’s team to the next phase of our product growth while supporting the developers around the globe who rely on DigitalOcean to grow their businesses. 
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/introducing-digitaloceans-new-chief-product-officer
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">
introducing-digitaloceans-new-chief-product-officer
</guid>
<category>news</category>
<dc:creator>gabe-monroy</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>​​I am honored and humbled that today I have joined DigitalOcean as its Chief Product Officer. I am excited to lead DigitalOcean’s team to the next phase of our product growth while supporting the developers around the globe who rely on DigitalOcean to grow their businesses. </p><p>I come to DigitalOcean having served as the Vice President of the Azure Developer Experience group, and am passionate about open source communities in the cloud native space. I was an early contributor to the Docker and Kubernetes projects, and served on the board of directors of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) during its founding years. I am also a 2-time entrepreneur. After<a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/04/ever-heard-startup-deis-well-microsoft-certainly/"> Microsoft acquired Deis</a> in 2017, I helped lead the team that took Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) from zero to the fastest growing service in the history of Azure.</p><p>Since my days as a startup leader, I have cared deeply about empowering the next generation of developers —small teams, small businesses — and I believe I can have the biggest impact on those developers as the Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean.</p><p>If you have worked inside a big cloud company, you have witnessed the obsession with enterprise customers. It makes sense. Enterprises around the world are trying to undergo a digital transformation to become more competitive. The stakes are high, so they’re willing to pay handsomely for help. In the name of enterprise revenue, the big cloud vendors push more and more product investment and leadership attention toward their enterprise customers. This invariably comes at the expense of developers and small businesses, who don’t qualify as “top accounts”. It’s an established pattern that is not changing any time soon.</p><p>What is changing is that across the globe, there is an explosion of developers working on new digital products — small teams and small businesses — who started their journey as natives of the modern digital world. To succeed, these developers need access to a sophisticated cloud provider with a full spectrum of managed services including compute, networking, storage, databases, and more. Those services need to be wrapped in a developer experience that is carefully designed, and doesn’t feel like a collection of vendors sharing a food court. But most of all, developers need a cloud partner that is 100% focused on their success.</p><p>Ten years ago, DigitalOcean was founded to serve the next generation of developers. Long after they pioneered high-performance, SSD VMs, DigitalOcean continues to deliver the best VM experience on the market. They continue to champion the developer community, crafting some of the highest-quality educational content on the Internet. And they are renowned for their focus on design, usability, and developer-first experiences. After using DigitalOcean’s Kubernetes-based App Platform, I was blown away by the quality of the developer experience, and the technical underpinnings that make it possible. After spending many hours with Yancey and the DigitalOcean executive team, it’s clear everyone in leadership shares these values, and also brings the impressive leadership muscle and proven track records needed to execute on their vision.</p><p>If you’re a developer building a new website, developing a new API, or running a cloud-native software business, DigitalOcean is the cloud for you. Simpler experiences, simpler pricing, and a simpler way to innovate.</p><p>Stay tuned. Our journey has just begun.</p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3oWRvNqniI" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_3oWRvNqniI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div>
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<title>
New in DigitalOcean App Platform: Log forwarding, deployment progress indicators, availability in additional regions and more
</title>
<description>
Since launching DigitalOcean App Platform last year, we’ve been on an exciting journey of learning from our customers, improving the service and delivering critical features and functionalities that help developers, entrepreneurs and businesses bring their apps to market faster. In August, we released some great features for App Platform such as trusted sources and alerts and monitoring that make your apps more secure and easy to manage. If you missed this Tech Talk, we encourage you to watch it to see these features in action. Today, we’re excited to share more updates that make analysis of your logs simpler and deployment of your apps easier. We’ve also expanded the availability of App Platform to more regions.
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/app-platform-log-forwarding-deployment-progress
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">app-platform-log-forwarding-deployment-progress</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>moises-eskinazi</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Since launching <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">DigitalOcean App Platform</a> last year, we’ve been on an exciting journey of learning from our customers, improving the service and delivering critical features and functionalities that help developers, entrepreneurs and businesses bring their apps to market faster. In August, we released some <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/new-in-digitalocean-app-platform-enhanced-security-insights-and-dbaas-integration">great features</a> for App Platform such as trusted sources and alerts and monitoring that make your apps more secure and easy to manage. If you missed this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e1B4KF29Sk">Tech Talk</a>, we encourage you to watch it to see these features in action. Today, we’re excited to share more updates that make analysis of your logs simpler and deployment of your apps easier. We’ve also expanded the availability of App Platform to more regions.</p><h2>Forward App Platform logs to external systems for better analysis</h2><p>It is critical for application developers to analyze logs to understand how certain events progressed, and see if there were configuration changes or security issues that need to be addressed. Logs are also important for audit trails and troubleshooting issues. Analyzing these logs in a comprehensive and centralized manner helps make the process more efficient as there’s a single platform that gives you visibility into your entire environment. App Platform provides application logging functionality via <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/app-platform/how-to/view-logs/">dashboard</a> and using <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/apis-clis/doctl/reference/apps/logs/">doctl</a>, which does not include built-in log collection or retention mechanisms. </p><p>We’re excited to announce that App Platform now supports forwarding the application logs to external logging systems so that you can analyze all the events related to your app in a centralized platform and take advantage of log provider capabilities such as search, indexing and retention.The logs that are forwarded are encrypted in flight so that your data is secure and can&#39;t be accessed by unauthorized entities<em>.</em>We currently support forwarding logs to <a href="https://www.papertrail.com/">Papertrail</a> and <a href="https://www.datadoghq.com/">Datadog</a> and will be adding support for more log providers in the coming months. This feature is available to all App Platform users and can be configured using the UI or updating the <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/concepts/app-spec/">App Spec</a> of your app.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/ad2de187-dd9b-4f83-a1a0-36b97bc6d82c_log+forwarding1.png?auto=compress,format" alt="log fowarding image" copyright=""> </p> <p>Here’s a quick walkthrough video for <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/how-to/enable-log-forwarding/">setting up log forwarding</a> in App Platform. </p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNrHWNU6FPk" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNrHWNU6FPk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <h2>View progress of your app deployment with rich data</h2><p>In our last update, we introduced the ability to be notified about failed or successful deployments via email or Slack so that you are proactively informed of the status of your app deployment. </p><p>In some scenarios, teams would like to monitor the progress of deployments while the deployment is happening so that they can take immediate actions to troubleshoot or fix issues or even cancel a deployment if they need to make changes to their application while the deployment is going on. We’ve now added new UI elements that show the progress of your deployment in real time with links to get detailed information about your deployment. We’ve also added a “Cancel Deployment” button in case you want to cancel deployment and make changes to your application. </p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/6767ee3f-e3e4-4efb-9650-0070b1da2bd8_deployment+progress+indicator1.png?auto=compress,format" alt="deployment progress image" copyright=""> </p> <h2>Deploy a DigitalOcean App Platform app using GitHub Actions</h2><p><a href="https://docs.github.com/en/actions">GitHub Actions</a> makes it easier to automate how you build, test and deploy your projects on any platform. You can now deploy a DigitalOcean App Platform app using GitHub Actions, allowing you to auto-deploy your app from source on commit while running tests or performing other operations. Below are some examples of how to use App Platform with GitHub Actions:</p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/app_action">https://github.com/digitalocean/app_action</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/sample-golang-github-action">https://github.com/digitalocean/sample-golang-github-action</a></p><p><a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/sample-golang-docr-github-action">https://github.com/digitalocean/sample-golang-docr-github-action</a></p><h2>Support for <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS">Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)</a></h2><p>CORS is used to permit the loading of resources from your app when requesting them from a different domain. CORS uses additional headers to inform a browser whether they’re allowed to make requests to your app or static site when visiting on a different origin. You can now <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/how-to/update-cors-policies/">update the CORS policy</a> for any component of your app from App Platform. This is helpful in scenarios where another site or app needs to make requests to your app.</p> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/03b62fe2-894e-4d8c-8665-2d6a24010941_CORS1.png?auto=compress,format" alt="Cors policy image" copyright=""> </p> <h2>New developer guides and sample apps</h2><p>With App Platform, we offer the flexibility and support for most common programming languages and frameworks. This means you can develop your app in your language and framework of choice and quickly get it to market using App Platform. We also provide tutorials, best practices guidance and sample apps to help you get started. We’re excited to introduce two new developer guides and sample apps for <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/languages-frameworks/go/">Go</a> and <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/languages-frameworks/nodejs/">NodeJS</a> applications. These guides provide step by step guidance for deploying your Go and NodeJS application using App Platform.</p><h2>Availability in more regions </h2><p>We’ve been working on expanding the availability of App Platform so that customers in all regions can take advantage of the service and build, manage and scale apps quickly. We’re excited to announce that App Platform is now available in our London and Toronto datacenters. With this release, the service is now available in all the regions. </p><p>We hope that you are excited about this release and will give <a href="https://cloud.digitalocean.com/apps?i=97a18e">App Platform</a> a try. Check out the <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/app-platform/">docs</a> for more information. </p><p>If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean App Platform and Managed Databases in your business, please <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/">contact our sales team</a>.</p><p>Happy coding!</p><p>Moises Eskinazi</p><p>Senior Product Manager</p><p></p>
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<title>
Programmatically gain insight into your apps using the new Monitoring API
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<description>
Delivering superior customer experiences is a key priority for most startups and small businesses. One way to do that is to regularly monitor the performance of the infrastructure on which your apps run. This allows you to detect problems early, avoid outages, and prevent customer dissatisfaction.
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/monitoring-api-programmatic-insights
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">monitoring-api-programmatic-insights</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>brett-snyder</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Delivering superior customer experiences is a key priority for most startups and small businesses. One way to do that is to regularly monitor the performance of the infrastructure on which your apps run. This allows you to detect problems early, avoid outages, and prevent customer dissatisfaction.</p><p>DigitalOcean provides a monitoring service that enables you to track infrastructure metrics like memory usage, disk usage, load average – all at no additional cost to DigitalOcean users. You can set alerts to be notified via email or Slack, should metrics surpass any thresholds that you define. DigitalOcean monitoring was previously only available via the cloud control panel, and we’re excited that now you can access monitoring metrics and insights data through our API. This enables DigitalOcean API users to more easily view and monitor their metrics, ensuring they know when issues arise and can improve their performance over time.</p><h2>Why should you be using the Monitoring API?</h2><p>This extension of the DigitalOcean API will allow you to programmatically manage your alert policies and retrieve Droplet insight metrics from your own applications and scripts. This enables DigitalOcean users to create automated alerting solutions, custom metrics dashboards, or pass performance data on to end users. These new additions can also be leveraged to reduce the time spent manually managing alert policies via the DigitalOcean cloud console.</p><h2>Manage alert policies or retrieve insights data programmatically</h2><p>There are two main facets of the new API offering: </p><ul><li><strong>Alerting policies: </strong><a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/monitoring/how-to/set-up-alerts/"><strong></strong>Alert policies</a> are user-created rules that define thresholds for resource consumption. When a usage exceeds the threshold, notifications are dispatched through email or Slack. You now have the ability to manage alert policies for CPU usage, bandwidth, memory utilization, and more with the API. For more information, see the API reference docs for <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api/api-reference/#operation/list_alert_policies">AlertPolicy</a>.</li><li><strong>Monitored resources: </strong>A monitored resource is something about which metrics are collected. For example, you should be able to retrieve activity of a Droplet instance (CPU, memory, disk, bandwidth, and load average data). For a list of the available monitored resources, see the <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api/api-reference/#operation/get_droplet_bandwidth_metrics">monitored resource list</a>.</li></ul> <p class=" block-img"> <img src="https://images.prismic.io/www-static/3e55e415-2d86-429d-8de5-0a0688306284_monitoring+api+example.png?auto=compress,format" alt="" copyright=""> </p> <p>We hope that you are excited about this release and will give the <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api/api-reference/#operation/list_alert_policies">monitoring AP</a>I a try. Additionally, the <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/godo">godo</a> library, as well as <a href="https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl">doctl</a>, have also been updated with the functionality to manage alert policies. The API will continue to evolve, and more products will be supported for insights metric data.</p><p>Happy coding!</p><p>Brett Snyder</p><p>Senior Software Engineer</p>
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<title>
Grow even faster with the new control plane for DigitalOcean Kubernetes
</title>
<description>
Back in 2018, we launched DigitalOcean Kubernetes, a managed Kubernetes offering that makes it easy to provision and deploy production-grade Kubernetes clusters. Over the years we have made numerous enhancements to the product and added features such as autoscaling for clusters, tokenized authentication, Container Registry, automatic upgrades and patches, and an extensive collection of popular 1-Click Apps like Prometheus, Linkerd, Grafana, and Loki.
</description>
<link>
https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/new-control-plane-digitalocean-managed-kubernetes
</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">new-control-plane-digitalocean-managed-kubernetes</guid>
<category>product-updates</category>
<dc:creator>bikram-gupta</dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<content:encoded>
<p>Back in 2018, we launched<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/doks-in-ga/"> DigitalOcean Kubernetes</a>, a managed Kubernetes offering that makes it easy to provision and deploy production-grade Kubernetes clusters. Over the years we have made numerous enhancements to the product and added features such as <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/autoscale/">autoscaling for clusters</a>, tokenized authentication, <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/container-registry/">Container Registry</a>, automatic <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/upgrade-cluster/">upgrades</a> and patches, and an extensive collection of popular <a href="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/category/kubernetes">1-Click Apps</a> like Prometheus, Linkerd, Grafana, and Loki.</p><p>Today, businesses and developers use DigitalOcean Kubernetes to deploy web applications, microservices, CI/CD pipelines, IoT applications, blockchain-based services, and much more. DigitalOcean Kubernetes does the heavy lifting of managing the infrastructure for you, so that you can focus on growing your business and bring your apps to market faster, and we’re excited to share some key updates to the product below.</p><h2>Our approach to Kubernetes design and functionality</h2><p>We understand that running workloads reliably and with increased resiliency is the number one goal when you move from running prototypes to running production-grade clusters. The Kubernetes control plane is critical to achieving this goal, as it is the mastermind behind a successful Kubernetes configuration by running multiple replicas of its components (Controller Manager, Scheduler, and API server).</p><p>We’re thrilled to share that we’ve redesigned the control plane of DigitalOcean Kubernetes to make it easier for you to run workloads reliably, and to provide high availability. From today the new control plane with high availability is available for all users of DigitalOcean Kubernetes!</p><p>Here are the key benefits of the new control plane:</p><ul><li><strong>Provides high availability</strong>: The new control plane eliminates the single point of failure in the cluster by maintaining the redundancy between the master nodes.</li><li><strong>Faster control plane creation</strong>: It takes close to ~30 seconds for the new control plane to spin up.</li><li><strong>Repairs itself in no time</strong>: If one component of the control plane fails in any way, it can recover without any significant downtime. </li><li><strong>More secure: </strong>The new control plane is backed by isolation and runtime primitives of containerization technology itself. </li></ul><p>Check out this short walkthrough video that shows the new control plane in action. </p> <div data-oembed="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn4zdnSiUs" data-oembed-type="video" data-oembed-provider="YouTube" > <iframe width="200" height="113" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HAn4zdnSiUs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <p>The control plane for DigitalOcean Kubernetes is free. You can add the high availability feature to the control plane for only $40/month. Additionally, for clusters above a certain size, we waive the $40/month charge and you get a control plane with high availability for free. <a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/kubernetes/how-to/create-ha-clusters">Please read the docs for more details</a>.</p><p>We’re consciously focused on the biggest challenges startups face: cost, scalability, availability, and security. DigitalOcean Kubernetes manifests exactly that goal with production-ready clusters coupled with fault tolerance and high availability.</p><h2>How DigitalOcean Kubernetes is helping businesses grow </h2><p>DigitalOcean customers such as Hack The Box and Atom Learning are leveraging DigitalOcean Kubernetes to scale their businesses effectively while keeping their teams lean. </p><p><em>“The fact that it’s so easy to configure, administrate and scale with DigitalOcean is something which I love. I’ve worked with Kubernetes before, hands-on, self-hosted, but the DigitalOcean integration and provision of Kubernetes has been the most seamless that I’ve experienced so far. “ - James Hooker, CTO, Hack The Box</em></p><p><a href="https://www.hackthebox.eu/">Hack The Box</a> offers advanced training for IT security professionals and hackers through a series of learning challenges in a gamified environment. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwMiDUARJJ4">Watch this video</a> to learn how Hack the Box scaled their user base to almost 750,000 users in the past year, while saving time and money with DigitalOcean. </p><p><em>“The reason we got hooked with DigitalOcean Kubernetes is the ease of setup and upskilling. We’ve scaled to thousands and thousands of users and the environment really hasn’t shown any issues and it has enabled us to scale as quickly as our business has grown. There’s no vendor lock-in so a multi-cloud approach is easy to implement.“ -- Tim Osborne, CTO, Atom Learning</em></p><p><a href="https://atomlearning.co.uk/">Atom Learning</a> is a rapidly growing, UK-based educational technology startup. <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/customers/atom-learning/">Learn how</a> CTO Tim and his team leveraged DigitalOcean Kubernetes to help them scale quickly and reliably as their customer base grows. </p><p>----</p><h2>Looking ahead</h2><p>Today’s announcement is a continuation of our journey. We’re committed to making DigitalOcean Kubernetes the ideal Kubernetes platform for developers, entrepreneurs, and startups. As always, you can get started with DigitalOcean Kubernetes <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/best-managed-kubernetes/">without breaking the bank</a>, since your master node is free. If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to <a href="https://cloud.digitalocean.com/kubernetes/clusters/new">spin up a DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster</a> today!</p><p>Additionally, if you’re attending KubeCon North America from October 11 to 15, meet the team at our <a href="https://kubecon-cloudnativecon-na.com/login/?msg=501">virtual booth</a>. If you’re not attending KubeCon, we&#39;ve got plenty of free and <a href="https://try.digitalocean.com/kubecon-2021/">open-to-everyone events </a>such as live Tech Talks &amp; Cloud Chats, plus the opportunity to connect with our solutions engineers and more. If you’d like to have a conversation about using DigitalOcean and Managed Kubernetes in your business, please feel free to contact our <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/company/contact/sales/">sales team</a>. </p><p>Happy coding!</p><p>DigitalOcean Kubernetes Team</p>
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