DigitalOcean Cloud VPS

Last night I was following the Intial Server Setup with Ubuntu 12.04 tutorial and messed up my first droplet when I attempted to give my user root privileges (it did not work) and because I did not permit root to login I was locked out. I guess I got the visudo add yourself as an admin directions wrong so I deleted my droplet and created another one. When I got to the give yourself root directions I googled and used this command instead: sudo adduser myusername sudo after I did that I typed exit in Terminal and went to sleep. Woke up wondering whether I should continue but I might delete that droplet and experiment with HHVM on Digital Ocean. I will either do this own my own or it will be a paid project.
 
I've used DigitalOcean fairly extensively. They're great for developers. However, there are a few downsides as I see it:

  • No IPv6 support right now. This is something I look for in a host.
  • Only one IP per droplet with no option to buy more just now.
I'd still look no further than Linode for a VPS where I want good value and quality hardware.
 
I've used DigitalOcean fairly extensively. They're great for developers. However, there are a few downsides as I see it:

  • No IPv6 support right now. This is something I look for in a host.
  • Only one IP per droplet with no option to buy more just now.
I'd still look no further than Linode for a VPS where I want good value and quality hardware.
I need 2GB Ram and their plan is $40 for that. Why should I care about IPv6?
 
That's completely understandable. Linode is slightly more expensive. You don't exactly need IPv6, but I always like to have it available, or at least have it as an option.

I still use DigitalOcean myself. They are great and they're expanding rapidly (they just opened a new DC today in fact - NY2) but Linode are still the market leaders in my opinion.
 
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It takes some time to get used to setting up for yourself. I'd recommend getting a $5 droplet just to play with it and get yourself accustomed to setting up a VPS. Then you can stick with current hosting while you get acquainted.
 
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It takes some time to get used to setting up for yourself. I'd recommend getting a $5 droplet just to play with it and get yourself accustomed to setting up a VPS. Then you can stick with current hosting while you get acquainted.
Yeah I created a ticket told em I'll try them out later.
 
I don't have time for this, getting a refund and looking for a managed VPS.
If you are wanting to set up a VPS, you need to MAKE time for it - or just stick with a fully managed one. Have fun if you ever decide to go to a dedicated server (managed ones are not cheap for a good one).
It's not that hard to learn - but I would suggest getting an older computer and start installing different flavors of Linux on it and playing with it locally.
 
How dare you give me good advice Tracy? I'm trying to experiment with as less effort possible. :ROFLMAO:
 
Blazing fast but maybe that's cause he hasn't done anything style-wise to it.
 
It's just using 1GB RAM / $10 USD a month.
It's even Apache, not tweak at all, just the Image (Ubuntu LAMP stack) when you create a droplet :)
 
So, I decided to give DigitalOcean a try. They are very cheap and I wanted to load balance XenForo for quite some time. I paid $5 bucks and started creating droplets. I choose Debian. After a quick apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-mysqlnd php5-gd mysql-server-5.5 I was up and running. Then, I followed one of the thousands guides you can find on the internet about load balancing with nginx.

My idea was simple: nginx at the front as the master and several droplets with php5-fpm as php slave servers. No web server. After a few hours of testing and setting up everything, the mini load balancer was ready. Afterwards, I started to tackle every major problem a cheap load balancer has:

1) sync: I used csync2 after reading very good comments on the forums. My only complaint is that I can't sync from my home computer. My IP is passing through a NAT and csync2 doesn't allow that.
2) Attachment: I have about 35GB on attachments. Since DigitalOcean doesn't let you buy additional space for your droplets, I would have to buy at least the 80GB droplet. I wasn't happy at all because my site doesn't need all that power at off peak hours, not to mention all the replication involved when using multiple servers and storing files in the filesystem. My solution is simple. Use this addon, store attachments on Amazon S3 and don't let guest to see attachments. Shouldn't be too expensive.
3) Avatars: This one is tricky but I think I came up with a good solution

Code:
location ~ \.php$ {
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
                fastcgi_pass backend;
                if ($args ~ avatar-upload) {
                        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                }
}

That's it. When the user tries to upload an avatar, through the admin control panel or their profile, Nginx doesn't use the backend servers and instead, it uses the local php5-fpm server. And since my site is rather small, I can serve all the avatars from the front server and no replication is needed.

4) I know this balancer is not redundant and if the database droplet or the front droplet fail, my entire site will go down. However, I think I can do pretty good with snapshots and backups. Although data loss might be possible for some time frame in case the database droplet crashes, I can be up and running again after some moderate time and my site is not mission critical.


My next idea is to find a way to automate scaling up and down. I'm planning to have the following setup:

- 1 front nginx/php5-fpm droplet - $10 (I need to test this with my live traffic but I'm going to start with a 1gb droplet)
- 1 mysql server (probably the 4gb droplet) - $40 (I don't know how this droplet will behave at peak times (800-1000 users according to XenForo)
- scale up with as many 512mb droplets as needed (they are CHEAP! $5). Scale down once the high load times are over
- buy backups only for the database server ($8).
- store attachments on Amazon S3 (~$4 to store 35gb in attachments... not very sure about bandwidth but I won't let visitors see attachments anymore. That should cut bandwith costs by a lot. Amazon S3 bandwidth is at $0.120 per GB right now)

I'm open for suggestions. Right now I'm paying $209 for a dedicated but I'm sure I can pay a lot less with this setup without sacrifying performance. And yeah, I'm going to have lots of fun!
 
I'm open for suggestions. Right now I'm paying $209 for a dedicated but I'm sure I can pay a lot less with this setup without sacrifying performance. And yeah, I'm going to have lots of fun!
If you need large storage then I suggest WiredTree. Their cheapest VPS is awesome with 100GB of HDD with SSD for caching. No need to spend extra on S3. You don't need pure SSD hosting anyway caching of files serves the purpose well
 
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If you need large storage then I suggest WiredTree. Their cheapest VPS is awesome with 100GB of HDD with SSD for caching. No need to spend extra on S3. You don't need pure SSD hosting anyway caching of files serves the purpose well

Thanks for the tip.

The SSD only hosting on DigitalOcean sucks. I hope they do something about it very soon.
 
I don't know if it still applies, but in the past, you needed to create a swap partition on DO droplets or you'd have performance problems.

There's an article on the site detailing how to do it.

The free semi-daily backup system is a great addition.

Linode is more flexible and configurable, but the price of DO is hard to pass up
 
This company and their vps are very interesting...
my only problem is that I don't have the time and the competences to learn how to use it.

Do you think that it could be a good idea to hire somebody (perhaps somebody here at xenforo) to setup the system for me and move all my data, so that I can benefit from a reliable and fast server containing the costs?
 
This company and their vps are very interesting...
my only problem is that I don't have the time and the competences to learn how to use it.

Do you think that it could be a good idea to hire somebody (perhaps somebody here at xenforo) to setup the system for me and move all my data, so that I can benefit from a reliable and fast server containing the costs?
@MattW
 
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