DigitalOcean Container Registry is Now Generally Available

The way we build and operate software continues to evolve. The latest trend – often called cloud native computing – encompasses a set of technologies and approaches that facilitate the development and operation of applications made to run in the cloud. Developers and small businesses have particularly embraced containers and Kubernetes in this shift.

A best practice for cloud native DevOps is to set up a CI/CD pipeline with a build system pushing images to a container registry. Runtime environments, such as our own DigitalOcean Kubernetes, can then pull images from the registry. You can use any container registry you want in conjunction with DigitalOcean Kubernetes, but there’s a specific one we recommend for ease of use and low costs.

Today we’re pleased to share that DigitalOcean Container Registry is now Generally Available.

Simple, private, and secure

DigitalOcean Container Registry makes it easy to securely store and manage private container images, especially for use with DigitalOcean Kubernetes.

To get started, navigate to the Container Registry tab in the control panel.

After creating your registry, you can then docker push container images to it. Images within your registry are encrypted at rest and in transit, and are only available to other members of your DigitalOcean team.

To make it easier to deploy your images to DigitalOcean Kubernetes, we provide a workflow for connecting your registry to clusters within your account. Simply visit the ‘Settings’ tab for your registry in the control panel, and select the clusters you want to use with the registry. DigitalOcean will then store an authentication token as an imagePullSecret in all namespaces for the chosen Kubernetes clusters.

You can transfer container images to your DigitalOcean Kubernetes clusters for free. To help improve performance, DigitalOcean Container Registry caches image metadata around the world.

Compatible with Open Container Initiative (OCI) artifacts

Container Registry isn’t just for containers. You can use Container Registry to store any artifact that is compatible with the OCI specification. For example, you can keep your Helm charts in Container Registry (note that Helm’s OCI support is still experimental).

Low, predictable pricing

In part because DigitalOcean Container Registry is built atop our Spaces object storage service, we’re able to offer it at low, predictable prices. You may very well find that our Free plan with one repository and 500 MiB of storage is good enough for personal projects. Should you need more repositories and storage, our Basic and Professional plans provide options suitable for larger projects. Unlike other container registries, you can use DigitalOcean Container Registry with as many collaborators you’d like, at no additional cost.

“Urlbox runs our screenshot API on DigitalOcean Kubernetes, and we use DigitalOcean Container Registry to store images for the different services that make up our application. Keeping images in DigitalOcean Container Registry has been a massive cost savings, as compared to storing and transferring images from Google Cloud.” - Chris Roebuck, Founder and CEO

Run your cloud native apps on DigitalOcean today

Here at DigitalOcean, we’re committed to helping you and your small business embrace the latest technologies associated with cloud native computing. Today DigitalOcean is hosting Deploy, a virtual developer conference, and I encourage you to join my session regarding how to run cloud native apps on DigitalOcean.

In the meantime, we’d love for you to give our Container Registry a try. Here’s documentation to help you get started.

If you’re a small business or startup and would like to speak with us regarding how you can run your cloud native apps on DigitalOcean, please contact us here.

Happy coding,
Adam Wolfe Gordon, Senior Software Engineer