reserved ip? yes or not

Hey there,

Great question about IP address stability for your Droplets! Let’s break this down:

When you create a Droplet on DigitalOcean, it’s assigned a static public IP address. This IP is yours as long as the Droplet exists. The key thing to note here is that if you destroy the Droplet and then create a new one, you’ll get a different IP address. But as long as you keep the same Droplet, the IP will not change.

If you’re just rebooting your Droplet or even resizing it, the IP address generally remains the same. The change usually only happens if you destroy and then recreate a Droplet.

This is where reserved IPs come into play. A reserved IP, also known as a floating IP, is a static IP address that you can assign to a Droplet. The beauty of a reserved IP is that it can be reassigned to another Droplet in your account if needed. This makes it incredibly handy for failover setups or if you need to migrate services without changing IP addresses.

Given that you’ve already set up your Droplets and assigned their IPs in various domains and DNS settings, it might be a good idea to consider reserving these IPs. This way, you can ensure that the IP addresses remain constant, even if you need to make changes to the underlying Droplets in the future.

If you decide to go with reserved IPs, check out the documentation here on how to reserve an IP and assign it to your existing Droplets. The process is quite straightforward but feel free to ask any questions in case that anything pops up!

On another note, always have a backup plan. In case you’re unable to reserve your current IPs for some reason, ensure you have a strategy for updating your DNS settings quickly to minimize downtime.

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby