Question

Using DigitalOcean for big web sites

Posted June 13, 2013 11.6k views
Hello, I've read at several places that DigitalOcean is intended for developers. Are there any limitations that could prevent it from being used for large companies' web sites/web stores ? Is Digital Ocean less reliable than other hosting companies ? Are there more risks to loose *everything* with Digital Ocean ? I've read that DO can easily suspend droplets in some case (DDoS attacks) without any notice... Thanks
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11 answers
studio June 13, 2013
Newsblur is using DO and it's a pretty busy website.
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m73mitchell June 14, 2013
Railscasts also uses DO and it gets quite a bit of traffic
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ranjithkr146 June 16, 2013
"...DO can easily suspend droplets in some case (DDoS attacks) without any notice.." -> This part in the query is scary. DO: can you respond to this? I am also thinking of hosting a production site with you.
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kamaln7 June 17, 2013
If your droplet experiences a DDoS that might affect the hypervisor it is on (and ultimately other clients), the droplet will be shutdown and you will be notified.

We recommend using Cloudflare or DDoS protection services if your site it prone to frequent DDoS attacks.
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s.stern June 18, 2013
Let's assume for a moment that a "big site" may include a WordPress Multisite that is growing every month and would soon need more disk space requiring a 'snapshot' be taken and restored to a new droplet. Since DO provides a lot of upgrade options with regards server resources especially disk space I would suspect that running a "big site" like this would not be a problem. Please correct me if i'm wrong.
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kamaln7 June 18, 2013
@Spencer: we host a lot of high-traffic websites - this shouldn't be a problem at all! :]
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ranjithkr146 June 19, 2013
@Kamal: thanks for the info related to DoS. Can you provide some references to DDoS protection serviceman especially low cost for new startups? Also, are there any write ups on DO related to settings for protection against it. In Debian?
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kamaln7 June 19, 2013
@ranjithkr146 Unfortunately we do not offer DDoS protection so you'll have to use another service for that such as Cloudflare.
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rizko June 21, 2013
You can use DDoS protection from BuyVM, it's very cheap DDoS protection...
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me215450 October 3, 2013
Cloudflare is generally sufficient, but for sites prone to attacks it won't be enough. You can scan IP ranges and try and find the direct IP's to the site. It's even easier if you advertise you use digitalocean. Quick use of a BGP tool and you're done for. (http://bgp.he.net/search?search%5Bsearch%5D=Digital+Ocean+Inc&commit=Search)
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Johnajbentley December 26, 2015

you need a hardware firewall at the end of the day. No exceptions to that rule…

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