DigitalOcean opens a Singapore Datacenter

https://digitalocean.com/blog_posts/we-re-excited-to-announce-our-singapore-datacenter-sgp1

by beigeotter • 12 years ago

108 70 12 years ago

d02• 12 years ago

They need to keep on top of existing demand as well and start running over-capacity. Not joking but it's pretty long wait to get an instance up in a preferred DC sometimes which is putting a lot of us off the platform.

AJ007• 12 years ago

I am going to keep machines at Digital Ocean, but they have had the most failures/downtime I have seen from any host that I've used in nearly a decade, including ec2, rackspace, and gogrid (if there is anyone left using gogrid.)

One problem we've run in to is an instance fails, but it can't be brought back up because the backup image is only located in the datacenter that is already at capacity.

d02• 12 years ago

A million upvotes if I could.

I didn't actually consider that last point. That has effectively killed DO for me instantly from a risk point of view and I'm going to immediately migrate my two machines off it. Literally it's 22:50 here tonight and I don't think I'll sleep until it's done.

Have some company credit left over with Azure so will throw it on there on Ubuntu for now.

yapcguy3• 12 years ago

Ok, this is nonsense!

DigitalOcean did not "open" a data center in Singapore. All they have done is rented some racks / colo space from Equinix in an existing facility.

http://www.equinix.com/locations/singapore-colocation/singap...

They're just another customer - to spin and imply they have built or opened a brand new data center is ridiculous.

"Our decision to open a new datacenter" is really "We've located servers in Singapore". What's wrong with telling the truth?

Just more evidence that DigitalOcean is all PR and hot air after their pot-shots at Linode and brushing off security issues as "features".

shimon_e• 12 years ago

You gotta love how some people can spin investments in the thousands of dollars as if it was millions.

deeths2• 12 years ago

They haven't said anything untrue. They're open about the fact they're working with a colo provider and using a common definition for "datacenter" appropriately.

While "datacenter" can refer to the physical building, it's also commonly used to refer to a set of server/storage/network resources physically cordoned off for your use in a colo.

Using this definition isn't just common with hundreds of other hosters, its well standardized in IT circles, and used as the official definition of the word "datacenter" by numerous industry groups, regulators, analysts, and the US Federal government.

For instance: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/data-cente... http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/ego...

The whitehouse.gov pdf above says: "under the FDCCI, a data center is now defined as a closet, room, floor, or building for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information. Such a repository houses computer systems and associated components...<snip>... housed in leased (including by cloud providers), owned, collocated, or stand-alone facilities."

yapcguy3• 12 years ago

I'll respectfully disagree. They are implying creation and ownership of an entire facility. They want to market themselves as being bigger and stronger than they actually are.

I guess hustling and bending the truth is rule 101 in marketing for start-ups these days, but it doesn't have to be like that.

When Blue Bottle open a new coffee shop, that's what they call it, an opening. If other coffee shops stock their coffee, Blue Bottle don't claim to have opened a new location, they simply say their coffee is available or served there.

phamilton• 12 years ago

In case you aren't familiar with equinix, they house almost everyone's "data center". Most of AWS is in equinix along with most financial institutions. Very few groups actually physically build a DC these days.

indrax• 12 years ago

"Our decision to open a new datacenter" is really "We've located servers in Singapore".

Did they locate the servers in singapore? No, your 'truth' is also non-literal.

What matters to customers is that there's now a Singapore option in the datacenter drop down box.

yapcguy3• 12 years ago

One would hope they've located some servers there.

Otherwise they're just reselling servers, which makes their claim to "open a new datacenter" even more of a farce!

joshfraser2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure who started this trend, but they're certainly not the first to do it. They're just copying Cloudflare and others who use misleading terminology to appear bigger.

erichocean• 12 years ago

FWIW CloudFlare uses the same terminology. It doesn't seem to be particularly egregious.

latch2• 12 years ago

Something seems off with the routing. I'm on one of the big 3 internet providers in Singapore, and I'm getting a 300-400ms latency to their ping server (speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com) and to a droplet which I just started.

    DO <-> SL ~2ms
    DO <-> AWS ~2ms
    Me <-> SL ~15ms
    Me <-> AWS ~15ms
    Me <-> DO   350ms

Thaxll• 12 years ago

Check your routing, I'm on the east coast with Level3 and I get 250ms:

PING speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com (128.199.255.139) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 128.199.255.139: icmp_req=1 ttl=51 time=256 ms

64 bytes from 128.199.255.139: icmp_req=2 ttl=51 time=256 ms

64 bytes from 128.199.255.139: icmp_req=3 ttl=51 time=256 ms

64 bytes from 128.199.255.139: icmp_req=4 ttl=51 time=256 ms

64 bytes from 128.199.255.139: icmp_req=5 ttl=51 time=256 ms

--- speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com ping statistics ---

5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4005ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 256.248/256.456/256.851/0.211 ms

nwh2• 12 years ago

Not the best from Australia yet either.

    --- speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com ping statistics ---
    49 packets transmitted, 45 packets received, 8.2% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 262.448/360.721/530.517/66.088 ms

latch2• 12 years ago

Despite what DO said in their announcement, my experience says that Australian users are better served by servers in California than Singapore.

qsun• 12 years ago

tpg user from sydney, routed through SanJose, 4xx ms

  --- speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com ping statistics ---
  10 packets transmitted, 10 received, 0% packet loss, time 8998ms
  rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 397.643/403.366/419.058/5.814 ms

samcrawford• 12 years ago

My tests from dedicated servers hosted with the big three in Singapore showed this:

    StarHub > DO ~70ms (via Tokyo, with NTT)
    SingTel > DO ~70ms (via Tokyo, also with NTT)
    M1 > DO ~210ms (via Los Angeles)

I don't have a droplet with DO to perform the reverse path.

So this looks quite unoptimised for actual Singaporean users right now.

surfsurge• 12 years ago

I'm glad you pointed out the importance of checking the reverse path. Traceroute can often be misinterpreted. I'd recommend the NANOG presentation "A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute".

https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog45/presentations/Sunday/...

heytt• 12 years ago

Not best from Thailand either.

This is some traceroute result from True IDC

13 ae-6.r21.tkokhk01.hk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.26) 61.168 ms 59.223 ms 59.476 ms

14 p64-2-1-2.r22.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.36) 108.462 ms p64-2-1-3.r23.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.56) 112.855 ms p64-2-1-2.r22.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.36) 122.359 ms

15 as-6.r21.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.157) 132.448 ms as-5.r21.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.151) 132.776 ms as-6.r21.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.157) 142.057 ms

16 ae-6.r00.sngpsi02.sg.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.6.105) 138.498 ms 139.374 ms 139.766 ms

17 116.51.27.150 (116.51.27.150) 147.845 ms 146.281 ms 147.800 ms

18 103.253.144.242 (103.253.144.242) 136.963 ms 131.681 ms 137.451 ms

kanwisher• 12 years ago

Another HNer in Thailand , I'm in Bangkok where are you ?

Cyclenerd• 12 years ago

From Germany over France, Netherlands and the US:

--- speedtest-sgp1.digitalocean.com ping statistics --- 50 packets transmitted, 50 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 277.878/291.729/306.448/5.964 ms

Veratyr2• 12 years ago

Checking their BGP, they're only peering with NTT and Teliasonera: http://bgp.he.net/AS133165

Honestly, I don't understand this stuff but possibly this is why things are so bad...?

joshfraser2• 12 years ago

Peering matters a lot. Routing is often more of a financial decision than a technical one.

jianxioy• 12 years ago

This is actually expected behavior. I'm Singaporean and we are well-known for this. Each request, even from Singapore to a Singapore-based site takes multiple hops

zapt02• 12 years ago

Peering from Sweden via Telia is excellent, considering the distance.

    Ping statistics for 128.199.255.139:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
    Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 213ms, Maximum = 215ms, Average = 214ms

Veratyr2• 12 years ago

A response from support:

"Australia is hit or miss depending on what provider or area your in. We had some delays in our peering installs and you should see some improvement within the next couple weeks. I will keep you update every few days on the progress since your in one of those areas we cannot immediately optimize the routing too."

So sounds like those delays are the issue.

raiyu2• 12 years ago

We are seeing some issues with the network transit providers that we selected in Singapore where some of the traffic is being routed optimally. Bryan has been working hard on determining the best mix of network transit providers and peering to setup to get this resolved as quickly possible, unfortunately when it comes to provisioning network cross connects with service orders and contracts its not a 24-48 hour turn around, but we are actively working on this very diligently.

gabemart• 12 years ago

It used to be that it was possible to take a snapshot of a DO droplet without shutting down the droplet, provided the droplet had 1GB of ram or higher.

Does anyone know if this is still the case?

InAnEmergency• 12 years ago

I don't know if that was ever the case, but at this point you do have to power off the droplet to make a snapshot: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/digitalocean...

Rapidwire2• 12 years ago

You can take a "backup" without powering down, but not a "snapshot".

IgorPartola4• 12 years ago

And still no IPv6 support :(. When will they make it a priority?

kordless6• 12 years ago

First thing I said when I came in - glad to see others say the same!

I just figured out I can run IPV6 hosts at home on Comcast and ping them from an IPV6 ping gateway page. I'm still scratching my head on how that works and whether or not my router allows all IPV6 packets inbound to all hosts. Tried to test on AWS, but that's not working. Went to my DO account, and still no support.

Rackspace supports IPV6, but I think something wonky happened to my account when I was testing the developer credits for them. I need to get it fixed.

Anyone have IPV6 at home and want to help me test it?

welterde• 12 years ago

Sure.. got a bunch of VMs&machines I can test from.

But first order you could just traceroute with Sixxs[0]. That way you will at least know if the icmp6 packets reach their target unharmed. Your router might still be blocking all incoming connections per default (which is probably a good idea for home networks).

[0]https://www.sixxs.net/tools/traceroute/

stevekemp• 12 years ago

Sure; drop me a mail and I can test from the UK if that's useful.

(Miredo tunnel here at home, or native IPv6 connectivity on my vps provider - Bytemark, in Manchester, UK.)

Though I'm just about to sleep so it'll be ten hours or so ;)

IgorPartola4• 12 years ago

Depending on what your router is running (hopefully OpenWRT), ping6/ICMPv6 should be allowed to any host by default. Check out your firewall rules and see what it says there. ICMPv6 is an important part of IPv6, and in general not being able to ping something isn't really a security gain, so much as a usability loss.

On my OpenWRT setup, the default is to rate limit ICMPv6 to 1000 requests/second and to limit the response types.

kordless6• 12 years ago

Called Rackspace support. Turns out I owed them $7 due to a bad card number. Signed back up with the developer's discount! I really appreciate the fact Rackspace has added support for IPV6.

I wasn't aware of this, and perhaps it's a 'feature', but all my boxes in my house are wide open to the Internet over it. Investigating...

aguki• 12 years ago

Why are those complaining about routing issues posting ping outputs instead of traceroutes?

jlgaddis• 12 years ago

It doesn't matter. Even if they posted traceroutes, they'd only be from one direction which is near useless anyways.

m4r71n• 12 years ago

How does DigitalOcean compare to RamNode? I've been using a small VPS at RamNode and it's been great. It offers pretty much the same features (SSD, 1 CPU, 1 Gbps connection) as DigitalOcean (plus RamNode offers 16 IPv6 addresses), yet it's half the price. The only downside to RamNode is the 500 GB of bandwidth compared to 1 TB at DigitalOcean. Maybe I'm missing something, but why would one use DigitalOcean over RamNode for VPS hosting?

cmircea4• 12 years ago

500GB bandwidth you say? That is the plan with only 128MB of memory; you can't run many things with so little memory. The 512MB plan at RamNode is $7.5, 50% more.

exhilaration• 12 years ago

Is that factoring in the coupons they keep putting out there? I paid $100.44 for a year after their 38% coupon (38RLY) and signed up for 1024 MB RAM plan, 150 GB disk, 2 IPv4 addresses, 3000 GB bandwidth. It's great.

kordless6• 12 years ago

I wish they would add IPV6 support.

j45• 12 years ago

I hope a Canadian Datacenter (preferably westcoast) is in the cards soon!

Rapidwire2• 12 years ago

Make a uservoice post about it if there isn't one.

mkhattab2• 12 years ago

I'm worried about DigitalOcean. I think their priority should be to try to approach feature parity with Amazon or Rackspace. As of now, there are many features that are missing, such as private networking (only available in NYC2), CDN, elastic IP, load balancing, etc.

How about the ability to support attaching metadata to any instance?[0] How difficult is this to implement? More importantly, how would a devops person manage many instances without this feature? Isn't ex-EC2/Rackspace/<others> the target market for DigitalOcean?

--- [0]: http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean...

stephen_g2• 12 years ago

Not to mention IPv6. I like DigitalOcean but am starting to think of completely ditching them not just because they don't have it (delays are understandable), but because the last word from them (around August or September last year) was that they'd have a public beta in October, and then gone completely silent.

No public beta happened, and now they won't respond to any customer queries about it. I'm fine with there being delays, but very not fine about the silent treatment (or vague answers like 'it's in development' - actually give some detail of what's been going on because it's been 'in development' for something like three years now).

mkhattab2• 12 years ago

I guess the reason is because their focus is primarily on expansion. They're trying to put on their big boy pants too soon.

mattezell• 12 years ago

Happy to hear about the new opening, DO. Happy customer here - thanks for providing what has proven to be solid service and support for me (far better than my previous 'budget provider').

I am seeing a lot of complaints about DO that has nothing to do with this announcement... Traceroutes and ping times from the region - legit. Debate on the claim of 'opening a data center' (vs renting rack space) - legit (at least on topic). Complaining about lack of DO features - off topic and noise...

Let's be honest about what DigitalOcean is (and they may not like my categorization - I don't know, I'm just a customer) - they are a low price / budget hosting provider... I am not saying that people's complaints about lack of features or problems aren't legitimate complaints, but that they don't particularly belong here or add value to this discussion. DO has been on here a lot - whining about wants and complaints on every post is lame...

You want to voice your complaints? Write a post about why DO doesn't live up to your dream of all that a $5/mo VPS solution should live up to on your little blog and see if it makes it to the front page - then you can rightfully whine about lack of IPv6 all you want and know that you're not just thread dumping on a young small company's enthusiastic announcement about expanding their services. Or... Here's a thought for all of you super awesome critics who clearly know what's up way more than DO does - go make something superior and sell it for $4.50/mo!!!

jdc0589• 12 years ago

Perfect example from another comment: "I'm worried about DigitalOcean. I think their priority should be to try to approach feature parity with Amazon or Rackspace."

Maintaining/achieving solid quality and reliability with their current, or a slightly extended feature set, while maintaining their awesome price point is FAR more important than feature parity with the biggest VPS hosts in the world. We don't need another hosting provider that has every feature ever at a premium price. We need a provider with a smaller feature set that is more affordable.

neom• 12 years ago

That doesn't mean no new features, but we are certainly not rushing products out the door, market pressure or not. We know what we're doing. :)

hendry• 12 years ago

I started a SG droplet about 5 hours ago. It's still down. They're suffering some outage and it's a shame it isn't mentioned on their status page. #fail

https://twitter.com/kaihendry/status/433451127657357312

I'll stick with GPLhost for now http://webconverger.org/servers/

DigitalOcean opens a Singapore Datacenter

Related Stories