DigitalOcean
Website: www.digitalocean.com
DigitalOcean is a cloud infrastructure provider that focuses on simplicity and scalability for developers and small to medium-sized businesses. It was founded in 2011 and has since grown to be a popular choice for developers due to its user-friendly interface and affordable pricing.
key Features
Here are some key features of DigitalOcean:
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Droplets: DigitalOcean’s virtual private servers (VPS) are called "Droplets." These are flexible, scalable compute instances that can be easily spun up with a variety of operating systems, including popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu, CentOS, and Debian, as well as application stacks like LAMP or MEAN.
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Managed Databases: DigitalOcean offers fully managed databases for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis. This allows developers to focus on application development without worrying about database maintenance.
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Block Storage and Spaces: DigitalOcean provides scalable block storage solutions and "Spaces," which is a managed object storage service similar to Amazon S3. These are useful for storing large amounts of data, such as media files, backups, or logs.
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Kubernetes: DigitalOcean provides a managed Kubernetes service that makes it easier to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications without the complexity of managing Kubernetes infrastructure yourself.
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App Platform: This is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that allows you to build, deploy, and scale applications with minimal configuration. It supports multiple languages and frameworks, and integrates with popular code repositories like GitHub.
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Load Balancers and Networking: DigitalOcean offers cloud load balancers, private networking, floating IPs, and firewall rules to help developers scale their applications and ensure availability and security.
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Developer-Friendly Tools: DigitalOcean has a well-documented API and CLI tools that integrate well with other services. It also provides a simple and intuitive web interface, making it easy for developers to manage resources.
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Pricing: One of DigitalOcean’s major selling points is its straightforward and transparent pricing model, which is more affordable compared to other cloud providers like AWS or Azure, especially for smaller projects. Pricing starts as low as $5/month for basic Droplets.
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Community and Tutorials: DigitalOcean has a vibrant community and a large library of tutorials and guides on everything from setting up web servers to deploying specific applications.
Student
DigitalOcean offers promotions and discounts for students! They have a program called DigitalOcean for Students, which provides free credits to help you get started with their cloud platform.
DigitalOcean for Students Program $100 in credits: If you sign up through the program, you can receive $100 worth of credits to use over a period of 12 months. This can be used for any of DigitalOcean's services, like Droplets, managed databases, Kubernetes, and storage.
How to apply:
You need to verify your student status via GitHub Student Developer Pack, which gives you access to the DigitalOcean credits as part of the bundle of offers for students. Alternatively, you can directly sign up on the DigitalOcean for Students page and verify your student status via other methods, like a university email address. Other Benefits: Access to Developer Tools: The credits can be used for a variety of services, and DigitalOcean has lots of documentation and resources to help students learn and grow.
Tutorials: There are plenty of free tutorials available to help students get up to speed on deploying and managing applications, working with cloud infrastructure, and more.
This is a great way for students to get hands-on experience with cloud computing and other DevOps tools without having to worry about the costs, especially if you're working on personal projects or learning cloud technologies.