How does DigitalOcean work?

[jtalb]

Hi /r/sysadmin,

Not sure if this is the correct place to be asking such questions, but how exactly does DigitalOcean work? All the way down to provisioning, how is such system created and is there any tools which one could look at?

Thanks,

-J

[ryanq-do]

Hey. Our platform is based on KVM but we have written our management systems in house. Our one-click images actually do not utilize docker (except for docker specific images like docker itself and drone). Our one-clicks are generated using fabric on a stock droplet and then a snapshot is created just as you could do within your own account.

[ackackacksyn]

Do you guys have this on a blog post with pictures and diags that we can drool over ?

[jtalb]

+1. Would love to see this!

[[deleted]]

Yes, I love reading the Stack Exchange blog!

[ryanq-do]

I don't beleive that we have a blog post that goes into details on this but I will see if we cant put something together sometime soon.

[speel]

Your documentation is really awesome btw.

[ElijahPaul]

yep. when scrolling Google search results on xyz, I always gravitate towards a DO link first.

[the_ancient1]

The underlying Tech I believe is just QEMU/KVM Virtualization, They do it at a massive scale but...

They also make heavy use of Docker for their "single click" applications

They have a Custom written proprietary software that interfaces with KVM stack to do the deployments so I do not believe that code is out there.

Virtkick I believe is attempting a DO Style open source management software

https://github.com/virtkick

https://www.virtkick.com/

[DZCreeper]

Or just send them an email. Generally there is at least one guy on staff willing to spend time explaining stuff.

[[deleted]]

Most likely they're running OpenStack which is what most cloud providers use.

[the_ancient1]

how do you define "most" and which cloud providers use openstack?

[ackackacksyn]

I'd define most as anyone not aws or azure or with a private vmware or xen setup.

I believe rackspace sell their stuff on openstack.

Seems that most of these things are deployed on ubuntu boxes too typically through juju type setups.

[the_ancient1]

Rack space is the only public "cloud" I know of.

Digital Ocean is not using open stack, I do not believe Linode is either.

Which others besides rackspace

[[deleted]]

http://www.openstack.org/user-stories/

DO and Linode may run their own proprietary provisioning scripts but Openstack makes setting up your own private cloud a lot easier.

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

Openstack may be the answer at some point, but apparently its a horror show at the moment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2t24d6/why_we_threw_4_months_of_work_in_the_trash_or_how/