I've played with DigitalOcean some. But I've kept my main VPS on Linode, and also recently recommended Linode for a group that I'm peripherally involved with.
Using SSDs for multi-tenant virtualized servers seems like a good idea to me. My intuition on this may be wrong, but it seems to me that the lack of variable seek time ought to lessen the variability in I/O performance that one hears so much about.
However, I have the following reservations about DigitalOcean:
1. No IPv6 yet AFAIK. I figured that would be a priority given the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, particularly in Amsterdam.
2. Not all resource allocations are proportional to the price or amount of RAM. On Linode, a 4 GB VPS is 4 times as much as a 1 GB VPS in every way. On DigitalOcean, a 2 GB VPS only has 2x as much CPU, 2x as much storage, and 3x as much bandwidth as a 512 MB VPS. Don't get me wrong; the prices are great. It just doesn't seem like a logical way to allocate resources from a pool.
> My intuition on this may be wrong, but it seems to me that the lack of variable seek time ought to lessen the variability in I/O performance that one hears so much about.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I'm limited in my experience, but I believe that's not entirely the case. Modern SAN controllers are optimized for very consistent latency on spinning platter disks, even under heavy load. The big benefit that I see in SSD-backed SANs is increased I/O bandwidth.
Using SSDs for multi-tenant virtualized servers seems like a good idea to me. My intuition on this may be wrong, but it seems to me that the lack of variable seek time ought to lessen the variability in I/O performance that one hears so much about.
However, I have the following reservations about DigitalOcean:
1. No IPv6 yet AFAIK. I figured that would be a priority given the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, particularly in Amsterdam.
2. Not all resource allocations are proportional to the price or amount of RAM. On Linode, a 4 GB VPS is 4 times as much as a 1 GB VPS in every way. On DigitalOcean, a 2 GB VPS only has 2x as much CPU, 2x as much storage, and 3x as much bandwidth as a 512 MB VPS. Don't get me wrong; the prices are great. It just doesn't seem like a logical way to allocate resources from a pool.