The New York-based cloud service provider DigitalOcean has unveiled an integrated monitoring service, one that provides operational health and resource utilization data into each Droplet (DigitalOcean’s term for an individual cloud server.)
The launch follows on the heels of the launch introduction of load balancers in February, this is one more step in delivering on DigitalOcean Chief Technology Officer Julia Austin‘s promise to expand DigitalOcean’s capabilities for making the cloud easier to use.
All of the standard monitoring functions are provided, said Mitch Wainer, DigitalOcean co-founder, in a phone interview. “It allows the developer to have more visibility into their infrastructure so they can make better decisions to optimize their applications.”
Developers can monitor inbound and outbound bandwidth, collect metrics and set specific thresholds by percent (e.g., if your CPU usage is above a seventy percentage, an alert is generated). Alerts can be delivered via email or Slack, depending on developer preference.
If all this sounds familiar, it is. There is nothing new about the functionality, conceded Wainer. It’s about allowing their customers to move away from external monitoring service likes DataDog or NewRelic. What’s different is that the service is integrated into each Droplet in an easy-to-view interface, with no configuration required.
And it’s free.
Getting Started
Adding monitoring while spinning up a new DigitalOcean cloud server is a breeze with no configuration required beyond going through a few checkboxes. Monitoring can be done through their control panel or through an API. Which is simple to use and set up, according to Wainer.
Already have Droplets and want to add monitoring? Or didn’t configure it when you set up your Droplet? No problem: An open source graphing agent will enable Monitoring on an existing Droplet.
Simply add one line of curl code. No seriously. One line. Here it is:
curl -sSL https://agent.digitalocean.com/install.sh | sh
NOTE: The full instructions are here.
Making It Easy
“It’s all about simplifying the toolset to manage, monitor, configure their environment,” said Wainer.
DigitalOcean is redefining the cloud space, he said, making it easier and simpler to set up. The company is all about developer loyalty. DigitalOcean was created with developers, not enterprise, in mind, he said.
DigitalOcean Monitoring
That’s a key differentiator, he explained. “As a developer, you want to love the tool you use. We want to deliver that experience to developers because that’s what will win for us for the long term.”
In the past, growth has mostly been from the bottom up, Wainer explained. Developers use Droplets at home, then take DigitalOcean to work when the company starts needed cloud solutions.
DigitalOcean now has over 50,000 teams using their product daily. The easy setup saves time, enabling businesses to move a lot faster, he said.
What’s Next?
The company continues its aggressive roadmap, thanks to Austin. “She’s helping us level up,” Wainer said. There are a lot of products in the pipeline, he said, and many are focused on being able to scale with ease and use distributed services on top of DigitalOcean. By the end of the year, the product will be much more robust with the ability to support larger production workloads.
Next up: expanded security features.
“We’re going to continue to build a platform [developers] love through simplifying the complexity of infrastructure,” said Wainer. “We’re continuously iterating and evolving our platform to support larger applications.”
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