A quick guide to getting a DigitalOcean account and launching your first Droplet (VM) with a simple Node.js APP.
Because AWS is so last week.
(No, seriously, have you ever tried asking AWS support a question? Unless you are paying them tens of thousands of dollars a month and have a "support agreement" your questions just go into their ticket system to be forgotten... DigitalOcean not only have a great platform, they have a great set of resources and a team of people on Twitter ready to answer any question.)
- A simpler way to deploy your apps/websites.
- Great performance
- Cheaper than AWS, Rackspace, etc. (transparent pricing)
- Great dashboard for visualising resource usage (RAM/Disk/Network)
- Simple API can be used to monitor your VMs and scale when required.
DigitalOcean is a virtual private server provider with a difference: they have dramatically simplified the process.
Visit: https://www.digitalocean.com and Create Account
Enter your billing info (credit card):
If you want to access your VM without having to remember (or copy-paste) a password, you will need to follow the instructions to add your SSH keys before creating your "Droplet" (VM).
Pick the cheapest VM and which ever region is closest to you. (to reduce code/file upload time and web latency)
Next, select your desired Operating System. (For simplicity we are choosing Ubuntu this time)
Finally, add your SSH key to the droplet and Click: Create Droplet!
Watch as DigitalOcean starts up your VM:
Once this is started you should now see an overview of your VM:
Locate the IP Address of your VM and copy it into your clip-board
Open your terminal application and login via SSH:
Now (while logged into the VM via SSH) run the following commands (in order) in your terminal:
apt-get update
apt-get install -y git nodejs node npm
npm install n -g
n stable
git clone https://github.com/nelsonic/ac.git
cd ac
npm install
nodejs example/server.jsNow visit: IP-Address-of-Your-VM:Port-number e.g: http://178.62.49.216:3000
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