Yes, Digital Ocean is cloud. And you ask me why? Well, they have all essential characteristics as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST). Also, let me just quote from NIST’s definition of cloud computing:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
– NIST
Before we go on any further, here’s a GIF from a Bollywood movie.
On-demand self-service
Yes, Digital Ocean does allow you to provision your own cloud whenever you wish to. You can also terminate your cloud whenever you want to. There’s no need to contact Digital Ocean to do any of those and you can “self-service” through the control panel.
Broad network access
Yes, Digital Ocean has broad network access and can be accessed worldwide through mobile devices and laptops.
Resource pooling
Yes, Digital Ocean’s server resources are pooled.
Rapid elasticity
Yes, you can change the specifications of your cloud anytime you wish to but due to the nature of KVM, a reboot is required for disk size change. Digital Ocean also does not run out of resources, and therefore, are unlimited.
Measured Service
Sort of, so yes. Digital Ocean have some sort monitoring system on their side which is automated. Clients can also manually monitor their cloud resource usage through the panel which shows some nice graphs for ya.
Yes to all 5 essential qualities defined by NIST. So yep, it’s an Infrastructure as a Service cloud.
B-But… DO doesn’t have HA
So? The qualities and definitions of a cloud service does not include High Availability. A high availability cloud is a HA cloud, which is different from a normal cloud.
B-But… DO doesn’t have SAN
So? The qualities and definitions of a cloud service does not include the use of a SAN. It doesn’t make Digital Ocean lesser of a cloud.
Before you say this is some kind of bullshit shill blog post, no it isn’t. Why?
- Because I hate Digital Ocean yet I’m making these kind of statements. They’ve terminated my account and I still hold grudges against them for that.
- I’m not polluting my blog post or my blog with some shitty affiliate links of theirs.
- They didn’t pay me for stating facts.
- I’m not working for them.
- If you used common sense, you would have already realised what I have stated above are all true and therefore, complies the standards defined by NIST
Feel free to argue against my statement in the comments section below or if you have any other comments, do leave them in the comments section too. Thanks for reading.
Yes, DigitalOcean is cloud.