DigitalOcean Kubernetes is a rock-solid managed K8s offering with straightforward pricing and feature set
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use DigitalOcean Kubernetes to manage all of our public-facing API and async job worker deployments for a SaaS application. We deploy Rails and Hasura containers to the platform using Pulumi's Kubernetes provider.
DO Kubernetes manages SSL termination through DO load balancers, and we use nginx-ingress to direct traffic inside the cluster. We use DO Kubernetes in conjunction with hosted DO Postgres on an internal network.
Pros
- Hosted dashboard
- Hosted container registry
- Horizontal auto-scaling
- LetsEncrypt SSL termination
Cons
- Option for internal VPC-only deployment
- Better integration with cloud firewall
- Better integration with DO App platform via VPC
Most Important Features
- Integration with cloud load balancers / SSL termination
- Integration with container registry
- Hosted and stable control plane
- Automatic upgrades
Return on Investment
- Excellent uptime
- Low cost for provided value
- Good integration with the rest of the DO platform to provide additional value
Alternatives Considered
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine and AWS Lambda
Other Software Used
PostgreSQL, Datadog, Snyk