Droplets, Volumes & Networking

Droplets — Virtual Machines

doctl compute droplet create my-app \
  --region nyc3 \
  --image ubuntu-22-04-x64 \
  --size s-2vcpu-4gb

doctl compute droplet-action snapshot <droplet-id> --snapshot-name backup-2026-09
# resizing a Droplet's CPU/RAM allocation may require a reboot —
# plan production resizes for a maintenance window, not as zero-downtime

A Droplet is DigitalOcean's term for a VM — roughly analogous to an AWS EC2 instance. A Snapshot is a point-in-time image of the whole disk, usable to restore or to spin up new, identically-configured Droplets.

Volumes (Block Storage)

Resizable persistent disk storage, attached independently of a Droplet's own root disk — can be detached and reattached to a different Droplet, decoupling storage lifecycle from compute lifecycle.

VPC & Cloud Firewalls

A VPC gives resources within a region an isolated private network — an app server can talk to its database without traffic touching the public internet. Cloud Firewalls define inbound/outbound rules centrally, applied to multiple Droplets, instead of configuring iptables per-server.

Load Balancers & Regions

A Load Balancer distributes traffic across multiple backend Droplets — improving both scalability and redundancy (unhealthy Droplets get routed around). Choose a Region physically close to your users to reduce latency.