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it_user697008 - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and CEO at a tech services company
Consultant
I need to upload a large amount of data and they do not charge me for traffic.

What is most valuable?

Because they are cheap and they do not charge me for traffic.

How has it helped my organization?

I need to upload a very large amount of data do Google Servers and Digital Ocean doesn´t charge me for traffic like Amazon does. This was the best option.

What needs improvement?

Compare it to Amazon AWS and you will see how much they can grow. Every company wants to grow as much as possible, or even more than AWS. So compare Digital Ocean with AWS and you will see how much they can grow. I don´t mind using AWS anymore and I think that what Digital Ocean offers me is enough.

For how long have I used the solution?

I believe we have been using it for a year.

Buyer's Guide
Ubuntu Linux
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about Ubuntu Linux. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

I didn´t have to ask for technical support. Their documentation solved my problems.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Google Compute Cloud, and we switched because Digital Ocean is cheaper.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. They require very little information in order to start your droplet.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you need a cheap server, this is the way you should go.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Google Cloud Compute and Amazon AWS.

What other advice do I have?

It works like the others, but it seems cheaper. If you´re looking for a robust implementation, then go with AWS.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com
Consultant
Top 20
Do a proof of concept (POC), scaling as large as you can as close to your intended production environment.

What is most valuable?

It's a free and open source software-defined storage (SDS) that runs on various platforms such as Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, IBM Z, among others.

It can be used for a bulk object including as an alternative to OpenStack Swift, Swiftstack, and others. Can also be configured for the block as well as the file.

How has it helped my organization?

Hmmmm…….Good question.

What needs improvement?

Ease of use, ease of management, ease of deployment, ease of troubleshooting, resiliency, automation, and performance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used various versions of Ceph off and on at different times, going back several years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes, on the other hand, deploy in a controlled environment, stay within the “box”, and it works well.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For my use, I did not scale it very large, as was concerned with doing so and with not having enough hardware to maintain performance.

In other words, depending on what you are looking to do, while being SDS, Ceph is also hardware dependent, as is all SDS.

However, it also needs CPU, memory and fast storage for OSDs as you scale activity.

How are customer service and technical support?

N/A, relied on various forums and Ceph site (looked at Red Hat site info, however, found ceph and other sites more useful).

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used and do use various others, including services such as AWS S3 /EBS /EFS /EC2 instance, as well as Azure Files/Blobs/etc, GCS.

Also on-prem software, including Microsoft S2D, VMware vSAN, OpenStack/Swift among others.

How was the initial setup?

Depends on your experience, and what you are trying to do, there are some useful scripts floating around, or you can get a turnkey kit solution from vendors such as Fujitsu, SUSE, Red Hat, and many others.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Look beyond the initial cost, for example, free if open source version, or price for a kit from Fujitsu, SUSE, RHEL among others.

Look at ongoing costs for maintenance. This is particularly important if you are going the free route as you will end up paying regarding allocating or using more of your staffs time to support, maintain, upgrade and enhance.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

VMware vSAN (still have), Microsoft Windows Storage Spaces Direct/S2D (still have), Dell EMC ECS/Atmos (still have), OpenStack Swift (still have), AWS S3 (still have), Azure (still have), Datacore (did a trial), and many others.

Some others to look at and consider include Dell EMC ScaleIO, Elastifile, Hedvig, HDS HCP, NetApp StorageGrid, Nexenta, Noobaa, Rozo, Starwind, Storpool, Virtuozzo, and WekaIO, among others.

What other advice do I have?

Do a proof of concept (POC), scaling as large as you can as close to your intended production environment.

If needed, use Google, AWS, Azure or some other cloud to do the POC in.

Look for several things in your POC including what are the hardware performance and resource (CPU, memory, I/O, SSD) dependencies, how easy to manage, tune, troubleshoot along with resiliency.

For example, fail nodes and see how system recovers as well as what you need to do to support the environment. Don’t be scared of Ceph, be prepared and informed, use it where it makes sense and is capable of meeting your needs. Make sure that you can get ceph to work for you, vs. you having to go to work for ceph.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Ubuntu Linux
June 2025
Learn what your peers think about Ubuntu Linux. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Team Leader Infrastructure Management Services at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
The package manager is easy to use & the OS supports a lot of hardware that enabled us to bring back to life old equipment and do more with less. It's ability to manage thousands of Servers seamlessly

What is most valuable?

The package manager is easy to use & the OS supports a lot of hardware that enabled us to bring back to life old equipment and do more with less. Its ability to manage thousands of servers seamlessly using Landscape reduces the TCO by a huge margin.

How has it helped my organization?

We have developed an internal Document Management System around Ubuntu and MySQL, which came at no extra cost and our efficiency has improved dramatically. We now scan and save all our documents and correspondence.

What needs improvement?

As a product, I can't think of anything much because we are yet to fully utilize the product and it has met all our expectations. The technical training is the one that needs to be updated regularly and also engagement of more technical training partners.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

The Ubuntu paid support is probably second to none because we have never needed it. The community support is so engaging and world class such that we have never really needed any enterprise support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes. We had RHEL servers and we took all of them out because of the TCO and the package manager which was a nightmare. A standard Ubuntu server is three times or more faster than RHEL server in booting up.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was smooth and self explanatory with an option to go through a standard setup or an advanced one.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Ubuntu Enterprise solution is the best route to pursue for SME. We recommend the standard SLA for 10*5 phone.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

RHEL and SUSE Linux.

What other advice do I have?

If you are going to implement this platform then you must run a new installation rather than upgrade any other distro's. This is to avoid garbage in and garbage out.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Developer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Consultant
The initial setup experience was the best of all other distributions.

What is most valuable?

I like it that Ubuntu is actually free and was one of the first with a decent hardware recognition during installation. It is still free, where some other distributions are no longer free and with a large and active community. A large community means that if you run into issues you have a place to find a solution or to help others.

How has it helped my organization?

I have used it professionally on some occasions but mainly to maintain the home network. Long Time Support has helped me to prevent regular updates on stable servers.

What needs improvement?

The Linux for desktop marketing could be improved but that is not only for Canonical/Ubuntu an issue.

How could these areas be improved? All parties (commercial, idealogical and non-commercial (I.e. the rest)) together could be a force to rekon with. But I do not think that there is a way to let them join forces. So, it is down to smaller initiatives to make people aware of the alternatives to Windows. Also, the required buying of Windows on each PC does not help. I think this is not helpful for IT as a whole.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Linux for over 20 years now and Ubuntu for over 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is rocksolid!

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not run into scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

I used community support (and Google) for the issues I ran into and solved most within a short time.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used other distributions, such as Slackware, Mandrake, Redhat, Debian and, of all of those, I like the way Ubuntu is setup the best.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup experience was the best of all other distributions and it was a smooth ride :)

What other advice do I have?

Go for it if you need al Linux based server. Just start downloading it and using it. It is free.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Security Expert at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
I don't have to switch between multiple OS for my work.

What is most valuable?

Ubuntu MATE provides me with a complete OS experience, so I don't have to switch between multiple OS for my work; I can do my development, usual browsing and accessing tools on the same machine.

I mostly use the OS for development purposes by running IDE like PyCharm. I also use the OS to connect to other machines in our development environment.

How has it helped my organization?

We moved from Ubuntu 12 to Ubuntu 16 recently, owing to the various new fixes that were shipped with its new version.

Ubuntu is the standard deviation OS in our environment and we have built our own image that the developers can just download and begin using it.

What needs improvement?

Stability is a big issue in my opinion. I have found version 12 to be more stable. I have tried various desktop environments and MATE seemed most stable to me.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for the last four months. Before this, I was using Ubuntu 12.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have encountered stability issues. I find it less stable when I am using Ubuntu as a virtual machine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no major issues with its scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have never used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Ubuntu 12 and we switched to Ubuntu 16, so as to solve the performance issues and version upgrade for development purposes.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward. We found it easy to set up version 16 compared to version 12.

What other advice do I have?

MATE Desktop is most suited if you want to run Ubuntu 16 in a virtual environment.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Associate System Administrator at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Allows package management and customization.

What is most valuable?

  • Package management
  • Stability
  • Customization

How has it helped my organization?

Using LAMP services really improves all of the infrastructure.

What needs improvement?

Patch management.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for six years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

I have not used customer service.

Technical Support:

I have not used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used FreeBSD. We moved to Ubuntu, because FreeBSD package management is very difficult.

How was the initial setup?

I was involved in the setup and it was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it on our own.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is free.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other options.

What other advice do I have?

Great job, Ubuntu team. Keep it up.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
IT Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Review about Ubuntu Linux

What is most valuable?

1. stable

2. easy upgradable

3. secure

4. light

How has it helped my organization?

I always use it at home.

What needs improvement?

Backoffice tools should be improved: xls and doc files should be edited with light and faster tools.

For how long have I used the solution?

15 years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Not applicable.

Technical Support:

Not applicable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

First I used Fedora. I switched for stability reasons.

How was the initial setup?

No.

What about the implementation team?

By myself.

What was our ROI?

Not applicable.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Not applicable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Already answered.

What other advice do I have?

No apart my thanks to ubuntu community.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Consultant IT Infrastructure at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Since it provides LTS releases with 5 years of support, you can have longer server lifecycles without having to worry about security patches.

What is most valuable?

Although Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux, it ships with (more or less) current software. In addition, there a are a lot of community-based repositories which can easily be added.

Since Ubuntu provides LTS releases with 5 years of support, you can have longer server lifecycles without having to worry about security patches.

One of the greatest things about Ubuntu is the possibility of upgrading to the newer release on the fly - no reinstallation is needed.

Other great things/features include: Great AppArmor support, huge official package repository from Canonical and the community, decent hardware support.

How has it helped my organization?

Ubuntu powers many servers in most of the companies I worked for. Maintaining them was - in most cases - easy and painless.

What needs improvement?

The rpm-based distributions (such as Suse, Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora) ship with support for awesome system management software (Spacewalk, just to name one example). Ubuntu often provides *some* support for these tools, but it is very rarely supported a 100%. Canonical has Landscape and some other stuff; however, this is not sufficient. Canonical clearly should provide more system management tools which integrate into enterprise environments. Red Hat, CentOS and Suse clearly have more advantages here.


Furthermore, the Unity desktop and the advertisment integration of third parties are horrible.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Ubuntu since 2010.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Deployment was always straight-forward; however, upgrading to latest releases (e.g. from 12.04 to 14.04) could mean that you have to adapt your system management tools since some package names can change.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Not with Ubuntu itself, but some software being packaged by the community for Ubuntu is not built with optimum parameters. E.g. I had many struggles with the libvirt/KVM builds for Ubuntu.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before using Ubuntu, I was used to Debian and their concept of having rock-solid (but also very old) software in their repositories. Ubuntu, however, is not so extreme in this point: It is stable, but the provided software is not thaaaat old. In addition, Ubuntu/Canonical are eager to provide at least some management tools.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Ubuntu is very easy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I also like Red Hat, CentOS and Fedora; however, upgrading to latest releases without reinstalling the complete OS seems only to be painless with Ubuntu (please correct me if I am wrong, maybe it always went well for you?).

What other advice do I have?

Try Ubuntu. Seriously. If you are looking for a good Linux distribution with a large community and lots of packages, Ubuntu is the way to go. However, if you need management tools (e.g. for automated installation, patch management etc.) you might have to invest some time in getting open-source projects involved or by writing your own solutions (if you don't want to use Landscape).

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Ubuntu Linux Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: June 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Ubuntu Linux Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.