Droplet Features

DigitalOcean Droplets are Linux-based virtual machines (VMs) that run on top of virtualized hardware. Each Droplet you create is a new server you can use, either standalone or as part of a larger, cloud-based infrastructure.

Droplet Plans

The Droplet plan you choose determines the amount of resources (like CPU, RAM, disk storage, and network bandwidth) allocated to your Droplet. You can choose shared or dedicated CPUs.

We offer the following Droplet plans:

These Droplets can have Regular CPUs or Premium CPUs. You can choose between Intel and AMD for Premium CPUs. Droplets with Premium CPUs are guaranteed to use one of the latest two generations of CPUs we have, NVMe SSDs, and have higher network throughput speed.

Choosing the Right Droplet Plan

In-depth comparisons of available Droplet plans, including hardware and software, an explanation of shared CPU and dedicated CPU plans, and how to make a data-driven decision on which plan is best for your use case.

GPU Droplets

We offer GPU Droplets with NVIDIA H100 GPUs in a single or 8 GPU configuration:

GPU Droplets also have two different kinds of storage:

• Boot disk: A local, persistent disk on the Droplet to store data for software like the operating system and ML frameworks.

• Scratch disk: A local, non-persistent disk to store data for staging purposes, like inference and training. Non-GPU Droplets do not have a scratch disk.

We provide an AI/ML-ready image for GPU Droplets that has NVIDIA drivers and software preinstalled, or you can use existing Droplet images and manually install the drivers and software necessary to use the GPU.

How to Create and Configure GPU Droplets

Create and configure GPU Droplets, which are powered by NVIDIA’s H100 GPUs.

Linux Distributions

We support the following Linux distributions:

See the full list of distributions and Marketplace images:

Linux Images for Droplets

Reference tables for available Linux images for Droplets, including the image IDs and API/CLI slugs.

Tags

Tags are custom labels you apply to Droplets that have multiple uses:

• Filtering. Tagging multiple Droplets with the same label lets you organize your resources and view a filtered list of Droplets that share that particular tag.

• Automatic inclusion in firewall rules and load balancer backend pools. Automatically include Droplets in a firewall or load balancer configuration by tag, minimizing administration overhead when adding new Droplets to your infrastructure.

• API call execution on multiple Droplets at once. Initiate an action across all Droplets with the same tag using the DigitalOcean API. Identifying groups of Droplets and administering all of them at once reduces the time required to manage resources.

Reserved IPs

DigitalOcean Reserved IPs are publicly-accessible static IP addresses that you can assign to Droplets. A reserved IP provides an additional static address you can use to access a Droplet without replacing or changing the Droplet’s original public IP address.

Volumes Block Storage

DigitalOcean Volumes Block Storage is a flexible, convenient way of managing additional storage (in units called volumes) for your Droplets. Volumes are independent resources that you can move between Droplets within the same region. You can increase the size of a volume without powering down the Droplet it’s attached to. They’re most useful when you need more storage space but don’t need the additional processing power or memory that a larger Droplet would provide.

Firewalls

DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls are a free, network-based, stateful firewall service for your DigitalOcean Droplets. They block all traffic that isn’t expressly permitted by a rule. You can define the Droplets protected by a firewall individually or by using tags.

Load Balancers

DigitalOcean Load Balancers are a fully-managed, highly available load balancing service. Load balancers distribute traffic to groups of Droplets, which decouples the overall health of a backend service from the health of a single server to ensure that your services stay online.