Latest products and features at DigitalOcean: July 2020

July was another busy month at DigitalOcean as we introduced the support for PostgreSQL 12 on Managed Databases. Here are the highlights of July:

• Managed Databases now support PostgreSQL 12: We are excited to announce that DigitalOcean Managed Databases now support PostgreSQL 12! In addition to this, we released the capability for in-place major version upgrade that allows you to easily upgrade from one major version to another (e.g. PostgreSQL v11 to PostgreSQL v12). This way you could test and validate the compatibility of existing database service on the new version before committing to the upgrade. The upgrade process is seamless and eliminates the need to manually move data between services. Plus, there is no downtime, so your database cluster remains available while it is being upgraded. 

With the above mentioned release, our current support matrix for engines and versions looks like the following:

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 12 from previous versions is free. We hope you upgrade your databases and take advantage of all the new capabilities and enhancements that version 12 has to offer. 

• Memory-Optimized Droplets are now in General Availability: We are excited to announce that Memory-Optimized Droplets are now in General Availability (GA) and are available in the SFO3 and TOR1 data center regions. Memory-Optimized Droplets are the Droplets with maximum memory, 100% dedicated vCPU, and a generous 8GB of memory for each vCPU. These are ideal for RAM-intensive applications like high-performance databases, in-memory caches, and real-time big data processing.

• DigitalOcean Load Balancer health checks now support the HTTPS protocol: Health checks verify that your Droplets are online and meet any customized health criteria. Load balancers will only forward requests to Droplets that pass health checks. The health checks now support the HTTPS protocol and you can easily configure load balancers to verify the health of your Droplets’ HTTPS endpoints.

• Remove global SQL modes from Managed MySQL database clusters: MySQL can operate in different SQL modes. Global SQL modes affect the SQL syntax MySQL supports and the data validation checks it performs. You can now remove all global SQL modes from MySQL database clusters.

• Creation of Spaces in NYC3 has resumed: On June 10, we temporarily disabled the creation of new Spaces in FRA1 and NYC3 due to capacity issues. We are happy to announce that we have resumed the creation of Spaces in NYC3. The restriction will continue for FRA1 until our engineering team finishes updating the clusters later this year. Existing Spaces in FRA1 and NYC3 are unaffected, and you can still create new Spaces in AMS3.

• Reserved IPs billing update (a reminder): Reserved IPs (formerly named Floating IPs) are publicly accessible static IP addresses that you can assign to Droplets. Reserved IPs are always free when assigned to a Droplet, but we have now started charging for unassigned Reserved IPs. The first charge will appear in July 2020 invoices for all Reserved IPs that were not assigned to Droplets during the month of June. If you have unassigned Reserved IPs that you don’t need, please delete them to avoid any charges. 

• Tax updates
  U.S. state tax collection for AZ, HI, NY, PA, WA, and WV has begun: To ensure compliance with the requirements of the United States as it pertains to the taxability of our services, we charge sales tax to DigitalOcean customers in certain states. We have started the state tax collection for Arizona, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and West Virginia and charges will appear on the August invoice. Click here to learn about the tax rate, states in which we charge taxes, and FAQ related to taxes.  
  Tax collection for Saudi Arabia has begun: For compliance with Saudi Arabia’s VAT Law, DigitalOcean began charging Value Added Tax (VAT) to customers in Saudi Arabia on July 1, 2020 at a rate of 15%. These charges will appear on the August invoice.

• Marketplace updates: We also launched several new preconfigured 1-Click Apps in the DigitalOcean Marketplace to help you save time and remove the hassle of provisioning servers.
  ONLYOFFICE Editors (ONLYOFFICE Document Server) is an open source office suite that comprises web-based viewers and collaborative editors for text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
  Supabase Realtime listens to changes in a PostgreSQL database and broadcasts them over WebSocket.

Check out the release notes for other minor product updates in July. You can also learn about the updates from the previous month here. 

We hope you give the new updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them here. 

Until next month, 

Happy coding!

Rafael Rosa,

Senior Product Manager