Digital Ocean Offers Docker-centric CoreOS Hosting

Providing more evidence of the momentum that Docker has right now, cloud hosting company DigitalOcean is using CoreOS Linux to deliver Docker-powered virtual servers to its customers. The company has put a post up announcing that developers can begin using CoreOS on its cloud platform.

The central idea behind this offering from Digital Ocean is to get more developers into working with containers and container-based application delivery.

According to the announcement:

"There's been a lot of community excitement for CoreOS. This integration with the alpha channel version on Digital Ocean provides an easy and quick way for web and mobile developers interested in working with Docker to deploy applications and experiment with containers. On CoreOS, Docker containers can boot in milliseconds, providing unprecedented flexibility in managing load across a cluster of Droplets. Some additional features include automatic updates, automatic network configuration, and integration with etcd technology."

If you're unfamiliar with what the company means by "Droplets" in this context, that's actually what Digital Ocean is known for. The company calls its virtual servers Droplets, and they are explained here. 

Digital Ocean is not the only cloud hosting company offering CoreOS as an available distribution. Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Rackspace Cloud offer it, and Rackspace offers it with OpenStack.

According to Digital Ocean:

"Through CoreOS’s etcd technology, users can deploy a cluster of servers configured to work with one another, ensuring the resiliency of their architecture. This feature greatly reduces the impact of a possible server failure, supporting high-traffic applications. And for those looking for commercial support, CoreOS Managed Linux is delivered as an OS as a Service. We hope developers using our infrastructure are as excited as we are about the possibilities now available through CoreOS on our platform."