How to Create Your First DigitalOcean Droplet Virtual Server

Intro

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DigitalOcean calls its virtual servers, droplets; each droplet that you spin up is a new virtual server for your personal use. 

The setup is very easy— the entire process can take almost as little as a minute! 

This tutorial will walk you through creating and accessing your new server. 

Step One—Log In

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To create your first droplet go to https://www.DigitalOcean.com/droplets and log in with your email and password. 

If you’ve never created a droplet before, the button will be right there on the first page: click on “Create a New Server.” 

Otherwise, click on the “Servers” link at the top of the left hand sidebar and press the “Create a New Server” button.

Step Two—Name your Droplet

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Once you have started the process to create a droplet, choose your server's name: it can be from 1 to 256 characters without spaces or symbols. 

The name you choose will then be your machine’s host name. 

Step Three—Select your Droplet's Type and Size

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Depending on your server's needs and budget, you can select the droplet option that works best for you. 

There is a wide spectrum for prices and power. The smallest and least expensive option starts at 512MB with 1CPU. The droplets grow larger from there, all the way up to a 96GB. Should your needs change at a future point, you can adjust your droplet, scaling up or down rapidly.

Step Four—Select Your Droplet Location

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You may choose the most effective region for your droplet location. Although equally powerful, the best region to choose is the one nearest to you and your customers or other possible users. Selecting a more distant server location may increase your server latency without serving any practical purpose.

Step Five—Select the Droplet Image

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You can create your droplet image from 4 possible options:

• Operating System: The "Standard OS Images" tab lets you use one of several Linux operating systems, such as Fedora, Ubuntu, CentOS, or Debian.


• Applications: The "Applications" tab provides you with pre-installed and configured programs that will get your droplet off to a strong start.


• Snapshots: The "My Images" tab allows you to start up a droplet using a snapshots from a previous one, letting you create backup copies or scale quickly.


• Backups: The "My Backups" tab helps you set up a new server with a previously automatically generated backup, an option that you can enable on each droplet individually with the "Backups" button

Step Six—Create Your Droplet

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Once you have selected all of your preferred options, click on "Create Droplet." In the minute that follows, the root password will arrive in your inbox and the droplet will be set up. 

With that, the server is ready for you!

Step Seven—Log In To Your Droplet

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The process is slightly different for Mac and Windows Computers:

How to Log In With a Mac

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1. To log in on a Mac computer, open the terminal program (in the utilities folder) and type in the following command, logging in with the ip address from the welcome email:

   ssh root@your_ip_address



2. Type "yes" when the prompt asks if you want to connect to the host. When prompted, type in the root password that was emailed to you and press enter. Although the password is entered when you type, it does not show up on the screen for security reasons.

You will then be connected to your DigitalOcean Droplet

How to Log In With Windows

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To log into your droplet on windows, you will need to have PuTTY, an SSH client, installed on your computer. 

1. You can download the program here. Choose the windows installer.


2. Once PuTTY is downloaded and installed, starting the program will take you to the configuration screen.


3. Fill in the “Host Name (or IP address)” field with the Droplet IP address from the welcome email, make sure the port number is 22, and the connection type is SSH.


4. Additionally, click on the sidebar entry, SSH, and select “2 only” as the preferred SSH protocol version.


5. Once everything is configured, you can name and save these preferences for the future by clicking on Session in the side bar and typing a title into the Saved Sessions field. Then click save.


6. Double click on the session name to connect, and accept the subsequent pop up that asks if you want to connect to the host. After PuTTY starts up, type in the root password that was emailed to you.

You will then be connected to your DigitalOcean Droplet

See More

Once you have installed a droplet, you can start to set it up for your needs. We have tutorial covering the initial server setup for Ubuntu, Arch, or CentOS.