DigitalOcean® Droplet Management

Overview

After you create an cPanel & WHM instance on a DigitalOcean® Droplet, you can manage that instance from within DigitalOcean’s portal. This document describes common instance-management tasks that you may perform on your cPanel & WHM Droplet.

Note:
New Droplets may require several minutes to initialize. When the Droplet is ready, the portal will display a success message.

Access your instance for the first time

To access a new instance, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the DigitalOcean website and log in to your account. Your project page will appear with a list of Droplets.

  2. In the list of Droplets, locate the IP address of the server.

  3. To connect to your Droplet via SSH, run the following command, where IPADDRESS represents the server’s public IP address: 

    ssh root@IPADDRESS

  4. To change the root user’s password, run the passwd command. The system will prompt you to enter a new password.

  5. Enter the desired password and press Enter. The system will prompt you to confirm the password.

  6. Reenter the desired password and press Enter. A confirmation message will appear.

  7. If you wish to access WHM in your browser, perform the following additional steps:

    • Navigate to the following address, where IPADDRESS represents the server’s public IP address: 

      https://IPADDRESS:2087

    • Use the root password to log in to the WHM interface as the root user.

Note:
For more information, read our How to Access the Command Line and How to Log in to Your Server or Account documentation.

Floating IP management

DigitalOcean allows you to point a publicly-accessable Floating IP address at a Droplet. Floating IP addresses are IP addresses that you can move from one instance to another.

The Floating IP address connects to an Anchor IP address (RFC-1918) on the server. DigitalOcean maps the addresses in a NAT relationship.

Important:

  • When you purchase a cPanel & WHM license, use the Droplet’s public IP address.

  • The project page will display a Droplet’s Floating IP address. The Droplet’s page will display a Droplet’s public IP address. The Droplet’s profile page will display both IP addresses.

  • DigitalOcean’s Anchor IP addresses are not Private networking IP addresses.

  • DigitalOcean binds public and Anchor IP addresses to eth0. This is a standard DigitalOcean configuration. For more information, read DigitalOcean’s Floating IP address documentation.

  • Currently, cPanel, L.L.C. only recommends that you use Floating IP addresses for secondary and tertiary nameservers.

  • Floating IP addresses do not support PTR records. Due to this technical limitation, Floating IP addresses may cause issues with email deliverability.

To enable a Floating IP address on a Droplet, perform the following steps:

  1. Next to Floating IP, click Enable now. The Floating IPs tab on the Networking page will appear.

  2. Click Assign Floating IP. DigitalOcean will assign a Floating IP address and display it in the page.

Add Monitoring

DigitalOcean allows you to set up monitoring of your Droplet and it can send you alerts via email or Slack.

Note:
These are monitoring alerts that DigitalOcean manages. For monitoring alerts that cPanel & WHM performs, read our Contact Manager documentation.

To add monitoring to your DigitalOcean Droplet, perform the following steps:

  1. To connect to your Droplet via SSH, run the following command, where example represents the key pair name and IPADDRESS represents the server’s public IP address: 

    ssh root@IPADDRESS

  2. Run the following command: 

    curl -sSL https://agent.digitalocean.com/install.sh | sh

    A success message will appear.

  3. In the left sidebar, click Monitoring and then click Create alert policy.

  4. Select the metric and threshold to monitor.

  5. Enter the name of the Droplet to monitor in the Select Dropets or Tags text box.

  6. If you wish to receive alerts via Slack, click Connect Slack and follow the instructions.

  7. Enter a label for the alert in the Name and create alert policy text box and click Create alert policy. A success message will appear.

For more information about monitoring at DigitalOcean, read their How to Set Up Monitoring Alerts documentation.

Manage a Droplet

Important:
We strongly recommend that you stop unused Droplets to reduce unnecessary costs.

To resize, reboot, manage DigitalOcean backups, or destroy an instance, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the DigitalOcean website and log in to your account. Your project page will appear with a list of Droplets.

  2. Click the Droplet that you wish to manage. The Droplet’s profile page will appear.

  3. Click the desired action in the Droplet’s navigation bar:

    • Graphs — Review your Droplet’s performance charts.

    • Access — Connect to your Droplet via SSH.

    • Power — Power on, power off, or reboot your Droplet.

    • Volumes —Add, remove, or manage storage volumes.

    • Resize — Change the Droplet’s CPU, RAM, or disk space.

    • Networking — Review the Droplet’s network information or manage the Droplet’s firewall.

    • Backups — Manage backups of your Droplet that DigitialOcean performs.

      Note:
      These are system-level backups that DigitalOcean manages. For backups that cPanel & WHM performs, read our Backup Configuration documentation.

    • Snapshots — To take a snapshot of your Droplet’s data.

      Important:
      You must power down a Droplet before you take a snapshot of it.

    • Kernel — Do not use this option. You will manage your Droplet’s kernel directly in the server.

    • History — View a log of actions performed on the portal for your Droplet.

    • Destroy — Terminate the Droplet and all of its backups at DigitalOcean.

    • Tags — Add or manage tags to organize Droplets at DigitalOcean.

    • Recovery — Boot from a recovery ISO or hard drive.