> Do have some backups outside of your primary cloud provider. You'll sleep better.
This is really the takeaway from this whole incident. Even if the account doesn’t get banned you’re just one accidental action away from your database and backups disappearing simultaneously otherwise in most cases. Or if you are using a blob store there may not be any backup if the original is deleted (it’s like RAID not backups).
Changing nameservers can take up to 48 hours. Things usually settle down after the first few hours, but a few odd users will continue to be directed to the old nameservers well into the next day. This is exactly the kind of intermittent, hard-to-diagnose issue that you don't want to have to worry about in the middle of a crisis such as "Digital Ocean killed my company."
Changing A records, on the other hand, can take as little time as you want depending on the TTL value.
That transition requires authorisation from the original provider. If they locked your account and don't pick up the phone, you won't get the move approved and won't be able to repoint your urls to a different cloud.
It's not common to use those two words as synonyms. Although it is common to use the registar as a cloud provider, it may not be a good practice either (depends on the registar).
By provider I mean the registrar (which typically provides both services). Moving to another registrar requires an authorization code, and good luck getting that on a short notice if your provider doesn't talk to you.
Absolutely, your domain name might be your most important asset. It’s silly to put that in the hands of a party that you might have to fight. Especially as there are hundreds of alternatives.
Does that really help? If your DNS provider screws it up, you're in deep trouble regardless of whether they were the same guys hosting your VMs or not.
In the original article this is referencing DO shut down/locked his account.
By having an alternate provider you spread your risk. And in this scenario you could update your DNS from the locked DO account to AWS/Linode/GCP whatevr
This is really the takeaway from this whole incident. Even if the account doesn’t get banned you’re just one accidental action away from your database and backups disappearing simultaneously otherwise in most cases. Or if you are using a blob store there may not be any backup if the original is deleted (it’s like RAID not backups).