Hi guys,
I wrote that DigitalOcean article, it looks like I made a few mistakes, my bad!
I’d like to update the article to correct the issues.
So I’d just like to ask a few questions to make sure I get things right with the corrected version.
In the article I said you could optionally use a Managed Redis instance, my thinking at the time was that using sticky sessions would allow you to use the builtin Redis in the Discourse image. Is this correct? Maybe this isn’t sufficient and an external Redis instance should be a compulsory requirement.
I agree with @Falco 's comment about Object Storage, that’s an oversight from me. I can update the article to include instructions for using DigitalOcean Spaces to handle image uploads.
I suspect removing all state from the Droplets is the answer to solve the installation problems, I had hoped using an external Redis was optional due to sticky sessions but I could be mistaken.
I agree also that this makes your Discourse installation more complicated to upgrade, I think though if you remove all state from the Droplets, you should be able to just upgrade one Droplet, then snapshot it and just replace the other Droplets with new ones created from the snapshots (A bit like Kubernetes Deployments, except you do the re-deployment manually).
I agree also that there probably are better ways to scale Discourse, I’d still like to correct the article though so people can follow it if they’d like to.
Thanks,
Francis