Our website is experiencing issues with bot attacks on the server. The website is hosted with Digitalocean and we are not of the skill level to reconfigure the server droplet settings.

Please help urgently, we are losing business every day!

That was a recent request we received in our Emergency Support Services for server owners.

Rebuilding a Droplet always comes with a risk of losing data. Fortunately, with proper planning we can avoid this risk.

Today, we’ll see how our Support Engineers rebuilt the DigitalOcean Droplet and brought the customer back in business.

Preparing for the Droplet rebuild

The steps to rebuild Droplets without data loss is a frequent query seen in DigitalOcean community page.

Before jumping on how to rebuild the Droplet, let’s have a look on why there is a need for proper planning prior to the task.

Rebuilding the Droplet is a destructive process where you lose all the data in your Droplet. Therefore, our Support Engineers do the following things as part of the preparation.

1. Droplet analysis

The first step of preparation is to do a complete analysis of the existing Droplet. This includes collecting information on the number of websites, versions of specific applications like PHP, web server, database server, etc.

Additionally, we note down the nameservers of the websites, custom service configurations if any, etc. too. Normally, rebuild completes easily. But, if there appears a problem, this will come handy as a fall back option.

2. Ensure proper backups of Droplet

Again, prior to the Droplet rebuild, we ensure that there are proper backups for the Droplet. Digitalocean provides the option to take snapshots of each Droplet. These snapshot works as the exact replica of the Droplet. We check and see that the latest snapshot contains all the website data, configuration files etc.

At times, we even create a new backup to keep the latest data.

But, in the case of a server under malicious attack, we cannot take a fresh backup as it would include malicious files too. So, we check and confirm that the backups do not have these malicious files.

Steps to rebuild Digitalocean Droplet

Now that we have prepared for the Droplet rebuild, let’s see the actual process involved in it.

1. Destroy or Rebuild ?

Rebuilding a Droplet is done from the “Destroy” option in the Digitalocean Dashboard. It takes you to a page where there are two options: Destroy Droplet and Rebuild Droplet.

Unlike Destroy option, the Rebuild option provides the following advantages:

1. Will preserve the IP-address
2. reset operating system on the original Droplet

But, in both cases, that data in the Droplet is lost.

Similarly, destroying a Droplet also destroys its backups. Therefore, we need to convert backups into snapshots before deleting the Droplet to save them. As a fail-safe method, we can even keep it in remote storage as well.

IP address change is something that websites cannot afford easily as it involves changes in the dns records. To avoid IP address change, our Support Engineers select the “Rebuild Droplet” option.

2. Select the Image

Now, we need to select the image that would work as the base of new Droplet. Here, we need to choose the latest working snapshot of the Droplet.

This would ensure that the new Droplet will have the exact same settings of the original Droplet.

And, the Rebuild page shows up as in the picture.

Here, ubuntu-s-1vcpu-1gb-fra1-01-1544606479753 was the working snapshot of our Ubuntu Droplet.

Clicking on Rebuild button will present you with a new droplet with the exact same settings.

Post rebuild checks

Now, we have rebuilt the DigitalOcean Droplet. Additionally, our Support Engineers go one step ahead to ensure that all websites are working fine on the new Droplet as well. For this, we do checks like:

1. Verify DNS and see that connection reach the new Droplet
2. Verify web server configuration, database server, etc.
3. Access websites in browser after clearing cache
4. Check websites from different geographical locations to ensure connectivity.

Finally, we complete the rebuild process of Droplet without potential data loss. And, customer is back in business!

Conclusion

Rebuilding a Droplet can be risky task due to the chance of data loss. Today, we’ve seen how our Support Engineers properly plan and execute the Droplet rebuild by keeping data secure.