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Create Droplet

Last updated: March 4, 2026

This guide walks through creating a Droplet from the DigitalOcean dashboard and completing the initial SSH/user setup.

All screenshots are loaded from digitalocean/images/droplet/.

Prerequisites​

  • DigitalOcean account with billing enabled
  • SSH key pair on your local machine
  • Terminal access on your local machine

Generate SSH key if needed:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@example.com"
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

1. Open Droplets and Start Creation​

  • Log in to DigitalOcean dashboard.
  • Open Droplets from the left menu.
  • Click Create Droplet.

Step 1 - Initial Droplet page

2. Configure Droplet Options​

On the create form, configure:

  • Region and datacenter
  • Image (for example Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
  • Size/plan (CPU/RAM)
  • Authentication method (SSH Key recommended)
  • Optional: backups, monitoring, tags, hostname

Then click Create Droplet.

Step 2 - Configure and create Droplet

3. Wait for Provisioning​

After creation, the Droplet appears in the list and starts provisioning.

Step 3 - Droplet provisioning in progress

4. Confirm Droplet Is Ready and Copy Public IP​

When status is ready, copy the public IPv4 address.

Step 4 - Droplet created with public IP

5. SSH Login as Root (First Login)​

Connect from your local machine:

ssh root@<DROPLET_PUBLIC_IP>

If your key file is custom:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/<your_private_key> root@<DROPLET_PUBLIC_IP>

Step 5 - First SSH login to Droplet

6. Create a Non-Root Sudo User​

Create user and grant sudo access:

adduser ubuntu
usermod -aG sudo ubuntu

Step 6 - Create sudo user

7. Copy Root SSH Authorized Keys to New User​

Copy SSH access so the new user can log in with keys:

rsync --archive --chown=ubuntu:ubuntu /root/.ssh /home/ubuntu
chmod 700 /home/ubuntu/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_keys

Step 7 - Copy SSH keys to new user

8. Verify New User Login​

From local machine, open a new terminal and test:

ssh ubuntu@<DROPLET_PUBLIC_IP>

If successful, you can continue hardening:

Optional Initial Updates​

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y