Building and scaling cloud infrastructure often means navigating fragile network configurations, unpredictable IP behavior, and rigid networking provider limitations. Whether it’s dealing with flaky multi-cloud connections, scrambling to update IP allow-lists after a restart, or hesitating to migrate workloads due to reputation-bound IPs, these challenges add unnecessary risk and complexity to modern deployments.

We’re excited to announce three new updates designed to simplify cloud networking and enhance deployment flexibility: Partner Network Connect supports high availability and DOKS, general availability of Reserved IPv6 on Droplets, and public preview of Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP). These improvements address real-world infrastructure challenges and are built with simplicity, scalability, and reliability in mind.

Partner Network Connect now supports high availability and DOKS

Multi-cloud architectures are great, until the private links between them become a single point of failure. For teams routing traffic between multiple cloud providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, even brief disruptions can stall ML pipelines, gaming platforms, or analytics services. Traditional setups offer limited redundancy, and recovering from outages usually involves manual intervention or rerouting traffic over public networks.

High Availability for Partner Network Connect helps solve this by letting you provision redundant links across two separate DigitalOcean gateway routers. Traffic automatically fails over if one link goes down, with no manual steps required and no impact to your customers.

With fully managed failover, this update removes operational overhead while helping meet the needs of latency-sensitive or distributed systems.

Key benefits include:

• Automatic failover: Eliminate downtime from single link failures.

• Reliable for demanding workloads: Especially useful for platforms in streaming, AI, or multiplayer applications .

• Straightforward setup: Provision HA connections in minutes—no complex BGP or custom failover scripts.

Multi-cloud connectivity for your DOKS workloads.

Connecting Kubernetes clusters across clouds often requires brittle workarounds, manual routing, or exposure to the public internet. You can now create a VPC-native DOKS cluster, connect your VPC to a Partner Attachment, and establish seamless connectivity between your DOKS workloads on DigitalOcean and Kubernetes workloads running in AWS or other cloud environments. This enables more secure, low-latency communication between clusters without the complexity of custom networking.

Real-world use case: SaaS and AdTech companies often span multiple clouds to optimize performance and align with partner ecosystems. For example, an application might run on DigitalOcean while relying on another cloud provider for third-party data streams. With high availability (HA), these businesses can maintain private, always-on connectivity—without compromising on security or speed.

See for yourself how simple it is to set up Partner Network Connect. Visit documentation for more details

Reserved IPv6 on Droplets

For apps built on IPv6—like blockchain nodes, real-time analytics platforms, or systems with strict IP allow-lists—dynamic address allocation creates fragility. When a Droplet is recreated or rebooted, IPv6 changes can break client connections or force painful reconfiguration. That’s a non-starter for services that demand availability and consistent access.

Reserved IPv6 fixes this. You can now allocate static IPv6 addresses, independent of any Droplet lifecycle. Whether you reboot, rebuild, or replace a Droplet, your IPv6 address stays the same.

Key benefits include:

• Persistent addresses: Assign once, move across Droplets within the same region.

• Zero downtime for upgrades: Keep clients connected without touching firewall rules or DNS.

• No separate fee: Included as a standard feature, just like IPv4 reservations.

DigitalOcean’s implementation makes it easy to use Reserved IPv6 through the UI or API. You can automate migrations or failover without complex routing logic or pre-warming steps. Learn How to Create Reserved IPs to get started.

Real-world use case: Decentralized networks hardcode IPv6 addresses into client binaries. Without static IPs, every address change requires a new software release and coordination across thousands of nodes—creating operational friction. Reserved IPv6 addresses help eliminate this pain point. Similarly, security-focused organizations use fixed IPs to allow-list scanning infrastructure and validate DDoS protections with consistent, persistent connectivity.

Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) Public preview

When migrating workloads or expanding multi-cloud presence, IP address stability is more than a convenience—it’s a requirement. Teams rely on known IPs for allow-listing, branding, and email reputation. Changing those addresses can break integrations or trigger spam filters. Worse, some teams delay cloud migrations entirely just to preserve IP trust.

With BYOIP, now available for public preview, you can import your own public IPv4 blocks and assign them to Droplets or Kubernetes nodes on DigitalOcean, avoiding the need to renumber or experience downtime.

Key benefits include:

• Retain IP trust and deliverability: Especially valuable for marketing platforms or email-forwarding SaaS.

• Simplify migration: Keep IPs when transitioning from other providers or on-prem systems.

• Secure client access: Maintain allow-lists without reconfiguration.

No separate fee : Included as a standard feature to bring or use your own addresses.

Provisioning requires just three inputs and typically completes in 7 business days, significantly faster than the multi-week processes common with many hyperscalers. There’s no need for multiple pools or route table gymnastics, and support is in place for both VMs and managed K8s. Once provisioned, assign your addresses to Droplets using the same interface and APIs as Reserved IPs.

Real-world use case: Fleet tracking and IoT platforms often require consistent IP addresses across thousands of devices—any changes can trigger widespread reconnects and risk data loss. Similarly, SaaS platforms offering white-labeled deployment environments across regions and partners depend on custom IPs to maintain trusted infrastructure without disruption. Reserved IPs help streamline operations and avoid migration headaches.

These updates go beyond feature releases, giving developers and ops engineers tighter control over how their environments are connected and managed. Whether you’re building IPv6-native apps, managing cross-cloud latency, or migrating high-stakes workloads, we’re focused on making network reliability accessible without added complexity.

Want to dig deeper? Check out our Networking documentation or visit your DigitalOcean console to get started.

Watch the webinar to scale smarter with all Q2 2025 IaaS updates

If you’re a DigitalOcean customer looking to optimize your IaaS setup, watch our Sail to Success webinar: Scale your cloud with Q2 2025 IaaS updates to hear from product experts on the latest updates in compute, networking, and storage. You’ll also get practical tips to scale smarter and manage cloud costs more effectively.