The challenge
Developers and sysadmins needed temporary, disposable compute — a Windows or Linux desktop for an hour, a test run, or a CI job — without the commitment (or babysitting) of a long-lived server. We built DeskBoot ourselves to solve this for our own workflow, then opened it up as a product.
What we built
- A Next.js platform for launching Windows Server (2019/2022/2025) and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Kali) instances on demand, across five AWS regions including Africa.
- Per-second billing via Paystack, with usage tracked and analyzed through PostHog.
- An API and CLI so fleets of desktops can be provisioned and torn down from scripts and CI/CD pipelines.
- Security defaults baked in: per-session firewalls, isolated VPCs, and current OS patch baselines out of the box.
The outcome
DeskBoot is a Ditesol product, live today, giving technical teams throwaway compute in the regions that matter to them — including Africa — with automation as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought. It's also our own on-demand dev/staging environment partner for clients who need one.