Connect your own VPS¶

Bring any VPS — Hetzner, OVH, on-premises — over SSH. We deploy the proxy and request HTTPS automatically.

Prerequisites¶

A VPS with Ubuntu 22.04 or newer (Debian 12 also works).
SSH access for a sudo-capable user. The user can be root.
Outbound HTTPS allowed from the VPS (we pull container images from Docker Hub and the OCA mirror).

Walkthrough¶

1. Open the hosts page¶

Go to /cloud/ui/hosts. Click New Host.

2. Fill in connection details¶

Name — whatever helps you remember it (e.g. customer-foo-prod).
IP address or hostname — the public IP works fine.
SSH port — usually 22.
Username — root is fine; a sudo-capable user is also fine.
Auth method — SSH key (recommended) or password.

3. SSH key (recommended path)¶

We generate an Ed25519 keypair for you. Copy the displayed public key.

On the VPS, append it to the chosen user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys:

echo "ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3..." >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Click Test connection. Green = we got in.

4. Run `Check`¶

This probes the host: kernel, distro, free disk, RAM, Docker presence. Anything missing shows up so you can decide whether to install it manually or let us run Full Setup.

5. Run `Full Setup`¶

We install Docker (if missing), drop in Traefik, wire up cert auto-renewal, and run a final probe. Watch the log to follow each step.

When it ends in green, the host is ready to receive instances.

DNS for HTTPS¶

For Let's Encrypt to issue a cert when you deploy a domain on this host, the domain must already point (A or AAAA) to the VPS IP at the moment of deployment. Set DNS first, then deploy.

Troubleshooting¶

Connection refused

Check the VPS firewall (ufw is most common): sudo ufw status.
Check the SSH service: sudo systemctl status ssh.
Confirm the public key is in that user's authorized_keys, not just root's. Mismatched users is the most frequent cause.

Docker install failed

Most often a kernel too old for the modern Docker engine. Upgrade Ubuntu to 22.04+ or Debian to 12+. We don't support older kernels.

Full Setup gets stuck on Traefik

Check that ports 80 and 443 are free on the host (no nginx, apache, or other webserver running): sudo ss -tulpn | grep -E ':80|:443'. If something is bound, stop it first.