Dokku on DigitalOcean

Your very own PaaS

Create Droplet

Create new droplet with Ubuntu 16.04. Be sure to use an SSH key.

Install Dokku

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dokku/dokku/v0.12.5/bootstrap.sh
sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.12.5 bash bootstrap.sh

And visit your server’s IP address in your browser to complete installation.

If you have a domain, use virtualhost naming. Otherwise, Dokku will use different ports for each deploy of your app. You can add easily add a domain later.

Add a Firewall

Create a firewall

Inbound Rules

• SSH from your external IP
• HTTP and HTTPS from all IPv4 and all IPv6

Outbound Rules

• ICMP, all TCP, and all UDP from all IPv4 and all IPv6

Set Up Server

Turn on automatic updates

sudo apt-get -y install unattended-upgrades
echo 'APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";' >> /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

Enable swap

sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
sudo sh -c 'echo "/swapfile none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab'

Configure time zone

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

and select None of the above, then UTC.

Deploy

Get the official Dokku client locally

git clone git@github.com:progrium/dokku.git ~/.dokku

# add the following to either your
# .bashrc, .bash_profile, or .profile file
alias dokku='$HOME/.dokku/contrib/dokku_client.sh'

Create app

dokku apps:create myapp

Add a CHECKS file

WAIT=2
ATTEMPTS=15
/

Deploy

git remote add dokku dokku@dokkuhost:myapp
git push dokku master

Workers

Dokku only runs web processes by default. If you have workers or other process types, use:

dokku ps:scale worker=1

One-Off Jobs

dokku run rails db:migrate
dokku run rails console

Scheduled Jobs

Two options

1. Add a custom clock process to your Procfile

2. Or create /etc/cron.d/myapp with:

  PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
  SHELL=/bin/bash
  * * * * * dokku dokku --rm run myapp rake task1
  0 0 * * * dokku dokku --rm run myapp rake task2

Custom Domains

dokku domains:add www.datakick.org

SSL

Get free SSL certificates thanks to Let’s Encrypt. On the server, run:

dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-letsencrypt.git
dokku letsencrypt:cron-job --add

And locally, run:

dokku config:set --no-restart DOKKU_LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=your@email.tld
dokku letsencrypt

Logging

Use syslog to ship your logs to a service. Papertrail is great and has a free plan.

For apps, use:

dokku plugin:install https://github.com/michaelshobbs/dokku-logspout.git
dokku plugin:install https://github.com/michaelshobbs/dokku-hostname.git
dokku logspout:server syslog+tls://logs.papertrailapp.com:12345
dokku logspout:start

For nginx and other logs, install remote_syslog2

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/papertrail/remote_syslog2/releases/download/v0.18/remote_syslog_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf ./remote_syslog*.tar.gz
cd remote_syslog
sudo cp ./remote_syslog /usr/local/bin

Create /etc/log_files.yml with:

files:
  - /var/log/nginx/*.log
  - /var/log/unattended-upgrades/*.log
destination:
  host: logs.papertrailapp.com
  port: 12345
  protocol: tls

And run:

remote_syslog

Database

Check out Host Your Own Postgres.

Memcached

dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-memcached.git
dokku memcached:create lolipop
dokku memcached:link lolipop myapp

Redis

dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-redis.git
dokku redis:create lolipop
dokku redis:link lolipop myapp

TODO

• Monitoring

Bonus

Find great Docker projects at Awesome Docker.

Resources

• Additional Recommended Steps for New Ubuntu 14.04 Servers