Containerised delivery on a VPS

Overview

A DevOps infrastructure study capturing the standard Palmate engineering pattern when an application requires reproducible environments, automated health checks, and verified recovery procedures.

Business problem

Production was a VM with files changed over SSH. Staging did not match production. TLS renewal was a calendar event. Backups existed as a zip in someone’s cloud drive. A dependency update required tribal knowledge.

Technical challenge

The application had local file uploads and a database that had never been restored. DNS and email were entangled with the same host. Downtime windows were short because staff used the app during business hours.

Requirements

• Repeatable Docker Compose stack for app, worker, and database
• Separate staging with anonymised data
• Automated TLS
• Off-site encrypted database backups and a restore drill
• Deploy from git via CI, with a rollback tag

Solution

Package the application, put a reverse proxy in front, move secrets to environment files that are not in git, and make backups a tested job. Keep the same VPS if it is sufficient; do not migrate to a maze of managed services without a reason.

Architecture

Technology stack

• Linux
• Docker Compose
• Nginx
• GitHub Actions or equivalent
• Off-site object storage

Implementation approach

1. Photograph the current VM: cron, nginx, env files, disk usage
2. Compose the app locally until tests pass
3. Stand up staging on a second VM or namespace
4. Restore a backup into staging before touching production
5. Cut over DNS with a documented rollback

Outcome

Delivery success is verified when any engineer can trigger zero-downtime deploys and execute a full database restore in minutes with documented runbooks.