frappe_docker/docs/02-setup/07-single-server-example.md

Single Server Example

This guide demonstrates setting up multiple Frappe/ERPNext benches (projects) on a single server with shared infrastructure components.

In this use case we have a single server with a static IP attached to it. It can be used in scenarios where one powerful VM has multiple benches and applications or one entry level VM with single site. For single bench, single site setup follow only up to the point where first bench and first site is added. If you choose this setup you can only scale vertically. If you need to scale horizontally you'll need to backup the sites and restore them on to cluster setup.

We will setup the following:

• Install docker and docker compose v2 on linux server.
• Install traefik service for internal load balancer and letsencrypt.
• Install MariaDB with containers.
• Setup project called erpnext-one and create sites one.example.com and two.example.com in the project.
• Setup project called erpnext-two and create sites three.example.com and four.example.com in the project.

Explanation:

Single instance of Traefik will be installed and act as internal loadbalancer for multiple benches and sites hosted on the server. It can also load balance other applications along with frappe benches, e.g. wordpress, metabase, etc. We only expose the ports 80 and 443 once with this instance of traefik. Traefik will also take care of letsencrypt automation for all sites installed on the server. Why choose Traefik over Nginx Proxy Manager? Traefik doesn't need additional DB service and can store certificates in a json file in a volume.

Single instance of MariaDB will be installed and act as database service for all the benches/projects installed on the server.

Each instance of ERPNext project (bench) will have its own redis, socketio, gunicorn, nginx, workers and scheduler. It will connect to internal MariaDB by connecting to MariaDB network. It will expose sites to public through Traefik by connecting to Traefik network.

Install Docker

Easiest way to install docker is to use the convenience script.

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | bash

Note: The documentation assumes Ubuntu LTS server is used. Use any distribution as long as the docker convenience script works. If the convenience script doesn't work, you'll need to install docker manually.

Install Compose V2

Refer original documentation for updated version.

DOCKER_CONFIG=${DOCKER_CONFIG:-$HOME/.docker}
mkdir -p $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins
curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.2.3/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose
chmod +x $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Prepare

Clone frappe_docker repo for the needed YAMLs and change the current working directory of your shell to the cloned repo.

git clone https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker
cd frappe_docker

Create configuration and resources directory

mkdir ~/gitops

The ~/gitops directory will store all the resources that we use for setup. We will also keep the environment files in this directory as there will be multiple projects with different environment variables. You can create a private repo for this directory and track the changes there.

Install Traefik

Basic Traefik setup using docker compose.

Create a file called traefik.env in ~/gitops

echo 'TRAEFIK_DOMAIN=traefik.example.com' > ~/gitops/traefik.env
echo 'EMAIL=admin@example.com' >> ~/gitops/traefik.env
echo "HASHED_PASSWORD='$(openssl passwd -apr1 changeit)'" >> ~/gitops/traefik.env

Note:

• Change the domain from traefik.example.com to the one used in production. DNS entry needs to point to the Server IP.
• Change the letsencrypt notification email from admin@example.com to correct email.
• Change the password from changeit to more secure.

env file generated at location ~/gitops/traefik.env will look like following:

TRAEFIK_DOMAIN=traefik.example.com
EMAIL=admin@example.com
HASHED_PASSWORD=$apr1$K.4gp7RT$tj9R2jHh0D4Gb5o5fIAzm/

If Container does not deploy put the HASHED_PASSWORD in ''.

Deploy the traefik container with letsencrypt SSL

docker compose --project-name traefik \
  --env-file ~/gitops/traefik.env \
  -f overrides/compose.traefik.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.traefik-ssl.yaml up -d

This will make the traefik dashboard available on traefik.example.com and all certificates will reside in the Docker volume cert-data.

For LAN setup deploy the traefik container without overriding overrides/compose.traefik-ssl.yaml.

Install MariaDB

Basic MariaDB setup using docker compose.

Create a file called mariadb.env in ~/gitops

echo "DB_PASSWORD=changeit" > ~/gitops/mariadb.env

Note:

• Change the password from changeit to more secure.

env file generated at location ~/gitops/mariadb.env will look like following:

DB_PASSWORD=changeit

Note: Change the password from changeit to more secure one.

Deploy the mariadb container

docker compose --project-name mariadb --env-file ~/gitops/mariadb.env -f overrides/compose.mariadb-shared.yaml up -d

This will make mariadb-database service available under mariadb-network. Data will reside in /data/mariadb.

Install ERPNext

Create first bench

Create first bench called erpnext-one with one.example.com and two.example.com

Create a file called erpnext-one.env in ~/gitops

cp example.env ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
sed -i 's/DB_PASSWORD=123/DB_PASSWORD=changeit/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
sed -i 's/DB_HOST=/DB_HOST=mariadb-database/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
sed -i 's/DB_PORT=/DB_PORT=3306/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
sed -i 's/SITES=`erp.example.com`/SITES=\`one.example.com\`,\`two.example.com\`/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
echo 'ROUTER=erpnext-one' >> ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env
echo "BENCH_NETWORK=erpnext-one" >> ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env

Note:

• Change the password from changeit to the one set for MariaDB compose in the previous step.

env file is generated at location ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env.

Create a yaml file called erpnext-one.yaml in ~/gitops directory:

docker compose --project-name erpnext-one \
  --env-file ~/gitops/erpnext-one.env \
  -f compose.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.redis.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.multi-bench.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.multi-bench-ssl.yaml config > ~/gitops/erpnext-one.yaml

For LAN setup do not override compose.multi-bench-ssl.yaml.

Use the above command after any changes are made to erpnext-one.env file to regenerate ~/gitops/erpnext-one.yaml. e.g. after changing version to migrate the bench.

Deploy erpnext-one containers:

docker compose --project-name erpnext-one -f ~/gitops/erpnext-one.yaml up -d

Create sites one.example.com and two.example.com:

# one.example.com
docker compose --project-name erpnext-one exec backend \
  bench new-site --mariadb-user-host-login-scope=% --db-root-password changeit --install-app erpnext --admin-password changeit one.example.com

You can stop here and have a single bench single site setup complete. Continue to add one more site to the current bench.

# two.example.com
docker compose --project-name erpnext-one exec backend \
  bench new-site --mariadb-user-host-login-scope=% --db-root-password changeit --install-app erpnext --admin-password changeit two.example.com

Create second bench

Setting up additional bench is optional. Continue only if you need multi bench setup.

Create second bench called erpnext-two with three.example.com and four.example.com

Create a file called erpnext-two.env in ~/gitops

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/frappe/frappe_docker/main/example.env -o ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
sed -i 's/DB_PASSWORD=123/DB_PASSWORD=changeit/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
sed -i 's/DB_HOST=/DB_HOST=mariadb-database/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
sed -i 's/DB_PORT=/DB_PORT=3306/g' ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
echo "ROUTER=erpnext-two" >> ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
echo "SITES=\`three.example.com\`,\`four.example.com\`" >> ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env
echo "BENCH_NETWORK=erpnext-two" >> ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env

Note:

• Change the password from changeit to the one set for MariaDB compose in the previous step.

env file is generated at location ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env.

Create a yaml file called erpnext-two.yaml in ~/gitops directory:

docker compose --project-name erpnext-two \
  --env-file ~/gitops/erpnext-two.env \
  -f compose.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.redis.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.multi-bench.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.multi-bench-ssl.yaml config > ~/gitops/erpnext-two.yaml

Use the above command after any changes are made to erpnext-two.env file to regenerate ~/gitops/erpnext-two.yaml. e.g. after changing version to migrate the bench.

Deploy erpnext-two containers:

docker compose --project-name erpnext-two -f ~/gitops/erpnext-two.yaml up -d

Create sites three.example.com and four.example.com:

# three.example.com
docker compose --project-name erpnext-two exec backend \
  bench new-site --mariadb-user-host-login-scope=% --db-root-password changeit --install-app erpnext --admin-password changeit three.example.com
# four.example.com
docker compose --project-name erpnext-two exec backend \
  bench new-site --mariadb-user-host-login-scope=% --db-root-password changeit --install-app erpnext --admin-password changeit four.example.com

Create custom domain to existing site

In case you need to point custom domain to existing site follow these steps. Also useful if custom domain is required for LAN based access.

Create environment file

echo "ROUTER=custom-one-example" > ~/gitops/custom-one-example.env
echo "SITES=\`custom-one.example.com\`" >> ~/gitops/custom-one-example.env
echo "BASE_SITE=one.example.com" >> ~/gitops/custom-one-example.env
echo "BENCH_NETWORK=erpnext-one" >> ~/gitops/custom-one-example.env

Note:

• Change the file name from custom-one-example.env to a logical one.
• Change ROUTER variable from custom-one.example.com to the one being added.
• Change SITES variable from custom-one.example.com to the one being added. You can add multiple sites quoted in backtick (`) and separated by commas.
• Change BASE_SITE variable from one.example.com to the one which is being pointed to.
• Change BENCH_NETWORK variable from erpnext-one to the one which was created with the bench.

env file is generated at location mentioned in command.

Generate yaml to reverse proxy:

docker compose --project-name custom-one-example \
  --env-file ~/gitops/custom-one-example.env \
  -f overrides/compose.custom-domain.yaml \
  -f overrides/compose.custom-domain-ssl.yaml config > ~/gitops/custom-one-example.yaml

For LAN setup do not override compose.custom-domain-ssl.yaml.

Deploy erpnext-two containers:

docker compose --project-name custom-one-example -f ~/gitops/custom-one-example.yaml up -d

Site operations

Refer: site operations

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