Dokploy Terraform Deployment

With this project you can provision a Hetzner VPS with Dokploy pre-installed using Terraform.

What is Dokploy?

An open-source, self-hosted Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that simplifies application deployment, database management, and server configuration through a web UI and CLI.

Why this project?

By combining Terraform with Dokploy, you get:

• Infrastructure as Code: Reproducible server provisioning which you can include in your version control
• Easy Deployment: Use Dokploy's UI/CLI to manage your applications after initial setup

Additionally:

• Server hardening and added security: SSH is hardened and root login is disabled by default. Only clients with the configured SSH key can access the server. To skip this step, remove the remote-exec line that runs ssh_init.sh in main.tf.

Table of Contents

• Default VPS Configuration
• Prerequisites
• Setup Instructions
• Accessing the Server
• Cleaning Up

Default VPS Configuration

The VPS will be provisioned with the following settings (configurable in main.tf):

server_type  = "cx23"
image        = "docker-ce"
location     = "fsn1"

Prerequisites

• Terraform installed
• Hetzner Cloud account with:
  • Activated account
  • IPv4 primary IP named "dokploy-ip"
  • API token
  • Optional: Firewall rules (add to main.tf under firewall_ids)

Setup Instructions

1. Create SSH Key

Generate SSH keys for server provisioning and access:

mkdir -p ~/.ssh/dokploy
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "dokploy" -f ~/.ssh/dokploy/id_ed25519

The SSH keys will be stored in ~/.ssh/dokploy/ on your local machine.

2. Configure Hetzner API Token

Once you've acquired your Hetzner API token, store it in the root directory of this project:

echo "your-api-token-here" > hetzner-token.txt

3. Initialize Terraform

terraform init

4. Provision the Server

terraform fmt
terraform validate
terraform apply

This will:

• Create a new server on Hetzner Cloud
• Disable root user and apply SSH hardening
• Install Dokploy

Upon successful completion, you'll see:

hcloud_server.dokploy-manager (remote-exec): Congratulations, Dokploy is installed!
hcloud_server.dokploy-manager (remote-exec): Please go to http://<your-ip>:3000

Note: Your server's firewall should expose port 3000 otherwise Dokploy will not be accessible.

Cleaning Up

To destroy all resources created by Terraform:

terraform destroy

Warning: This will permanently delete your server and all data on it.

Note: If there's a problem with cleaning up the resource automatically, make sure to clean up the known hosts on your local machine and SSH key for this project under Hetzner Console > Security > SSH keys.