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Putting a site or an application online

Your VPS Ultra has its own IPv4 address and its IPv6 address: your domains point directly to them, and your server receives traffic on every port you open. You serve as many sites and domains as you wish.

1. Point your domain to your server​

Wherever your domain's DNS zone is managed, create two records with the addresses shown in your server's card, VPS section of your client area:

TypeNameValue
A@, www or the subdomain you wantthe IPv4 address from your card
AAAAthe same namethe IPv6 address from your card

When your domain's DNS zone is managed by Simafri, our team sets up these records for you: write to us. Before switching over a site that is already live, also ask us to lower the record's time to live (TTL).

To check from your computer:

dig +short A app.my-company.com
dig +short AAAA app.my-company.com

2. Install your web server and your certificate​

Two common choices on Linux:

  • Caddy, which obtains and renews your HTTPS certificates on its own:

    apt install caddy

    then, in /etc/caddy/Caddyfile:

    app.my-company.com {
        reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000
    }

    and systemctl reload caddy;

  • Nginx or Apache, with Certbot for the Let's Encrypt certificate:

    apt install nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx
    certbot --nginx -d app.my-company.com -d www.app.my-company.com

    Certbot installs the certificate, adds listening on port 443 and schedules its automatic renewal.

On Windows Server, IIS serves your sites, and an ACME client such as win-acme installs and renews your Let's Encrypt certificates there.

3. Keep your application running​

A Node.js, Python, Go or Java application that runs continuously is entrusted to systemd: it starts with the server and restarts on its own if it stops. Example, in /etc/systemd/system/app.service:

[Unit]
Description=My application
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/srv/app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node server.js
Restart=always
Environment=NODE_ENV=production
User=www-data

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now app
journalctl -u app -f    # follow its logs

Docker and Docker Compose also install as on any Linux server.

4. Your database​

PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redis or MongoDB install with the package manager, or from the vendor's official repository. The guaranteed memory of your VPS Ultra suits a demanding database well: set its working memory (shared_buffers for PostgreSQL, innodb_buffer_pool_size for MySQL) according to the memory of your size.

Keep your database listening on localhost, and administer it from your computer through an SSH tunnel:

ssh -L 5432:localhost:5432 root@app.my-company.com

Your tool (DBeaver, pgAdmin, TablePlus) then connects to localhost:5432.

Frequently asked questions​

My site shows a certificate error.​

Check in this order: your A and AAAA records point to the addresses on your card (dig), your web server listens on ports 80 and 443 (ss -tlnp), your firewall lets them through (ufw status), and the certificate covers this name (certbot certificates).

Can I host several sites on my VPS Ultra?​

Yes, as many as you wish: point each domain to your addresses and add its block to your web server.