Running Docker on a VPS: the practical starting point

Docker turned self-hosting from a weekend project into a single command. But running it well on a VPS takes a few deliberate choices, or you end up fighting it months later.

Keep data in volumes, not containers. A container is disposable; the data you care about should live in a named volume or a bound host directory. If you rebuild a container and lose your data, the data was in the wrong place.

Set resource limits. Without limits, one runaway container can consume all the RAM and take down everything else on the box. Set memory and CPU limits on your containers so a misbehaving app is contained.

Terminate TLS in one place. Run a single reverse proxy — Nginx or a proxy container — that owns ports 80 and 443 and routes to the containers behind it. Every app then gets HTTPS without each one handling certificates separately.

Pin your image versions. Using the "latest" tag seems convenient until an update breaks your app at 2am. Pin to a specific version, and update deliberately.

Know where your logs go. Container logs grow. Configure rotation so a chatty container does not fill the disk and wedge the server.

Back up the volumes and the compose files. Your compose file plus the data volumes together are the whole application. Version-control the compose files and back up the volumes with the same discipline as any other data.

Get these five right — volumes, limits, one proxy, pinned versions, log rotation — and Docker becomes a reliable way to run a whole stack of self-hosted apps on modest hardware.