---
title: Deploy your first app
---

In order to deploy an app you need two things:

1. a server (e.g. [Hetzner VPS](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud))
2. a DNS provider (e.g. [Gandi](https://www.gandi.net/en))

## Create your server

Co-op Cloud has itself near zero system requirements. You only need to worry about the system resource usage of your apps and the overhead of running containers with the docker runtime (often negligible. If you want to know more, see [this FAQ entry](/faq/#isnt-running-everything-in-containers-inefficient)). We will deploy a new Nextcloud instance in this guide, so you will only need 1GB of RAM according to [their documentation](https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/system_requirements.html). You may also be interested in this [FAQ entry](/faq/#arent-containers-horrible-from-a-security-perpective) if you are curious about security in the context of containers.

## Wire up your DNS

Typically, you'll need two A records, one to point to the VPS itself and another to support sub-domains for the apps. You can then support an app hosted on your root domain (e.g. `example.com`) and other apps on sub-domains (e.g. `foo.example.com`, `bar.example.com`). Your entries in your DNS provider setup might look like the following.

    @  1800 IN A 116.203.211.204
    *. 1800 IN A 116.203.211.204

Where `116.203.211.204` can be replaced with the IP address of your server.

## Install server prerequisites

On your server, you'll want to install [Docker](https://www.docker.com/). This can be done by following the [install documentation](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/).

On a [Debian system](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/), that can be done like so.

```bash
$ sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io containerd runc
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg-agent software-properties-common
$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
```

## Bootstrap `abra`

Once your DNS and docker daemon are up, you can install [`abra`](https://git.autonomic.zone/autonomic-cooperative/abra) locally on your developer machine and hook it up to your server.

Firstly, install `abra` locally.

!!! danger "Here be dragons"

    `abra` is written in Bash version 4 and if you have a version older than
    that, you will face issues. You can check your current bash version by
    running `bash --version`. Some developers of the tool are using Zsh > 5 and
    things work fine. Some MacOS users have had to use this [Homebrew
    formula](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/bash#default) to upgrade their
    Bash.

```bash
$ curl https://install.abra.autonomic.zone | bash
```

The source for this script [is here](https://git.autonomic.zone/coop-cloud/abra/src/branch/main/installer/installer).

You may need to add the `~/.local/bin/` directory with your `$PATH` in order to run the executable.

```bash
$ export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin
$ abra --help  # check it works
```

Now you can connect `abra` with your new server.

```bash
$ abra server add example.com
```

Where `example.com` is replaced with your server DNS name.

!!! note

    `abra server add` accepts also a `<user>` and `<port>` arguments for your
    custom SSH connection details. What is happening here is that you are using
    the underlying SSH machinery to make a secure connection to the server
    installed Docker daemon. This allows `abra` to run remote deployments from
    your local development machine.

Once you've added the sever, you can initialise the [new single-host swarm](https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/key-concepts/).

```bash
$ abra server example.com init
```

You will now have a new `~/.abra/` folder on your local file system which stores all the configuration of your Co-op Cloud instance. You can easily share this as a git repository with others.

## Deploy Traefik

In order to have your Co-op cloud installation automagically provision SSL certificates, we will first install [Traefik](https://doc.traefik.io/traefik/). This tool is the main entrypoint for all web requests (e.g. like NGINX) and supports automatic SSL certificate configuration and other quality-of-life features which make deploying libre apps more enjoyable.

```bash
$ abra app new --server example.com --domain traefik.example.com traefik
```

We can then choose `traefik` as the app name.

You will want to take a look at your generated configuration and tweak the `LETS_ENCRYPT_EMAIL` value:

```bash
$ abra app traefik config
```

This is the required environment variables that you can configure and are injected into the app configuration when deployed.

```
$ abra app traefik deploy
```

We can then check that everything came up as expected.

```bash
$ abra app traefik ps   # status check
$ abra app traefik logs # logs watch
```

## Deploy Nextcloud

And now we can deploy apps.

Let's create a new Nextcloud app.

```bash
$ abra app new --server example.com --domain cloud.example.com nextcloud
```

We can then choose `nextcloud` as the app name.

And we need to generate secrets for the app: database connection password, root password and admin password.

```bash
$ abra app nextcloud secret generate --all
```

!!! warning

    Take care, these secrets are only shown once on the terminal so make sure
    to take note of them! `abra` makes use of the [Docker
    secrets](https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/secrets/) mechanism to ship
    these secrets securely to the server and store them as encrypted data.

Then we can deploy the Nextcloud.

```bash
$ abra app nextcloud deploy
```

And once again, we can watch to see that things come up correctly.

```bash
$ abra app nextcloud ps   # status check
$ abra app nextcloud logs # logs watch
```

!!! note

    Since Nextcloud takes some time to come up live, you can run the `ps`
    command under `watch` like so.

    ```bash
    $ watch abra app nextcloud ps
    ```

    And you can wait until you see that all containers have the "Running" state.

Your `traefik` instance will detect that a new app is coming up and generate SSL certificates for it.