
Ask HN: A server admin panel that “just works?” - serverQuestion
I&#x27;m interested in setting up my own server just to make it easy to run and play around with web projects. Does anyone know if there is a heroku like service that I can host on my own server to manage web apps&#x2F;sites.<p>Think connecting to a git repo from the UI. connecting to a domain to create development urls: projectname.domain.com, that sort of things.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what to look&#x2F;search for online to find what I&#x27;m looking for.
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syntheticcdo
If you want to set up your own server, why do you need a control panel? Just
learn to configure all the services. Command line is all you need.

If you want ease-of-use, running your own server is not the way to go. You can
get pretty far with AWS/GCP/Azure free tier.

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blinky1456
Stupid question here, but I have tried to google it a couple times and not
found the exact answers I want.

When setting up a server on VPS what exact 'dashboards'/'control panels' are
available?

Like op, I want to keep an eye on things manually in one place, similar to
what I get pre-set up in cpanel shared hosting. Disk space usage, total
traffic used that month, tracking server load, pages visited, and by what IPs,
etc.(ideally without using google analytics script tag on page)

I wan't to analyse the performance of my webapp really, relative to the amount
of people signed up.

I am going to be using LEMP stack.

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benbristow
CPanel and Plesk are probably your best options but you'll be paying a pretty
penny for them

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64738
I can whole-heartedly recommend Dokku[0], it's been fantastic for me, and does
exactly what you describe.

Edit: Doh! Except for the admin panel, which was a pretty major part of your
question :) Dokku is CLI-based, though I seem to remember there being a third-
party web ui for it, can't remember. Either way, it might still be worth
checking out.

[0] [https://github.com/dokku/dokku](https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

~~~
cweagans
Dokku is excellent and does all the heavy lifting for what OP was asking for.
For the UI, [https://github.com/intercity/intercity-
server](https://github.com/intercity/intercity-server) is a good way to go
([https://intercity.io/](https://intercity.io/) has some screenshots and
such).

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jchw
If you really want something like Heroku, you could try Dokku, though that's
not really a control panel. Digital Ocean provides a droplet image for it.

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lykr0n
Cockpit does a lot of the basic functionality you need.

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solomatov
It's a great option and is installed by default on Fedora.

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mcny
Might want to mention fedora server edition (I think it is implied but people
might not realize)

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jimsmart
Another option I don't see mentioned so far:

We use VirtualMin on our servers for all of our commodity hosting (it is based
upon WebMin). There is an open source version and a pro version. We use the
pro version — I don't personally know what the exact differences are, as it
was my colleague's choice historically, so I can't comment specifically on the
open source version's features. But we've found it pretty good, and cheap
enough ($6/month/server).

It takes literally seconds to set up a new domain, provides config info to
copy across to our DNS provider (we don't do DNS on the same machine, other
folk can provide a far more reliable service at no extra cost: FWIW, we use
Joker), it has support for autocerts from Let's Encrypt, and has fairly up-to-
date app bundles for a lot of well known web apps.

I'm a developer, and have no issues with command line, but using a control
panel for day-to-day basics is just so easy, pretty much a total no-brainer,
and also allows us to have more technically minded folk manage their own
domains/subdomains and services (if you wish to share/resell).

I've used Plesk before, and didn't like it much, for a variety of reasons
(including when it borked an update, and was all kinds of hell to fix)

[https://www.virtualmin.com](https://www.virtualmin.com)

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devxpy
I've been using captainduckduck in production for a while now.

It might be a little finniky for you to wrap your head around at first, but it
does work well once you do that.

[https://captainduckduck.com](https://captainduckduck.com)

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kiwijamo
I’ve started using Ansible to document how I want my server set up in a
machine readable way. Very useful because when I want to start over I can just
run my Ansible playbooks to set up everything to how I want it. I’d prefer
that to an GUI approach such as an admin panel. A GUI makes it difficult to
record your desired configuration and then later initialise a new server (or a
reinstalled OS) to use said configuration. Even simply writing a shell script
to do the configuration would be great as it means you’re both (1) documenting
your configuration preferences and (2) making a tool that sets everything up
as per your preferences. YMMV of course.

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reacharavindh
I think this is the usecase Redhat is trying to target with its Cockpit
application. Easy GUI admin for a server. I think it works with all Linux
distros but more tuned for Refora, RHEL, CentOS.

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thekonqueror
I built ScaleDynamix[1] with similar goals in mind. It connects to your
AWS/GCP/Azure account via terraform and gives you a cpanel like interface to
launch sites. You can also horizontally scale the stack either manually or
automatically based on utilization. It's optimized for php, but you can run
any other languages easily on it.

There is a free version available for non-commercial projects.

[1] [https://scaledynamix.com](https://scaledynamix.com)

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woudsma
I’m using Dokku + Kirby or Serverpilot + Kirby. Kirby has a plugin called
autogit, where you can update/save changes to/from a git repository

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iambateman
Autogit is about to change my life.

I run probably 12 Kirby sites, and it’s amazing, but content backups is a
major issue.

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vgeek
If you want LAMP/LEMP, check out [https://vestacp.com/](https://vestacp.com/).

You can provision a subdomain and clone whatever repo into the root directory
and be functional pretty quickly.

~~~
locusm
Vesta has had quite a few security issues, they seem to have lost quite a bit
of momentum lately. Vesta is OK but not for CLI noobs.

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bfoks
Take a look at this discussion:
[https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1067833058731147265](https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1067833058731147265)

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keviv
For PHP projects, Laravel Forge is a good option
[https://forge.laravel.com/](https://forge.laravel.com/)

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unixhero
Webmin

Cloudron

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the_common_man
+1 for cloudron

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leetbulb
We have a Plesk server that we use to host random stuff easily. Takes care of
DNS, Git, updates, etc etc. Great solution for something that just works.

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slenk
I doubt OP will want to pay for a service when he is looking for a product to
"host random stuff"

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InGodsName
ServerPilot.io is nice for php/wordpress lately they turned themsleves into a
paid only solution.

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kyriakos
Cpanel still works fine assuming you are looking to run LAMP. Takes care of
everything for you.

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daemonk
Get a dedicated root server with hetzner. It's relatively cheap for what you
get.

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nik736
That doesn't help with the question

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leowoo91
Can IaaS be considered as the new admin panel?

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xaduha
After I started using Nixos I can't imagine using anything else.
[https://nixos.org](https://nixos.org)

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Kudos
Where can I read about the nixos admin panel?

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xaduha
I don't know if there is one, probably wouldn't be that hard to make if anyone
actually bothered. At the end of the day what is simpler that modifying a text
file? You can search for options and default values here
[https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html)

~~~
Kudos
Ok, it's just that was the entire point of the post.

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xaduha
I read the question more broadly, same as syntheticcdo at the top there. In my
opinion learning Nix/NixOS is easier and more productive than learning general
Linux administration. These kinds of panels are half-measure.

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alixaxel
Flynn.io does this to some extent.

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corobo
Is Flynn still about? I've not heard from them in ages (subscribed to their
blog) - checking on it, looks like they've not posted anything in over a year

Really liked it when I was testing it a while back but reluctant to use it if
it's going to sunset on me

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pmlnr
Webmin, yunohost, freedombox

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spicyusername
Cockpit meets these needs.

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alexandernst
Plesk

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slifin
Proxmox

