Install on your VPS server

For under $10 p/m you can host Operational on a rock-solid virtual private server(VPS).

Install on a fresh VPS server

This is the fastest method to install Operational. This method requires that:

• You have setup a VPS server and are logged in as root
• You have configured 2 domain names(one for frontend, one for backend) for your instance.

After that, run this inside your VPS as root.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/operational-co/operational.co/master/bin/setup-vps.sh -o setup-vps.sh && sudo bash setup-vps.sh

This script will:

• Install nginx
• Install nodejs
• Install pm2
• Install mysql
• Install certbot
• Configure nginx and certbot
• Pull the repo and install dependencies
• Setup Webpush
• Create .env files
• Configure UFW for basic security measures
• Start the server

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Security

This guide should be enough to get you up and runnings, however we recommend:

• You install fail2ban and configure it
• Make sure your server has ssh key auth and not password auth
• Configure ssh to work on a non-default port

These steps are a bit overkill if you’re using Operational as a internal tool, but we recommend doing this for peace of mind.

If you’re new to VPS hosting, there are scripts out there to one-shot secure your server.

• https://www.kkyri.com/p/how-to-secure-your-new-vps-a-step-by-step-guide
• https://github.com/akcryptoguy/vps-harden/tree/master
• https://github.com/vernu/vps-audit

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Maintainence

Updating Operational

If you wish to update your copy of Operational, perform these steps:

• ssh inside your server
• go to /home/operational.go
• run git fetch origin. If this doesn’t work, set your git remote to operational’s github repo.
• cd to /app and run npm run build
• restart nodejs by running pm2 restart 0

Accessing mysql

You might need to access your mysql database directly via Sequel Ace or other Db viewer.

To do this,

• ssh inside your server
• run sudo ufw allow 3306/tcp. This will allow outside connections
• run nano /root/.passwords. This is where the root and operational_user passwords are stored.

Use the passwords to access your mysql installation.

Server recommendations

• We recommended Hetzner because they have the best bang-for-your-buck pricing. But really, any VPS provider will work.
• Operational doesn’t require much ram. We recommend at least 1 gb of ram but it will run on lower ram too.
• We recommend ubuntu 20.x,22.x or 24.x for the server OS.