Any recommended Server Managers that aren't Cloudon?

[marcusquinn]

So we've still not got any conclusive results with our EspoCRM hosting failures on Cloudron:

• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3209/timeout-in-espocrm-need-to-restart-webservice
• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5214/errors-logs-to-identify-issues
• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5177/add-espocrm-api-to-cloudron-health-checks
• https://forum.espocrm.com/forum/general/71485-unexplained-system-freezes-not-showing-in-error-logs-with-the-api-not-responding

Throwing a £300/m top of the specifications dedicated VPS at it didn't help.

So we have sadly been forced to move that app's hosting to it's own plain Ubuntu VPS.

The sad thing is, we'll never be able to risk moving this app back to Cloudron hosting because we have not been given any evidence on why it has been happening and how to solve it - and it only happens with this one Cloudron live instance, with live users, and can't be reproduced on the development environment, so no-one can reproduce the issue once we lose all the live users that were somehow triggering it.

If anyone else has had the same issues, please add your own post like these guys also did:

• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3209/timeout-in-espocrm-need-to-restart-webservice

We're still using Cloudron for what it does work for, which is still quite a lot - but now we are forced to seek an alternative solution that can have diagnostics and debugging for the application stack that we can act on in the even of issue.

So, is there anything else anyone likes and is using just for server hardening, performance tuning etc?

I haven't looked around for a while, but this is going to be a 1-app server, so it's needs really are just OS and Service Management.

Don't particularly need Docker, due to being a single-app server, but it might be interesting to compare what debugging we can do with that in an alternative setup compared to the brick-wall of silent fails we've has with the Cloudron Espo app.

(anyone that says "well everyone else is alright with it", might want to keep that to themselves, we just have bigger, faster, stronger needs)

I'm sure I saw a few mentioned, but the names escape me?...

[marcusquinn]

Reminds me of this suggestion: https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/4429/suggestion-cloudron-base-version

[marcusquinn]

Maybe this is an option?

• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5146/cockpit
• https://cockpit-project.org/
• https://alternativeto.net/software/cockpit-linux/about/

Anyone had a play? Real world experience?

[timconsidine]

@marcusquinn I'm not entirely sure what your needs are for your super-server, but I have installed CapRover https://caprover.com/ on its own VPS.

It run nicely with a number of one-click app installs. Although EspoCRM is not one of them, it has a number of ways to do custom installs to install EspoCRM

But CapRover has Portainer and Cockpit which might deal with your OS and service management. And Prometheus and Grafana if they come into the scope of service management.

[marcusquinn]

@timconsidine I'm thinking Cockpit or my "Cloudron Base" suggestion are the closest to what's needed, without all the things that aren't. Not looking for an alternative for multi-apps, like Cloudron, but an alternative for single apps on a VPS without Docker or restrictions and adaptions that prevent an app doing what it needs to and being logged at root levels.

[MooCloud_Matt]

@marcusquinn

Probably Portainer + Cockpit are the best combo/options that I know, that can fit your requirement.
You just need a docker-compose to create your "Stack" inside Portainer for EspoCRM.
Using their official image/docke-compose: https://github.com/espocrm/docker

This is super flexible but you also need to take care of maintenance, and security but is docker it's easy to maintain.

[marcusquinn]

@moocloud_matt Thanks. Don't want Docker or Portainer. Just the bare naked Ubuntu as it's for hosting a single app.

This is the setup script for EspoCRM in this way:

• https://github.com/espocrm/documentation/blob/master/docs/administration/installation-by-script.md

[scooke]

@marcusquinn Espocrm is doing exactly what you want it to when it has been set up this way?

[marcusquinn]

@scooke EspoCRM is not stable on Cloudron when you start adding more users and features, and provides no debug error logs when it locks-up and needs manual intervention to recover.

Our DIY setup, with an identical application codebase, is stable and trouble-free.

[timconsidine]

@marcusquinn did you consider netdata https://www.netdata.cloud ?

Seems to have a lot of metrics
Maybe you solved your system monitoring quest

[marcusquinn]

@timconsidine Nice, looks interesting. More like Grafana than Cockpit from my initial glance over the site? Seems to be on the growing Wishlist too:

• https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1125/netdata-real-time-monitoring