Skip to content

AWS & DigitalOcean deployment guide updates #9124

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
fantix merged 4 commits into from
Nov 28, 2025
+11 −226
Merged

AWS & DigitalOcean deployment guide updates #9124

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from 3 commits
Commits
Show all changes
4 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
e258266
AWS & DigitalOcean deployment guide updates
fmoor Nov 26, 2025
b8c7fb1
Fix link syntax
fmoor Nov 26, 2025
899e9f8
fix ref syntax
fmoor Nov 26, 2025
e679d4c
Update docs/reference/running/deployment/aws_aurora_ecs.rst
fmoor Nov 28, 2025
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
9 changes: 9 additions & 0 deletions docs/reference/running/deployment/aws_aurora_ecs.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -6,6 +6,15 @@ AWS

:edb-alt-title: Deploying Gel to AWS

.. note::

We recomend using our `helm chart <helm-chart_>`_ to deploy gel on AWS. The
CloudFormation guide below does not configure TLS certificates correctly.

.. _helm-chart:
https://github.com/geldata/helm-charts/blob/main
/charts/gel-server/README.md

.. include:: ./note_cloud.rst

In this guide we show how to deploy Gel on AWS using Amazon Aurora and
Expand Down
228 changes: 2 additions & 226 deletions docs/reference/running/deployment/digitalocean.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -6,229 +6,5 @@ DigitalOcean

:edb-alt-title: Deploying Gel to DigitalOcean

In this guide we show how to deploy Gel to DigitalOcean either with a
One-click Deploy option or a
:ref:`managed PostgreSQL <ref_guide_deployment_digitalocean_managed>`
database as the backend.

.. include:: ./note_cloud.rst

.. include:: ./note_cloud_reset_password.rst

One-click Deploy
++++++++++++++++

Prerequisites
=============

* |gelcmd| CLI (`install <gel-install_>`_)
* DigitalOcean account

Click the button below and follow the droplet creation workflow on
DigitalOcean to deploy a Gel instance.

.. image:: https://www.deploytodo.com/do-btn-blue.svg
:target: 1-click-button_
:width: 225px

.. _1-click-button:
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/edgedb?refcode=f0b0d77b5d49

By default, the admin password is ``gelpassword``; let's change that to
something more secure. First, find your droplet's IP address on the
`DigitalOcean dashboard <https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets>`_ and assign
it to an environment variable ``IP``.

.. _DigitalOcean: https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets?
.. _here: gel-install_

.. code-block:: bash

$ IP=<your-droplet-ip>

Then use the ``read`` command to securely assign a value to the ``PASSWORD``
environment variable.

.. code-block:: bash

$ echo -n "> " && read -s PASSWORD

Use these variables to change the password for the default role |admin|.

.. code-block:: bash

$ printf gelpassword | gel query \
--host $IP \
--password-from-stdin \
--tls-security insecure \
"alter role admin set password := '${PASSWORD}'"
OK: ALTER ROLE

.. _ref_guide_deployment_digitalocean_link:

Construct the DSN
-----------------

Let's construct your instance's DSN (also known as a "connection string").
We'll write the value to a file called ``dsn.txt`` so it doesn't get stored in
shell logs.

.. code-block:: bash

$ echo gel://admin:$PASSWORD@$IP > dsn.txt

Copy the value from ``dsn.txt``. Run the following command to open a REPL
to the new instance.

.. code-block:: bash

$ gel --dsn <dsn> --tls-security insecure
gel>

Success! You're now connected to your remote instance.

It's often useful to assign an alias to the remote instance using
:gelcmd:`instance link`.

.. code-block:: bash

$ gel instance link \
--dsn <dsn> \
--trust-tls-cert \
--non-interactive \
my_instance
Authenticating to gel://admin@1.2.3.4:5656/main
Trusting unknown server certificate:
SHA1:1880da9527be464e2cad3bdb20dfc430a6af5727
Successfully linked to remote instance. To connect run:
gel -I my_instance

You can now use the ``-I`` CLI flag to execute commands against your remote
instance:

.. code-block:: bash

$ gel -I my_instance
gel>


.. _ref_guide_deployment_digitalocean_managed:

Deploy with Managed PostgreSQL
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Prerequisites
=============

* |gelcmd| CLI (`install <gel-install_>`_)
* DigitalOcean account
* ``doctl`` CLI (`install <doclt-install_>`_)
* ``jq`` (`install <jq_>`_)

.. _gel-install: https://www.edgedb.com/install
.. _doclt-install: https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/doctl/how-to/install
.. _jq: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/


Create a managed PostgreSQL instance
====================================

If you already have a PostgreSQL instance you can skip this step.

.. code-block:: bash

$ DSN="$( \
doctl databases create gel-postgres \
--engine pg \
--version 14 \
--size db-s-1vcpu-1gb \
--num-nodes 1 \
--region sfo3 \
--output json \
| jq -r '.[0].connection.uri' )"


Provision a droplet
===================

Replace ``$SSH_KEY_IDS`` with the ids for the ssh keys you want to ssh into the
new droplet with. Separate multiple values with a comma. You can list your
keys with ``doctl compute ssh-key list``. If you don't have any ssh keys in
your DigitalOcean account you can follow `this guide <upload-ssh-keys_>`_ to
add one now.

.. _upload-ssh-keys:
https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets
/how-to/add-ssh-keys/to-account/

.. code-block:: bash

$ IP="$( \
doctl compute droplet create gel \
--image gel \
--region sfo3 \
--size s-2vcpu-4gb \
--ssh-keys $SSH_KEY_IDS \
--format PublicIPv4 \
--no-header \
--wait )"

Configure the backend Postgres DSN. To simplify the initial deployment, let's
instruct Gel to run in insecure mode (with password authentication off and
an autogenerated TLS certificate). We will secure the instance once things are
up and running.

.. code-block:: bash

$ printf "GEL_SERVER_BACKEND_DSN=${DSN} \
\nGEL_SERVER_SECURITY=insecure_dev_mode\n" \
| ssh root@$IP -T "cat > /etc/gel/env"

$ ssh root@$IP "systemctl restart gel.service"

Set the superuser password.

.. code-block:: bash

$ echo -n "> " && read -s PASSWORD

$ gel -H $IP --tls-security insecure query \
"alter role admin set password := '$PASSWORD'"
OK: ALTER ROLE

Set the security policy to strict.

.. code-block:: bash

$ printf "GEL_SERVER_BACKEND_DSN=${DSN} \
\nGEL_SERVER_SECURITY=strict\n" \
| ssh root@$IP -T "cat > /etc/gel/env"

$ ssh root@$IP "systemctl restart gel.service"


.. note::

To upgrade an existing Gel droplet to the latest point release, ``ssh``
into your droplet and run the following.

.. code-block:: bash

$ apt-get update && apt-get install --only-upgrade gel-server-6
$ systemctl restart gel

That's it! Refer to the :ref:`Construct the DSN
<ref_guide_deployment_digitalocean_link>` section above to connect to your
instance.

.. note::

The command groups :gelcmd:`instance` and :gelcmd:`project` are not
intended to manage production instances.

Health Checks
=============

Using an HTTP client, you can perform health checks to monitor the status of
your Gel instance. Learn how to use them with our :ref:`health checks guide
<ref_guide_deployment_health_checks>`.
Create a droplet and use the :ref:`ref_guide_deployment_bare_metal` guide to
install gel server.
Loading