Production Mindset - Laravel with Docker Compose

Introduction

In the previous article, I showed how to build a production-ready Docker image for Laravel & Filament.

But in real-world applications, a single container is never enough.

Running a production application means dealing with multiple concerns:

• web server
• PHP runtime
• database
• cache
• background workers
• scheduled jobs

And this is where things usually start to get messy.

The problem with "simple" setups

Most Docker Compose examples look like this:

• one container
• maybe a database
• everything else mixed together

It works.

Until it doesn’t.

From my experience, this approach quickly leads to:

• poor observability
• difficult debugging
• no real scaling strategy
• fragile deployments

A simple rule I follow

Over time, I ended up following one principle:

👉 one container = one responsibility

It sounds simple, but it completely changes how you design your architecture.

A production-oriented architecture

Instead of one container doing everything, I split responsibilities:

• app → PHP-FPM runtime
• web → reverse proxy (Nginx)
• db → PostgreSQL
• redis → cache & queues
• horizon → queue workers
• scheduler → scheduled jobs

Each service is isolated.

Each service can scale independently.

Each service can fail independently.

👉 This is what makes the system predictable.

A common trap: the "public volume"

One mistake I’ve seen (and made) multiple times is how static assets are handled.

A typical setup uses:

public:/var/www/app/public

Looks fine.

But in practice:

• old assets can persist between deployments
• new builds may not be reflected
• deployments become inconsistent

👉 This kind of issue is subtle… and painful in production.

Another key point: bootstrap vs runtime

In many setups, migrations and initialization tasks run inside the main container.

I prefer separating concerns:

• runtime containers → long-running processes
• bootstrap → one-time tasks (migrations, setup)

👉 In real production systems, this is often handled in CI/CD pipelines instead.

Why this matters

This kind of architecture gives you:

• better isolation
• clearer debugging
• safer deployments
• real scalability

It’s not the simplest setup.

But it’s much closer to what you actually need in production.

Going further

In this article, I intentionally kept things focused on concepts and architecture.

👉 I cover the full Docker Compose setup (with real configuration, volumes, healthchecks, and production patterns)

https://filamentmastery.com/articles/production-ready-docker-compose-for-laravel-filament/

Series

This article is part of a series on production-ready Laravel & Filament setups:

• Docker image (multi-stage build)
• Docker Compose architecture
• CI/CD pipelines
• deployment strategies

I’ll be covering each part progressively.

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If you’ve already built similar setups, I’d be curious to hear how you structure your containers in production.