William

Posted on Jan 21

Dockavel - Production-Ready Docker Stack for Laravel

#laravel #docker #devops #php

After 10 years of deploying Laravel applications, I've open-sourced the Docker stack I've been using in production.

The Problem

Every new Laravel project meant several hours of:

Configuring Docker Compose
Setting up Nginx and SSL certificates
Server hardening (Fail2Ban, firewall, SSH)
Writing deployment scripts
Debugging permissions

It was never the interesting part—just friction before actual work could begin.

The Solution: Dockavel

A production-ready Docker environment that handles everything with one command:

./scripts/deploy.sh prod

What It Does

🚀 One-Command Deployment

Development: ./scripts/dev.sh up
Production: ./scripts/deploy.sh prod
Zero-downtime deployments

🔐 Automatic SSL

Let's Encrypt integration with auto-renewal
Cloudflare origin certificates support
Smart proxy detection
HTTP to HTTPS redirects

🛡️ Security Hardening

Server setup script configures:

Fail2Ban for SSH and HTTP protection
UFW firewall with minimal ports
SSH hardening (key-only, custom port)
Automatic security updates

📦 Full Production Stack

Laravel 12+ with optimizations
PHP 8.4-FPM with xtensions
MySQL 8.0 with persistent volumes
Redis 7.0 for caching and sessions
Laravel Horizon for queue monitoring
Nginx as reverse proxy

💾 Automated Backups

Daily database backups
Configurable retention (7/30/90 days)
Email notifications
One-command restoration

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/mg2k4/Dockavel.git my-project
cd my-project

# Development
./scripts/deploy.sh dev

# Production (on your server)
./scripts/server-setup.sh  # First time only
./scripts/deploy.sh prod

Your app is now running with SSL, security hardening, and automated backups!

What Makes It Different

Laravel Sail: Great for local development, not production-focused

Laradock: Offers many options but complex for production

Dockavel: Production-first, opinionated, one command to deploy

Architecture

┌─────────────┐
│   Nginx     │ ← SSL termination, reverse proxy
└──────┬──────┘
       │
┌──────▼──────┐
│  PHP-FPM    │ ← Laravel application
└──────┬──────┘
       │
   ┌───┴───┬─────────┐
   │       │         │
┌──▼──┐  ┌─▼───┐  ┌──▼────┐
│MySQL│  │Redis│  │Horizon│
└─────┘  └─────┘  └───────┘

Links

📚 Documentation: https://dockavel.com

📦 GitHub: https://github.com/mg2k4/Dockavel

🎥 Demo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-kj-T2QlXw

My First Open Source Project

This is my first time releasing something open source. I've been using variations of this stack for 5+ years in production, and I finally cleaned it up to share.

Feedback, issues, and PRs are very welcome! Let me know what features you'd like to see.

License

MIT - Free to use, modify, and distribute.

If this saves you even a few hours of Docker configuration, I'll consider it a success. Happy deploying! 🚀

What deployment challenges are you facing with Laravel? Let me know in the comments!

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