Website deployment setup on Hetzner

Configuring Website Deployment on Hetzner

Hetzner is a German cloud provider with the best price-to-performance ratio in Europe. Cloud VPS is 3–5x cheaper than AWS/GCP with comparable specs. GDPR-compliant servers in the EU.

Creating Server via hcloud CLI

# Install CLI
brew install hetzner-cloud/tap/hcloud

# Create server
hcloud server create \
    --name myapp-prod \
    --type cpx21 \          # 3 vCPU, 4 GB RAM — ~9€/mo
    --image ubuntu-22.04 \
    --location nbg1 \       # Nuremberg
    --ssh-key my-key \
    --user-data-file cloud-init.yaml

Terraform for Hetzner

# main.tf
terraform {
  required_providers {
    hcloud = {
      source  = "hetznercloud/hcloud"
      version = "~> 1.44"
    }
  }
}

provider "hcloud" {
  token = var.hcloud_token
}

resource "hcloud_server" "app" {
  name        = "myapp-prod"
  image       = "ubuntu-22.04"
  server_type = "cpx21"
  location    = "nbg1"
  ssh_keys    = [hcloud_ssh_key.default.id]
  user_data   = file("cloud-init.yaml")

  labels = {
    env  = "production"
    app  = "myapp"
  }
}

resource "hcloud_firewall" "app" {
  name = "myapp-firewall"

  rule {
    direction = "in"
    protocol  = "tcp"
    port      = "22"
    source_ips = ["10.0.0.0/8"]  # only via VPN
  }

  rule {
    direction = "in"
    protocol  = "tcp"
    port      = "80"
    source_ips = ["0.0.0.0/0", "::/0"]
  }

  rule {
    direction = "in"
    protocol  = "tcp"
    port      = "443"
    source_ips = ["0.0.0.0/0", "::/0"]
  }
}

resource "hcloud_load_balancer" "lb" {
  name               = "myapp-lb"
  load_balancer_type = "lb11"
  location           = "nbg1"
}

resource "hcloud_load_balancer_target" "server" {
  type             = "server"
  load_balancer_id = hcloud_load_balancer.lb.id
  server_id        = hcloud_server.app.id
}

GitHub Actions Deploy

- name: Deploy to Hetzner
  uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v1
  with:
    host: ${{ secrets.HETZNER_IP }}
    username: deploy
    key: ${{ secrets.SSH_PRIVATE_KEY }}
    script: |
      set -e
      cd /var/www/myapp

      # Fetch changes
      git fetch origin main
      git reset --hard origin/main

      # Update dependencies
      composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
      npm ci --omit=dev
      npm run build

      # Migrations and cache
      php artisan migrate --force
      php artisan optimize

      # Reload
      sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm nginx
      php artisan queue:restart

Hetzner Object Storage (S3-compatible)

# Setup AWS CLI for Hetzner
aws configure set aws_access_key_id $HETZNER_S3_KEY
aws configure set aws_secret_access_key $HETZNER_S3_SECRET
aws configure set region eu-central

# Create bucket
aws --endpoint-url https://fsn1.your-objectstorage.com \
    s3 mb s3://myapp-assets

# Upload static files
aws --endpoint-url https://fsn1.your-objectstorage.com \
    s3 sync ./dist/assets s3://myapp-assets/assets \
    --cache-control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"

Hetzner + Docker Swarm (Multiple Servers)

# Initialize Swarm on first server
ssh server1 "docker swarm init"

# Add worker nodes
JOIN_TOKEN=$(ssh server1 "docker swarm join-token worker -q")
ssh server2 "docker swarm join --token $JOIN_TOKEN server1:2377"
ssh server3 "docker swarm join --token $JOIN_TOKEN server1:2377"

# Deploy stack
docker -H ssh://deploy@server1 stack deploy \
    -c docker-compose.prod.yml \
    myapp

Implementation Timeline

• Single VPS + Nginx + deploy: 1–2 days
• Terraform + Load Balancer: 3–4 days
• Docker Swarm cluster: 4–5 days