Self Hosting

In this guide, we will walk you through the process of setting up a self-hosted environment. Self-hosting allows you to have full control over your applications and data. It’s a great way to ensure privacy, control, and customization.

We will cover two main options for setting up your self-hosted environment: using a cloud server or using your desktop. For the cloud server, we will use an AWS EC2 instance. For the desktop, we will use Docker to create a local environment.

Let’s get started!

Setting up Docker Environment

Option 1 - Using Cloud Server

Best way to start is to create EC2 machine on AWS. It must of minimum t3.medium/t3a.medium

Run the below command to install docker engine.

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o install-docker.sh

sudo sh install-docker.sh

Option 2 - Using Docker Desktop

For Mac:

  1. Download Docker Desktop for Mac from the Docker Hub.
  2. Double-click the downloaded .dmg file and drag the Docker app icon to the Applications folder.
  3. Open Docker Desktop from the Applications folder. You might be asked to provide your system password to install additional software.

For Windows:

  1. Download Docker Desktop for Windows from the Docker Hub.
  2. Run the installer and follow the instructions. You might be asked to enable Hyper-V and “Containers” Windows features.
  3. Open Docker Desktop. You might be asked to log out and log back in, or restart your machine, for changes to take effect.

After installation, you can verify the installation by opening a terminal (Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal app on Mac) and running the command docker --version. This should display the installed version of Docker.

Installing Plane

Installing Plane is a very easy and minimal step process.

Prerequisite

  • Docker installed and running
  • OS with bash scripting enabled (Ubuntu, Linux AMI, macos). Windows systems need to have gitbash
  • User context used must have access to docker services. In most cases, use sudo su to switch as root user
  • Use the terminal (or gitbash) window to run all the future steps

Downloading Latest Stable Release

mkdir plane-selfhost

cd plane-selfhost

curl -fsSL -o setup.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/makeplane/plane/master/deploy/selfhost/install.sh

chmod +x setup.sh

Proceed with setup

Above steps will set you ready to install and start Plane services.

Let’s get started by running the ./setup.sh command.

This will prompt you with the below options.

Select a Action you want to perform:
   1) Install
   2) Start
   3) Stop
   4) Restart
   5) Upgrade
   6) Exit

Action [2]: 1

For the 1st time setup, type “1” as action input.

This will create a folder plane-app or plane-app-preview (in case of preview deployment) and will download 2 files inside that

  • docker-compose.yaml
  • .env

Again the options [1-6] will be popped up and this time hit 6 to exit.


Continue with setup - Environment Settings

Before proceeding, we suggest you to review .env file and set the values. Below are the most import keys you must refer to. You can use any text editor to edit this file.

NGINX_PORT - This is default set to 80. Make sure the port you choose to use is not preoccupied. (e.g NGINX_PORT=8080)”

WEB_URL - This is default set to http://localhost. Change this to the FQDN you plan to use along with NGINX_PORT (eg. https://plane.example.com:8080 or http://[IP-ADDRESS]:8080)”

CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS - This is default set to http://localhost. Change this to the FQDN you plan to use along with NGINX_PORT (eg. https://plane.example.com:8080 or http://[IP-ADDRESS]:8080)”

There are many other settings you can play with, but we suggest you configure EMAIL SETTINGS as it will enable you to invite your teammates onto the platform.


Continue with setup - Start server

Let’s again run the ./setup.sh command. You will again be prompted with the below options. This time select 2 to start the services

Select an Action you want to perform:
   1) Install
   2) Start
   3) Stop
   4) Restart
   5) Upgrade
   6) Exit

Action [2]: 2

Expect something like this.
Downloading docker images

Be patient as it might take sometime based on download speed and system configuration. If all goes well, you must see something like this

Downloading completed

This is the confirmation that all images were downloaded and the services are up & running.

You have successfully self hosted Plane instance. Access the application by going to IP or domain you have configured it on (e.g https://plane.example.com:8080 or http://[IP-ADDRESS]:8080)


Stopping the server

In case you want to make changes to .env variables, we suggest you to stop the services before doing that.

Let’s again run the ./setup.sh command. You will again be prompted with the below options. This time select 3 to stop the services

Select an Action you want to perform:
   1) Install
   2) Start
   3) Stop
   4) Restart
   5) Upgrade
   6) Exit

Action [2]: 3

If all goes well, you must see something like this

Stop Services


Restarting the server

In case you want to make changes to .env variables, without stopping the server or you noticed some abnormalities in services, you can restart the services with RESTART option.

Let’s again run the ./setup.sh command. You will again be prompted with the below options. This time select 4 to restart the services

Select a Action you want to perform:
   1) Install
   2) Start
   3) Stop
   4) Restart
   5) Upgrade
   6) Exit

Action [2]: 4

If all goes well, you must see something like this

Restart Services


Upgrading Plane version (v0.14.0 onwards)

It is always advised to keep Plane up to date with the latest release.

Lets again run the ./setup.sh command. You will again be prompted with the below options. This time select 5 to upgrade the release.

Select a Action you want to perform:
   1) Install
   2) Start
   3) Stop
   4) Restart
   5) Upgrade
   6) Exit

Action [2]: 5

By choosing this, it will stop the services and then will download the latest docker-compose.yaml and variables-upgrade.env. Here system will not replace .env with the new one.

You must expect the below message

Alt text

Once done, choose 6 to exit from prompt.

“It is very important for you to compare the 2 files variables-upgrade.env and .env. Copy the newly added variable from downloaded file to .env and set the expected values.”

Once done with making changes in .env file, jump on to Start Server

Upgrading from v0.13.2 to v0.14.x

This is a one time activity for users who are upgrading from v0.13.2 to v0.14.0

As there have been significant changes to Self Hosting process, this step mainly covers the data migration from current (v0.13.2) docker volumes to newly created volumes

“Before we begin with migration, make sure your v0.14.0 was started and then stopped. This is required to know the newly created docker volume names.”

Begin with downloading the migration script using below command


curl -fsSL -o migrate.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/makeplane/plane/master/deploy/selfhost/migration-0.13-0.14.sh

chmod +x migrate.sh

Now run the ./migrate.sh command and expect the instructions as below

******************************************************************

This script is solely for the migration purpose only.
This is a 1 time migration of volume data from v0.13.2 => v0.14.x

Assumption:
1. Postgres data volume name ends with _pgdata
2. Minio data volume name ends with _uploads
3. Redis data volume name ends with _redisdata

Any changes to this script can break the migration.

Before you proceed, make sure you run the below command
to know the docker volumes

docker volume ls -q | grep -i "_pgdata"
docker volume ls -q | grep -i "_uploads"
docker volume ls -q | grep -i "_redisdata"

*******************************************************

Given below list of REDIS volumes, identify the prefix of source and destination volumes leaving "_redisdata"
---------------------
plane-app_redisdata
v0132_redisdata

Provide the Source Volume Prefix :

Open another terminal window, and run the mentioned 3 command. This may be different for users who have changed the volume names in their previous setup (v0.13.2)

For every command you must see 2 records something like shown in above example of redisdata

To move forward, you would need PREFIX of old setup and new setup. As per above example, v0132 is the prefix of v0.13.2 and plane-app is the prefix of v0.14.0 setup

Back to original terminal window, Provide the Source Volume Prefix and hit ENTER.

Now you will be prompted to Provide Destination Volume Prefix. Provide the value and hit ENTER

Provide the Source Volume Prefix : v0132
Provide the Destination Volume Prefix : plane-app

In case the suffixes are wrong or the mentioned volumes are not found, you will receive the error shown below. The image below displays an error for source volumes.

Migrate Error

In case of successful migration, it will be a silent exit without error.

Now it’s time to restart v0.14.0 setup.