Deploy It in Minutes: CapRover on a Bare‑Bones VPS

Introduction

Cannes, around 04:20 AM. The hackathon clock is merciless. Our funding‑rate bot is humming, but the graphs? Non‑existent. “Can we spin up ClickHouse and Grafana now?” asks my teammate, already opening fluence.network in another tab. That night we refined a repeatable recipe: grab a cheap VPS, drop CapRover on top, deploy whatever we need — front‑end, microservice, or a full analytics stack — in minutes, not hours.

Below is the distilled playbook I wish I had earlier. Same conversational style as our arbitrage series, just more commands. 🔧

Missed the funding‑rate arbitrage article? Catch up here — the stack we deploy will power its dashboards.

1. Provision a VPS

Pick any cloud or bare‑metal provider you like — DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS Lightsail, your own homelab — the toolchain below works everywhere. Create a mid‑tier Ubuntu 22.04 box (2–4 vCPU, 4–8 GB RAM gives ClickHouse and Grafana breathing room), add your public SSH key, and take note of the server’s public IP. That’s all you need for the rest of the guide.

2. SSH in & prep the box

ssh ubuntu@<VPS_IP>
# Always update first
apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install Docker & Compose

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu  # log out & back in to apply

# Docker Compose plugin
sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin -y

Quick sanity check: docker run hello-world should spit out the classic handshake.

Open these ports in your VPS firewall / security group for CapRover & Docker Swarm to work: 80, 443, 3000, 996, 7946, 4789, 2377/tcp 7946, 4789, 2377/udp

3. One‑liner CapRover install

CapRover is basically “Heroku + Traefik” in a single container.

docker run -d \
  --name caprover \
  -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 3000:3000 \
  -e ACCEPTED_TERMS=true \
  -e MAIN_NODE_IP_ADDRESS='YOUR_VPS_IP' \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /captain:/captain \
  caprover/caprover

Wait ~30 seconds, then open: http://<LIGHTSAIL_IP>:3000 Set your root domain (e.g., vps.yourdomain.com) and copy the suggested DNS records.

Default caprover password: captain42

4. Point a domain & get free SSL

In your DNS provider, add an A record for captain.vps.yourdomain.com → VPS IP.
Back in CapRover, hit “Enable HTTPS”. Under the hood Let’s Encrypt + Traefik handle certs.
Voilà — dashboard now at https://captain.vps.yourdomain.com.

5. Deploy ClickHouse & Grafana

5.1 Create an app: clickhouse

Apps → Create new app → name clickhouse.
Choose “Method 3: deploy a pre‑built image”.
Image name: clickhouse/clickhouse-server:latest (official image ➜ https://hub.docker.com/r/clickhouse/clickhouse-server/).
Ports: leave 8123 (HTTP) & 9000 (native) exposed.
Hit Deploy.

5.2 Create an app: grafana

Same drill, new app:

Image: grafana/grafana:latest (official image ➜ https://hub.docker.com/r/grafana/grafana/)
Exposed port: 3000
Environment variable: GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=supersecret

Deploy! CapRover auto‑assigns subdomains: https://clickhouse.vps.yourdomain.com, https://grafana.vps.yourdomain.com

6. Wire Grafana → ClickHouse

Log into Grafana (admin / supersecret).
Connections → Add data source → ClickHouse.
URL: https://clickhouse.vps.yourdomain.com:8123
Auth: default default / '' (change in prod!).
Save & test — green check means success.

Now import a dashboard JSON or craft a panel showing average funding rates from your bot’s table. Instant visuals, zero glue code.

7. Automate the boring bits

Captain Definition files let you version deployments (think docker‑compose YAML).
Use CapRover CLI in CI/CD: caprover deploy on every git push main.
Set up scheduled backups: ClickHouse → S3, Grafana → JSON export.

What I Learned Doing This (Again and Again)

Speed isn’t just nice — it’s morale. When the idea–>prototype loop shrinks to minutes, the team stays in flow. CapRover isn’t magic, but it removes 80% of yak‑shaving:

No fighting reverse proxies.
No manual SSL renewals.
No “wait, which port is that service on?”

The other 20 %? Still on you. Keep your secrets safe, monitor your disk, and rehearse restores. ☕️

Ready to Ship?

Fork this guide, swap in your own services, and deploy something today. Questions, war stories, or better tricks — my DMs are always open.

💬 Twitter — https://twitter.com/defi_defiler 💼 LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/chlenc

chlenc/ship_fast.md