Digital Ocean

Create a Droplet#

Create a Droplet with the appropriate resources. For this guide, we will use a recommended configuration with Docker pre-installed.

Read our Resourcing guide for more details.

• Give your Droplet a descriptive name like onyx-prod

• Select a region close to your users

• Select the Docker image from the Marketplace tab

• Choose a Droplet size with at least 4 vCPUs and 16GB RAM

• Configure storage following the Resourcing Guide

• Add your SSH key for secure access

Create the Droplet#

Click Create Droplet and then view your Droplet details.

Save the Public IP address of the Droplet!

Point domain to the instance#

If you don't have a domain, buy one from a DNS provider like GoDaddy or just skip HTTPS for now.

To point our domain to the new instance, we need to add an A and CNAME record to our DNS provider.

The A record should be the subdomain that you would like to use for the Nexus instance like prod.

The CNAME record should be the same name with the www. in front resulting in www.prod pointing to the full domain like prod.onyx.app.

Install Nexus requirements#

Since we selected the Docker Marketplace image, Docker and Docker Compose are already installed.

We just need to install git:

  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install -y git

Install and Configure Nexus#

To install Nexus, we'll need to clone the repo and set the necessary environment variables.

  git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx.git

  cd onyx/deployment/docker_compose
  cp env.prod.template .env
  cp env.nginx.template .env.nginx

Fill out the .env and .env.nginx files.

  WEB_DOMAIN=<YOUR_DOMAIN>  # Something like "onyx.app"

  # If your email is something like "chris@onyx.app", then this should be "onyx.app"
  # This prevents people outside your school from creating an account
  VALID_EMAIL_DOMAINS=<YOUR_COMPANIES_EMAIL_DOMAIN>

Email/password login works out of the box, and SSO (Google / OIDC / SAML) is configured later from the admin panel. See our auth guides for details.

  DOMAIN=<YOUR_DOMAIN>  # Something like "onyx.app"

Launch Nexus#

Running the init-letsencrypt.sh script will get us a SSL certificate from letsencrypt and launch the Nexus stack.

  ./init-letsencrypt.sh

You will hit an error if you fail the letsencrypt workflow more than 5 times. You will need to wait 72 hours or request a new domain.

If you are skipping the HTTPS setup, start Nexus manually:

  docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml -p onyx-stack up -d --build --force-recreate

Give Nexus a few minutes to start up.

You can monitor the progress with `docker logs onyx-stack-api_server-1 -f`.

You can access Nexus from the instance Public IPv4 or from the domain you set up earlier!

Next Steps#

Configure Authentication#

Set up authentication for your Nexus deployment with OAuth, OIDC, or SAML.

More Nexus Configuration Options#

Learn about all available configuration options for your Nexus deployment.