Infrastructure — what keeps the server running
The base layer of an SMB stack: containers, management, , monitoring. Four tools that together form the foundation for every further application.
Why this cluster
Before an application runs, the platform has to stand: a container engine for isolation, a UI for management without SSH, a with auto-SSL in front, a monitoring system that raises the alarm when something falls over. These four tools carry every further service — the mandatory layer before , or your own mail server even make sense.
Tools in this cluster
Docker
Container engine for isolated services on your own server
Licence cost
Free
Apache-2.0 licensed container engine: containers, Compose, volumes, networks. Example: how a construction company with 25 staff runs eight services (Caddy, Nextcloud, Mailcow, BookStack, Vaultwarden, , , ) isolated on a single mini PC — no SaaS, no cloud lock-in.
Portainer
Container management in the browser for Docker and Swarm
Licence cost
Free (CE)
Zlib licensed web UI for , Compose and Swarm: stack editor, log stream, volume browser, multi-endpoint, container console. Example: how a marketing studio with its own UGREEN NAS manages twelve containers in the browser — without SSH, without vocabulary.
Caddy
Web server and reverse proxy with automatic HTTPS
Licence cost
Free
Apache-2.0 licensed web server with automatic certificates, HTTP/3, declarative Caddyfile syntax and hot reload. Example: how a web agency runs 30 client domains in a single Caddyfile — no Certbot jobs, no SSL outage tickets.
docker-mailserver
Self-hosted Postfix/Dovecot stack with Rspamd
Licence cost
Free
MIT licensed mail-server container: Postfix + Dovecot + Rspamd + ClamAV + , DKIM/SPF/DMARC ready, setup.sh for every admin task. Example: how a German structural engineering office migrated from Strato to its own mail server — unlimited project aliases, Bayes-trained spam filter, 100 % mail sovereignty.
Uptime Kuma
Self-hosted monitoring
Licence cost
Free
Open-source monitoring for websites, APIs, mail servers, databases and containers. Status pages for customers, notifications into your own inbox, all data on your own server. Example: how a tax office monitors its client portal, DATEV login, mail server and backup jobs with it.
Grafana
Open-source dashboards with 200+ data sources
Licence cost
Free
AGPL-3.0 licensed platform for dashboards, alerting and multi-data-source visualisation. Example: how a German private brewery with 18 staff monitors 12 fermentation tanks with IoT sensors — real-time fermentation curves, Slack alerts on drift, automatic brew protocols.
Stacks of multiple components
Individual tools are the building blocks — stacks are the finished constructions. Here several tools combine into a productive system.
Stack
Observability Stack
7 components for multi-host monitoring
7 Container · Apache-2.0 + AGPL-3.0 + GPL-3.0
, , , Promtail, , node_exporter and together — metrics, logs, alerts and dashboards in one stack. Example: how a hosting provider monitors 18 client in one dashboard.
→ See the stack showcaseOther clusters
Everything else runs on this infrastructure
Once the platform is in place, the productive tools come on top:
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