DigitalOcean

Deploy Operate on DigitalOcean

Operate is also available as a one-click Droplet image on the DigitalOcean Marketplace. Launch it from the Marketplace into your own DigitalOcean account and it comes up as a fully provisioned Operate instance, Docker, the full Compose stack, a reverse proxy, and a trusted HTTPS certificate for the Droplet's own IP address, all configured automatically. Operate never sends your logs, records, or code to us. Investigation context goes only to the AI provider you configure, so with a model hosted in your own DigitalOcean account it stays there.

Opens the Operate listing on the DigitalOcean Marketplace, where the Create Operate Droplet button launches it into your account.

The image is built on Ubuntu 24.04 with Docker Engine and the Compose plugin already installed, along with a pinned Operate release. The stack is wired to a systemd service, operate.service, so it starts on boot and comes back on its own after a reboot.

HTTPS is automatic. Caddy fronts ports 80 and 443 and obtains a trusted certificate for the Droplet's own IP address, so you get a working HTTPS URL with no domain to buy and nothing to run yourself. The web interface is also reachable directly on port 8080 if you prefer.

The Droplet serves Operate at the domain root (/) by default rather than under /operate. This is controlled by the same OPERATE_MOUNT_PATH variable the self-hosted guide documents; on the Droplet it lives in /opt/operate/operate.env. Open https://<droplet-ip>/ to continue setup.

You can point a domain at the Droplet later. As long as the name resolves to the Droplet, it gets its own certificate on the first request, again with nothing for you to configure. This works for a domain pointed straight at the Droplet's IP address. A DigitalOcean Reserved IP is different: the Droplet doesn't recognize it as one of its own addresses by default, so a domain pointed at a Reserved IP needs that address added to /opt/operate/tls/addresses by hand (one address per line, no restart needed) before its certificate will be issued.

On first boot the Droplet checks whether a newer Operate release exists and updates before starting, so a Droplet launched from an older Marketplace snapshot still comes up current.

By default the Droplet keeps MongoDB, Redis, and the rest of Operate's data on the Droplet itself, in persistent Docker volumes. That data is durable across container restarts and reboots, but it lives and dies with the Droplet, destroy the Droplet and the data goes with it.

Attaching a DigitalOcean Block Storage volume (Storage → Volumes in the DigitalOcean control panel) moves that data off the Droplet. It then survives the Droplet being destroyed or replaced, and can be snapshotted independently of the Droplet.

Recommended size

20GB is the practical minimum (about $2/month) and 50GB is a good starting point for production (about $5/month), at DigitalOcean's rate of $0.10 per GiB per month.

Attaching at Droplet creation

Attach the volume while creating the Droplet and there is nothing else to configure. On first boot the Droplet detects the volume, formats it if it is unformatted, mounts it, and points the stack's data at it through a single environment variable, OPERATE_DATA_ROOT. That is the same variable the self-hosted guide already documents for moving data onto a separate disk, it is not DigitalOcean-specific. Attach only one volume: if more than one is attached when the Droplet is created, first boot picks one for you with no way to choose which, and no warning that it happened.

Four things move onto the volume: MongoDB data, Redis data, cloned repositories, and Operate's internal secrets.

Verifying it's active

mountpoint /mnt/operate-data && df -h /mnt/operate-data
grep OPERATE_DATA_ROOT /opt/operate/operate.env
docker compose --env-file /opt/operate/operate.env -f /opt/operate/app/docker-compose.yml config | grep /mnt/operate-data
cat /var/log/operate-setup.log

Attaching or switching volumes later

Attach the volume from the DigitalOcean control panel, then run sudo operate storage on the Droplet. If more than one volume is attached, pass the volume name. The command stops the service, mounts the volume, migrates existing data onto it, and restarts, all on its own.

sudo operate storage
sudo operate storage my-volume-name

To move to a different volume without a new Droplet, for example switching to a larger one, attach the new volume while the old one is still attached and mounted, then run sudo operate storage <new-volume-name>. It detects that a different volume is now attached, copies your data across to it, and only then is the old volume safe to detach.

Moving data back to local storage

sudo operate storage --to-local-storage moves data from the data volume back onto local Docker volumes so the volume can be safely detached. It is a clean no-op if the data is already on local storage. It refuses if OPERATE_DATA_ROOT points at a data volume but the volume isn't mounted. It checks free disk space first and refuses with a clear error if there isn't enough room. Otherwise it copies the data across, clears OPERATE_DATA_ROOT, unmounts the volume, removes the /etc/fstab entry, and restarts the stack. The volume is then genuinely safe to detach.

sudo operate storage --to-local-storage

Moving to a new Droplet

A data volume can carry your data to a different Droplet: attach it on the old Droplet, detach it, create a new Droplet from the current image, and attach the volume to the new one. If you'd rather stop paying for the volume afterwards, run sudo operate storage --to-local-storage on the new Droplet and detach it. If you only want your current Droplet on the latest release, you don't need a new Droplet at all, run sudo operate update instead, see Staying current below.

A Marketplace snapshot is a point-in-time image. Apart from the first-boot check described above, nothing updates a Droplet on its own after it is created.

sudo operate update checks for a newer release and updates if one exists. It is safe to re-run at any time and is a no-op when you're already current.

sudo operate update

Everything is logged to /var/log/operate-setup.log, the same log data volume setup writes to.

If an update's restart fails, operate.service is left running the previous version and /opt/operate/app/docker-compose.yml.bak keeps that version's compose file, so nothing is lost. Re-run sudo operate update to retry, or restore the .bak file over docker-compose.yml by hand and restart the service to stay on the previous version.

Open the Droplet's HTTPS URL and confirm the getting-started page loads with a trusted certificate, no browser warning. From there, follow step 6 of the self-hosted guide to confirm the integration is wired end to end.