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Introduction

This repository provides a quickstart template for deploying a VPS on Hetzner to host your self-hosted services using Docker and Docker Compose.

At the core of this setup is used the terraform-hetzner-selfhosted-services-host Terraform module, which handles the provisioning of the infrastructure and necessary system services.

What It Automates​

By following this guide, you will fully automate the provisioning and configuration of:

  • A Hetzner VPS to host your services
  • Docker Compose for running your self-hosted applications
  • Secret management via Infisical, ensuring your services receive up-to-date and securely managed environment variables
  • A syncer service (deployr) to keep Docker Compose files on the VPS in sync with your GitHub repository and Infisical secrets, enabling a GitOps-style workflow

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Integrated Tooling​

In addition, the guide helps you integrate:

  • Let's Encrypt – for automated TLS certificate issuance and renewal
  • Infisical – to securely manage secrets used by your containers
  • Cloudflare – to manage DNS for your domains
  • AWS S3 – to store Terraform state securely
  • GitHub Actions – for CI/CD to apply infrastructure changes
  • Tailscale – for secure VPN access to your services

Why Use This Guide?​

This setup enables you to build a fully automated and reproducible self-hosting environment. The infrastructure and service configuration are defined as code, so you can:

  • Destroy and recreate your entire environment at any time
  • Track changes through version control
  • Minimize manual intervention and configuration drift

This approach is immutable in spirit—meaning the entire system state can be re-established from code, secrets, and remote state.

Who Is This For?​

This guide is especially useful for people who:

  • Prefer hosting self-managed services on a cloud VPS (rather than a home server), while keeping access secure through VPN
  • Want to learn and practice Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and Terragrunt
  • Value reproducibility, automation, and a clean GitOps-style deployment model for personal infrastructure