System Requirements

Hardware, software, and infrastructure requirements for self-hosting Quackback.

Minimum Requirements

Software Requirements

PostgreSQL

Version: 18 or higher (required)

Required Extensions:

• pgvector - Vector similarity search
• pg_cron - Scheduled jobs (optional)

Redis or Dragonfly

Required for background job processing (BullMQ).

Docker (Recommended)

The published image is multi-arch (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64), so it runs natively on both x86-64 and ARM hosts (Apple Silicon, AWS Graviton, Ampere, Raspberry Pi).

Bun (Alternative)

If running without Docker:

Network Requirements

Ports

Domains

You need:

• A domain or subdomain (e.g., feedback.yourcompany.com)
• SSL certificate (Let's Encrypt works great)

Outbound Connections

Quackback needs to reach:

• Email provider (SMTP or Resend API)
• OAuth providers (GitHub, Google, etc.)
• Integration services (Slack, etc.)

Database Requirements

PostgreSQL Configuration

Recommended settings for production:

# Memory
shared_buffers = 256MB
work_mem = 16MB
maintenance_work_mem = 128MB

# Connections
max_connections = 100

# WAL
wal_level = replica

Storage

Estimate storage needs:

Add headroom for:

• Attachments (if enabled)
• Vector embeddings (for AI features)
• Logs and backups

Backups

Warning: Plan for regular backups to prevent data loss. Point-in-time recovery is recommended for production deployments.

• Daily full backups
• Point-in-time recovery (recommended)
• Off-site backup storage

Cloud Provider Options

AWS

Minimum instance: t3.small

Google Cloud

Minimum machine: e2-small

DigitalOcean

Minimum droplet: 2GB RAM

Railway / Render / Fly.io

All support Quackback with managed databases.

VPS Providers

Budget-friendly options:

Security Requirements

TLS/SSL

• Required for production
• Use Let's Encrypt (free) or commercial cert
• Minimum TLS 1.2

Firewall

Allow only:

• 443 (HTTPS)
• 80 (HTTP, redirect to HTTPS)
• 22 (SSH, restricted IPs)

Block:

• Direct database access
• Application port from public

Secrets

Warning: Securely manage all secrets including SECRET_KEY, database credentials, OAuth client secrets, and integration tokens. Use environment variables or a secrets management solution.

Plan for scaling

Single Server

Suitable for:

• Up to 10,000 users
• Moderate traffic

Scale horizontally

For higher loads:

• Multiple application instances
• Load balancer
• Shared PostgreSQL
• Session storage (database-backed)

Scale the database

Options:

• Vertical scaling (bigger instance)
• Read replicas (for read-heavy loads)
• Connection pooling (PgBouncer)

Set up monitoring

Application

• Health check endpoint
• Error tracking (Sentry, etc.)
• Request latency

Database

• Connection count
• Query performance
• Disk usage

Infrastructure

• CPU utilization
• Memory usage
• Disk I/O
• Network throughput

Next Steps

• Docker Deployment - Quick start with Docker
• Manual Installation - Install with Bun
• Configuration - Environment variables