System Requirements

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

Minimum Requirements

Software Requirements

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is the only datastore Quackback needs. It holds your data, the background job queue, caches, rate limits, and realtime events.

Quackback creates both extensions on startup. If the database user can't create extensions, ask a superuser to run CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector; and CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pg_trgm; once.

Before it runs migrations, Quackback checks the server version, both extensions, and the TEMPORARY privilege. If anything is missing it stops without changing the database and names what to fix.

Object storage

File uploads need S3-compatible storage: AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, a Railway bucket, or the bundled PGSTY Silo (a maintained MinIO fork) in the Docker Compose stack. Without storage, uploads are disabled.

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, Amazon SES, or Resend)
• 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

• 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

SECRET_KEY is required and must be at least 32 characters. Generate one with openssl rand -base64 32 and keep it the same across upgrades: it signs sessions and encrypts stored credentials.

Plan for scaling

Single Server

Suitable for:

• Up to 10,000 users
• Moderate traffic

Scale horizontally

For higher loads, split HTTP serving from background processing across replicas. See Scale with multiple replicas.

Scale the database

Options:

• Vertical scaling (bigger instance)
• Read replicas (for read-heavy loads)
• Connection pooling in session mode (PgBouncer pool_mode = session)

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
• Scale with multiple replicas - Split web and worker roles
• Configuration - Environment variables