Introduction

So you want to deploy your Phoenix app. You head to the docs, and in typical Elixir fashion you find a number of thorough and well-written guides. Unfortunately, they're all guides for deploying to cloud PaaS platforms. Well, there is a Releases guide, but it only teaches you how to build a release. Not how to deploy it!

But what if you want to deploy to an actual server? Maybe you want to avoid vendor lock-in, or maybe you just want to manage your own system. You know, like the good old days. This is an opinionated guide for deploying an Elixir/Phoenix app to an actual server. VPS, bare metal - it doesn't matter. Just a server.

Nothing here is novel, but there aren't really any guides that spell it out.

I am going to spell it out.