swarm-cronjob VS Dokku

Anything from simple crontab entry to something like this: https://crazymax.dev/swarm-cronjob/

So, I found a really nice little tool that solves a problem I have in a really nice way. Specifically, cron jobs on Docker Swarm. This project: https://github.com/crazy-max/swarm-cronjob It uses labels on your services to schedule jobs. Thus it needs access to the docker api, and all the security concerns that go along with it...

As i said, if it's not exposed to the outside world and doesn't work with untrusted data, that claim is not entirely valid.

Imagine something like this getting abandoned, or someone running a year old version of it: https://github.com/crazy-max/swarm-cronjob/blob/master/READM...

Its only job is to run containers on a particular schedule, no more no less. There are very few attack vectors for something like that, considering that it doesn't talk to the outside world, nor processes any user input data.

Then again, it's not my job to pass judgement on situations like that, merely acknowledge that they exist and therefore the consequences of those suddenly breaking cannot be ignored.

I also found swarm-cronjob and ofelia both seems promising. BUT , I really like the idea of an interface to watch log files etc.

Would be great to see a comparison to some better known alternatives like

- Dokku [0]

- CapRover [1]

[0] https://dokku.com/

[1] https://caprover.com/

If you want to dig into it anyways, Dokku is an interesting mention. They provide an Open Source PaaS that you can install on your server to simplify self hosting containers.

When I came across Coolify, I thought of giving it a try. I am aware of Dokku, but I never really tried it because it doesn't have a UI. I work primarily as a UI developer, so having a nice UI to work with is a plus for me.

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.