Before you start
- An OVHcloud account
- Kule, on macOS 14 or later
- Terminal on your Mac: a few commands, once, to turn on root access
- Optional: a domain. It doesn’t need to be on Cloudflare.
1Order the VPS
When you order a VPS from OVHcloud, choose the current LTS release of Ubuntu as the operating system. For the size, at least 2 GB of memory and 30 GB of disk is enough; that is the minimum Dokploy itself recommends.
When the VPS is ready, OVHcloud sends a delivery email. It contains the IPv4 address and the username; the temporary password is not in the email itself but behind a secure link in it. On Ubuntu the username is ubuntu, on Debian it is debian. You can also find the VPS later in the Control Panel under Bare Metal Cloud, in the Virtual private servers section.
2First login
Open Terminal on your Mac and connect with the user from the email. On the first login, OVHcloud asks you to change the temporary password; once you change it, the session closes. This is expected: connect again with your new password.
ssh ubuntu@203.0.113.24 # change the temporary password, the session closes ssh ubuntu@203.0.113.24
3Turn on root access
While still on the server, set a password for root and allow root to log in over SSH with a password. You will enter this password into Kule once, in a moment.
sudo passwd root echo 'PermitRootLogin yes' | sudo tee /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/0-root.conf sudo systemctl restart ssh
4Add it to Kule
In Kule, open Sunucu ekle (Add server) from the left menu. Type the IP address, leave the user as root, enter the root password you just set and click Bağlan (Connect).
On the first connection, Kule shows the server’s fingerprint; once you confirm it, it is pinned. Kule then generates an SSH key just for this server, adds it to the server and stores it in the Keychain. The password is used only once and is never written anywhere.
5Preparation and Dokploy
From here on, it is the same with every provider. Kule looks at the server (operating system, resources, ports 80, 443 and 3000, internet access), sets up the protections and installs Dokploy with its official install script.
apt-get install -y -q ufw fail2ban unattended-upgrades ufw allow 22/tcp && ufw allow 80/tcp && ufw allow 443/tcp && ufw --force enable curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh docker swarm init --advertise-addr 203.0.113.24 ✓ http://203.0.113.24:3000 is responding
Once the panel is ready, Kule creates the admin account and the API key without opening a browser and stores them in the Keychain. Details are in the Dokploy guide.