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Using AWS EC2 is the recommended way of deploying Onyx. It is simple to set up and should meet the performance needs of 90% of organizations looking to use Onyx!

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Guide

1

Create an EC2 instance

Create an EC2 instance with the appropriate resources. For this guide, we will use the recommended m7g.xlarge instance.
Read our Resourcing guide for more details.
  • Give your instance a descriptive name like onyx-prod
  • Select the Amazon Linux 2023 AMI
  • Select the 64-bit (Arm) architecture
  • Select the m7g.xlarge instance type
  • Select Allow HTTPS traffic from the internet in the Network settings section
  • Configure storage following the Resourcing Guide
EC2 Instance CreationEC2 Security Group Configuration
2

Create the instance

Click Launch instance and then view your instance details.
Save the Public IPv4 address of the instance!
EC2 Public IPv4 Address
3

Point domain to the instance

If you don’t have a domain, buy one from a DNS provider like GoDaddy or just skip HTTPS for now.
To point our domain to the new instance, we need to add an A and CNAME record to our DNS provider.The A record should be the subdomain that you would like to use for the Onyx instance like prod.The CNAME record should be the same name with the www. in front resulting in www.prod pointing to the full domain like prod.onyx.app.DNS A Record ConfigurationDNS CNAME Record Configuration
4

Install Onyx requirements

Onyx requires git, docker, and docker compose.To install these on Amazon Linux 2023, run the following:
sudo yum update -y

sudo yum install docker -y
sudo service docker start

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

sudo yum install git
5

Install and Configure Onyx

To install Onyx, we’ll need to clone the repo and set the necessary environment variables.
git clone https://github.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx.git

cd onyx/deployment/docker_compose
cp env.prod.template .env
cp env.nginx.template .env.nginx
Fill out the .env and .env.nginx files.
.env
WEB_DOMAIN=<YOUR_DOMAIN>  # Something like "onyx.app"

# If your email is something like "chris@onyx.app", then this should be "onyx.app"
# This prevents people outside your company from creating an account
VALID_EMAIL_DOMAINS=<YOUR_COMPANIES_EMAIL_DOMAIN>

# See our auth guides for options here
AUTH_TYPE=
.env.nginx
DOMAIN=<YOUR_DOMAIN>  # Something like "onyx.app"
6

Launch Onyx

Running the init-letsencrypt.sh script will get us a SSL certificate from letsencrypt and launch the Onyx stack.
./init-letsencrypt.sh
You will hit an error if you fail the letsencrypt workflow more than 5 times. You will need to wait 72 hours or request a new domain.
If you are skipping the HTTPS setup, start Onyx manually:
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml -p onyx-stack up -d --build --force-recreate
Give Onyx a few minutes to start up.You can monitor the progress with docker logs onyx-stack-api_server-1 -f.
You can access Onyx from the instance Public IPv4 or from the domain you set up earlier!

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Next Steps

Configure Authentication

Set up authentication for your Onyx deployment with OAuth, OIDC, or SAML.

More Onyx Configuration Options

Learn about all available configuration options for your Onyx deployment.