Automate Deployments: Step-by-Step Guide to Building a CI/CD Pipeline on a VPS

Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is no longer optional for teams that need rapid, reliable releases. For many businesses and developers, hosting CI/CD tooling on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) provides greater control, cost-efficiency, and data sovereignty compared to cloud-managed services. This article walks you through a practical, technical, step-by-step approach to building a CI/CD pipeline on a VPS, explains the underlying principles, describes typical application scenarios, compares deployment strategies, and gives actionable recommendations for choosing VPS resources.

Why run CI/CD on a VPS?

Before diving into implementation, understand the motivations and trade-offs. A VPS-based CI/CD setup gives you:

• Full environment control: Choose OS, runtime versions, and networking rules.
• Cost predictability: Fixed monthly pricing for compute and storage, often cheaper than per-minutes cloud runners.
• Data compliance: Keep builds, secrets, and artifacts inside your infrastructure.
• Custom tooling: Install self-hosted artifact repos, private Docker registries, and custom runners.

Trade-offs include maintenance overhead (security updates, backups), limited horizontal scalability unless you link multiple VPS nodes, and potentially longer setup time. For many small-to-medium projects and enterprises with compliance needs, the benefits outweigh these costs.

Core concepts and architecture

A typical CI/CD pipeline consists of several logical components. On a VPS, you map these components to processes or containers:

• Source Control: Git repositories hosted on GitHub, GitLab, or a self-hosted Git server.
• CI Runner / Orchestrator: Jenkins, GitLab Runner, Drone CI, or a GitHub Actions self-hosted runner that executes build/test jobs.
• Build Environment: Docker images or VM environments used to run compiles, tests, and packaging.
• Artifact Storage / Registry: Docker registry (registry:2), Nexus, or S3-compatible object storage for artifacts.
• Deployment Engine: Docker Compose, Kubernetes, systemd units, or Ansible/Capistrano for deploying releases.
• Reverse Proxy and TLS: Nginx or Traefik to route traffic and manage TLS via Let’s Encrypt.
• Monitoring & Rollback: Health checks, metrics (Prometheus/Grafana), and scripted rollback strategies (blue-green, canary).

The simplest reliable architecture on a single VPS places CI runner, Docker Engine, and a reverse proxy on the server; artifact registry may be local or remote depending on storage needs.

Step-by-step implementation

1. Provision and secure the VPS

Begin with a clean VPS instance. Choose a Linux distribution you are comfortable maintaining (Ubuntu LTS or Debian are common). Basic security and provisioning steps:

• Create a non-root user and enable sudo: adduser ciadmin; usermod -aG sudo ciadmin
• Disable password authentication and enforce SSH key auth in /etc/ssh/sshd_config: PasswordAuthentication no
• Install and configure a firewall (ufw or iptables): ufw allow OpenSSH; ufw enable
• Keep the system updated: apt update && apt upgrade -y

Also consider enabling automatic security updates and setting up fail2ban to throttle brute-force attempts.

2. Install the runtime stack

On most pipelines, Docker dramatically simplifies environment consistency. Install Docker and Docker Compose:

• Install Docker Engine from Docker’s official repository.
• Install docker-compose or use Docker Compose V2: apt install docker-compose-plugin or curl the compose binary.
• Add your CI user to the docker group: usermod -aG docker ciadmin

Optionally install Podman if you prefer rootless containers, or use a lightweight orchestration layer like Docker Compose for multi-container apps.

3. Choose and deploy a CI orchestrator

Popular self-hosted choices:

• Jenkins: Extremely extensible, runs on JVM, good for complex pipelines—requires more maintenance.
• GitLab CI: If you host GitLab, use GitLab Runner installed on the VPS.
• Drone CI: Container-native, simple YAML pipelines.
• GitHub Actions self-hosted runner: If your repos are on GitHub, register a self-hosted runner.

Example: install GitLab Runner on Linux and register it with a GitLab project. Steps include downloading the binary, installing as a systemd service, then running:

gitlab-runner register –non-interactive –url “https://gitlab.com/” –registration-token “TOKEN” –executor “docker” –description “vps-runner” –docker-image “docker:20.10” –tag-list “vps”

For Jenkins, run Jenkins in Docker: docker run -d –name jenkins -p 8080:8080 -p 50000:50000 -v /var/jenkins_home:/var/jenkins_home jenkins/jenkins:lts

4. Set up secure credentials and secrets

Never hardcode credentials. Use the CI system’s secrets store (Jenkins Credentials, GitLab CI variables, Drone secrets) or a HashiCorp Vault instance. For Docker registry pushes, store DOCKER_USERNAME and DOCKER_PASSWORD as protected variables. For SSH-based deployments, add a deploy key to your repository and keep the private key on the VPS under the CI user (~/.ssh/id_rsa_deploy) with 600 permissions.

5. Build, test, and create artifacts

Define pipeline steps in YAML (GitLab CI example) or Jenkinsfile. A minimal GitLab .gitlab-ci.yml that builds a Docker image and pushes to a registry:

stages:
– build
– deploy
build:
stage: build
image: docker:20.10
services:
– docker:dind
script:
– docker login -u “$DOCKER_USER” -p “$DOCKER_PASS”
– docker build -t registry.example.com/myapp:$CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA .
– docker push registry.example.com/myapp:$CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA
artifacts:
expire_in: 1 day
paths:
– build/

Key points: use docker:dind for DinD (Docker-in-Docker) or use a Kaniko/BuildKit approach to avoid privileged containers. Tag images with commit SHAs for immutable releases.

6. Deploy with zero-downtime strategies

On a single VPS, common strategies are:

• Blue-Green: Run two app instances behind Nginx; switch traffic by updating upstream.
• Canary: Route a percentage of traffic to the new version for a short period.
• Rolling update with health checks: Replace containers one-by-one and verify health endpoints.

Example using Docker Compose and a simple rolling update script:

• docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml pull
• docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d –no-deps –build app
• Check health: curl -f http://localhost:8080/health || rollback

For reverse proxying and automated TLS, Traefik is excellent: it watches Docker labels, automatically obtains Let’s Encrypt certificates, and can route blue-green deployments by switching label values or services.

7. Add monitoring, logging, and alerting

Monitoring and observability are essential. Install Prometheus node exporter and application exporters to collect metrics. Use Grafana for dashboards and Alertmanager for rules. For logs, use a centralized collector like Fluentd/Fluent Bit sending logs to an ELK/Opensearch stack or to a hosted logging provider.

Basic health checks should be integrated into your pipeline: after deployment, run smoke tests (curl endpoints, run lightweight integration tests). If health checks fail, trigger an automated rollback using the previous image tag kept in the registry.

8. Backups and disaster recovery

Back up critical data: Git repositories (if self-hosted), registry storage, Jenkins home, and database dumps. Use incremental backups and store copies off-site or in object storage. Regularly test restores to ensure backups are valid.

Application scenarios and best fits

Using a VPS for CI/CD is particularly appropriate when:

• Your organization needs tight control over build artifacts and secrets.
• You have predictable build load that fits within the VPS capacity.
• You need to host private registries or artifacts behind company firewalls.
• You want to integrate with legacy systems on the same network.

For extremely high concurrency build workloads, or when you want elastic scaling, managed CI/CD services or Kubernetes clusters across multiple nodes may be better. However, VPS-based runners can be supplemented by on-demand additional servers or cloud instances if needed.

Advantages comparison: VPS vs managed CI/CD

Compare aspects:

• Cost: VPS gives predictable costs; managed services charge per build minute or concurrent runner.
• Control: VPS provides full control; managed services abstract infrastructure.
• Maintenance: VPS requires OS and runtime maintenance; managed services are maintained by provider.
• Scalability: Managed services scale automatically; VPS is limited to allocated resources but can be scaled vertically or by adding nodes.

In short, choose VPS when control and data locality are priorities; choose managed CI for minimal ops overhead and elastic scaling.

Choosing VPS resources and configuration

When selecting VPS specs for CI/CD, consider:

• CPU: Build tasks are CPU-bound; multi-core CPUs speed parallel builds.
• Memory: Memory-heavy builds (containerized tests, JVM) need more RAM (4–16GB+ depending on project).
• Disk: Fast SSD storage for Docker layers and artifacts; separate disk/volume for registry storage.
• Bandwidth: High throughput matters for pulling/pushing images and large artifact transfers.
• Snapshots & Backups: Use VPS snapshots for quick rollback and backups for persistence.

For many small teams, a VPS with 4 vCPU, 8–16GB RAM, and 80–160GB SSD is a practical starting point. Monitor usage and scale vertically or horizontally as required.

Security and compliance checklist

Key items to maintain a secure CI/CD environment on a VPS:

• Use SSH keys and restrict login; protect private keys with passphrases.
• Store secrets in a secure vault and use ephemeral tokens where possible.
• Isolate build environments (containers, namespaces) to reduce lateral movement risk.
• Patch OS and container runtimes regularly; use image scanning to detect vulnerabilities.
• Limit outbound network access for runners to only necessary endpoints.

Summary and next steps

Building a CI/CD pipeline on a VPS is a practical approach for teams that need control, compliance, and predictable costs. The core steps are: provision and secure your VPS, install Docker and the CI orchestrator of your choice, securely manage credentials, define reproducible pipelines that build and publish immutable artifacts, and deploy with safe strategies such as blue-green or rolling updates backed by health checks and monitoring. Complement the pipeline with logging, backups, and a robust security posture.

If you’re evaluating hosting providers, consider VPS options that offer reliable performance, SSD storage, and snapshots for quick recovery. For teams based or operating in the USA, a stable choice is the USA VPS offering from VPS.DO — you can find details here: https://vps.do/usa/. This can be a solid foundation for your self-hosted CI/CD infrastructure.