Free Cloud Development Server

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📌 Table of Contents

• Free Cloud Development Server
  • 📌 Table of Contents
  • 🚀 What You Get
    • Always Free Cloud Machine for App Deployment
    • Core Services (Running in Docker)
    • Development Environment (VS Code with Host Access)
  • 🛠️ Installation
    • Step 1: Create a Free-Tier e2 Micro Instance
    • Step 2: Configure DNS
    • Step 3: Install Dependencies
    • Step 4: Clone the Repository
    • Step 5: Configure Environment Files
    • Step 6: Run Ansible Playbook
    • 📝 Issues & Contributions
  • 🙏 Acknowledgments
  • 🎉 Happy Hosting!

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🚀 What You Get

Always Free Cloud Machine for App Deployment

This repo sets up a Google Cloud free-tier e2-micro instance with an external IP for secure app hosting and remote development.

• The server is managed using Docker Compose.
• Deployment is automatically installed using Ansible.
• VS Code Server runs on the host, while other apps run in Docker containers.

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Core Services (Running in Docker)

• traefik.yourdomain.com – Reverse proxy handling traffic routing & SSL certificates.

  • Dashboard
  • Quickstart via Docker

• firefly.yourdomain.com – Personal finance manager with bank data import support.

  • Demo
  • Homepage
  • GitHub
  • Bank imports

• vaultwarden.yourdomain.com – Secure password and secret manager with browser extensions.

  • Homepage
  • GitHub

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Development Environment (VS Code with Host Access)

• code.yourdomain.com – Web-based VS Code with Git support for cloud development.
  • Code Server & Remote Extension
  • GitHub

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🛠️ Installation

Step 1: Create a Free-Tier e2 Micro Instance

Google Cloud provides one free e2-micro instance per month in specific US regions:

• Regions: Oregon (us-west1), Iowa (us-central1), South Carolina (us-east1)
• Storage: 30 GB standard persistent disk

1. Go to Google Cloud Console → Compute Engine → VM Instances
2. Click Create Instance
3. Set Machine type to e2-micro
4. Choose a free-tier region (us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1)
5. Select Ubuntu/Debian as the OS
6. Enable Allow HTTP & HTTPS traffic
7. Click Create

Once created, use the web-based SSH in Google Cloud Console to connect.

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Step 2: Configure DNS

Set A records in your domain registrar to point to your server’s public IP address:

Name (Subdomain)	Type	TTL	Value (Your Server's IP)
@ (root domain)	A	300	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
code	A	300	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
firefly	A	300	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
traefik	A	300	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
vaultwarden	A	300	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Note: Replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your actual public IP address.

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Step 3: Install Dependencies

Run the following commands on your server:

sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt install -y git pipx ca-certificates curl  
sudo pipx install --include-deps ansible  
sudo ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker  
sudo pipx ensurepath  
source ~/.bashrc  

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Step 4: Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/mcconnellj/cloud-server  
cd cloud-server  

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Step 5: Configure Environment Files

cat <<EOF > .env-template  
DOMAIN=
CODE_SUBDOMAIN=code  
FIREFLY_SUBDOMAIN=firefly  
TRAEFIK_SUBDOMAIN=traefik  
VAULTWARDEN_SUBDOMAIN=vaultwarden  
TRAEFIK_USER=admin  
TRAEFIK_PASSWORD=""  
TRAEFIK_PASSWORD_HASH=""  
EMAIL=your_email@example.com  # <-- Ensure this is set for Let's Encrypt
CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN=your_cloudflare_api_token  # <-- Add your Cloudflare API token
CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL=your_cloudflare_email  # <-- Add your Cloudflare email
CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=your_cloudflare_api_key  # <-- Add your Cloudflare API key
EOF  

Rename the files:

mv .env-template .env  
mv .db.env-template .db.env  

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Step 6: Run Ansible Playbook

ansible-playbook ./playbooks/site.yml --connection=local  

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📝 Issues & Contributions

Contributions are welcome!

• Found a bug? Open an issue
• Want to contribute? Submit a PR
• Feature requests? Start a discussion
• Security Policy

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🙏 Acknowledgments

Special thanks to:

• S Zarichney for introducing me to CodePilot
• Bear for providing a switch for my local server
• Google Cloud Free Tier for free hosting

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🎉 Happy Hosting!