How to host Akaunting on UpCloud Cloud Server - ServerAvatar

Akaunting is an open-source platform designed to optimize financial management workflows for organizations. It provides essential tools for accounting, invoicing, and expense tracking, ensuring accessibility for both administrators and users. UpCloud is a dependable hosting option for Akaunting, providing scalable infrastructure and simple deployment solutions. ServerAvatar enhances the ease of deploying the Akaunting application on the UpCloud VPS and provides a simplified and user-friendly experience.

Create a Server in UpCloud

Getting Started with UpCloud:

UpCloud is a high-performance VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting platform designed for developers, businesses, and IT professionals. Renowned for its speed and reliability, UpCloud features the unique MaxIOPS storage technology, delivering performance significantly faster than traditional SSDs. This makes it an excellent choice for applications with high I/O demands, such as databases and web hosting. With its user-friendly control panel, UpCloud simplifies server management, making it an attractive option for anyone needing superior VPS hosting solutions.

To deploy any application on UpCloud, we must first set up a server. Therefore, our initial step will be to deploy a server and complete its initial setup.

Step 1: Server Deployment

• Log in to your Upcloud account. If you don’t have an account, create an account on UpCloud.
• Then, Navigate to Server → Server List and click on the Deploy Server button, as shown in the image below.

Step 2: Select Location

• The first thing you have to do is select the location for your server. UpCloud provides different options for selecting the location.
• The general rule is to select the region that is closest to your audience. It means that for the majority of your audience, Your sites will load faster due to lower latency.

Step 3: Select the plan for your Server

• Here you have to select the plan of your Droplet. UpCloud offers a variety of plans. Select the one that best meets your requirements.
• The minimum requirement is 2GB of RAM for better performance and 2GB of free disk space is required for the initial setup, additional space need is depending on your data. You can select another plan of higher configuration as per your requirements and usage.
• If your site is new and has low traffic, begin with a smaller plan. As your project gains and attracts more visitors, you can upgrade to a plan to handle the increased traffic.

Step 4: Add New Storage Device

• In the Storage section, you can attach new storage devices as needed. Your initial storage is based on the selected server plan. You can attach up to 16 storage devices, each with a maximum size of 4 TB.
• To add more disks, click the "Add new device" button and adjust the storage size with the slider. You can modify the storage configuration later by adding, removing, or resizing disk devices.

Step 5: Automated Backups

• You can also enable Automated Backups by clicking the toggle button on the right side. You can choose from Day, Week, Month, or Year plans.
• After selecting the appropriate plan, you can set a backup schedule using the drop-down menu below.

Step 6: Choose an Operating System

• In this step, you need to select your server operating system. We recommend selecting Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x64 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64. If you are using ServerAvatar to manage your servers, these operating systems are required.

Step 7: Select Network Configuration

• In this step, by default network configurations are set that include IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and a private Utility Network connection is set. You can customize these settings and attach your private network by clicking on the “Attach Private Network” option.

Step 8: Additional Options

• In this step, you can enable or disable IPv6 support and metadata service. Also, you can set the desired TimeZone and select between network and display adapters.
• If it suits you, we suggest keeping these options at their default settings.

Step 9: Select Login Method

• Now you have to select the Login method. There are two types of login methods. They are:
  1. Authentication via SSH Keys
  2. Authentication via One-Time Password
• If you are using SSH keys for authentication, It is the best option. You can also click on the “Add New” button to import your keys.
• If you do not know what is SSH key, You can go with the One-Time password method. You have to set a new password after the first time you log into this server.
• Make sure to set a strong password for your root user, which is the most powerful user with all the privileges on Linux OS. You can select the convenient way to have the password.

Step 10: Enter Initialization Script

• The Initialization scripts are user-defined automation scripts supported by all Linux public templates. When you select one of your stored scripts, it will appear in the edit field.
• You can make changes to the scripts or write a new one. The server will execute the script during the first bootup.

Step 11: Finalise Details

• In the last step of this process, We have to enter the Host Name, Server Name, and number of servers you want to deploy. Click on the Deploy button to create a server.

• In a few minutes, You will have the Server up and running.
• Now, We have to perform the initial step to allow the Serveravatar port from the firewall configuration.
• To allow the Serveravatar port from firewall configuration, Click on the Server → Server List Option and then click on the icon next to your server as shown in the below image.

• Now, navigate to the Firewall Section and Click on “Add Rule”.

• Create a rule to allow ServerAvatar Communication Port - 43210 as shown in the below image. Click on the Ok to add the firewall rule.

• Now, click on the “Save Changes” button to save the changes to Firewall Rules as shown in the below image.

Initial Server Configuration

The Initial server configuration includes the installation and configuration of various packages required to host your website. Usually, You have to write commands and modify configuration files. Luckily, With ServerAvatar, Your full server configuration and optimization can be automated.

Here are the three ways to automatically configure your server with ServerAvatar.

wget https://srvr.so/install
chmod +x install
./install

Install and Setup akaunting on cloud using ServerAvatar

Step 1: Create Database

Access the Database tab on the ServerAvatar server panel to create a MySQL Database.

Enter the credentials including Database name, Username, and Password, and click on the Create Database button.

Step 2: Create a PHP application

Access the Applications tab from the server panel to create a new PHP application.

Click the Create button and fill up the required information, including the Application Name, Domain Name, and Advanced Options for more PHP settings.

Note that:

If you want to host Akaunting on your domain, then make sure to point your domain to the current IP address of your server, and for that:

1. Log in to your domain provider site, where you buy your domain. Click here for more info about your domain name.
2. Access DNS Manager to edit your DNS records(contact the support team if you don’t find them)
3. Change the IP address of A Record of your website to the current server’s IP address. To host Akaunting on your subdomain, for example, Akaunting.yourdomain.com, create a new application with the subdomain as your primary domain and follow the same procedure. For accessing Akaunting on the subdomain, you need to add your subdomain on A Record that points to the current IP address of your server. To point to an IPV6 address, you would need to use an AAAA record.

Proceed to next by clicking on the Next step.

Now select method and service provider Git and GitHub, respectively (follow according to Snapshot).

Enter the required information as given below:
Repository Type: Public.
Deployment Key: generate new key by clicking on the Generate Key link.
Clone HTTPS URL: https://github.com/akaunting/akaunting.git
Branch: master
Deployment script:

composer install;
php artisan install --db-name="akaunting" --db-username="root" --db-password="pass" --admin-email="admin@company.com" --admin-password="123456";
composer dump-autoload;
php artisan sample-data:seed;

Enter db-name, db-username, and db-password according to the database we have created you check your database credentials in databases. Admin email and admin password are your login credentials when it is deployed on the server so you can set it any but remember them.

Move further by clicking on the Next Step.

Create a System User or choose a system user from an existing One.

Then choose PHP version 8.1 or above and leave the Custom Webroot field as it is.

After filling up all the details. click the Next Step button.

Step 3: Install and Run npm

Access SSH credentials from the dashboard of the application panel.

Make sure that in your server, Node js is installed. If it is not, then go to the Server Panel > Settings. Click on install Node js.

Login using the SSH credentials using the below command. Make sure to Replace the Username and Host with your actual credentials.

npm install;
npm run dev;

Now, the Akaunting software is successfully installed. You can go to the user interface by visiting the URL of your domain.

Tip:- It will run on HTTP, but to run it on HTTPs ServerAvatar provides a one-click solution to switch to HTTPs for that, go to the SSL Certificate in the application panel and click on force HTTP to HTTPs.