Multi-Server Setup

Scale your infrastructure by deploying services across multiple machines. This guide covers adding remote servers, distributing workloads, and best practices for multi-server architectures.

Overview

Senate supports deploying to:

• Local machine: The server running Senate
• Remote machines: Any server accessible via SSH

Benefits of multi-server setups:

• Scalability: Distribute load across machines
• Isolation: Separate environments (dev/staging/prod)
• Redundancy: No single point of failure
• Geographic distribution: Deploy closer to users

Prerequisites

Before adding remote machines:

Remote Server Requirements

• Linux server (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, etc.)
• Docker installed and running
• SSH access (port 22 or custom)
• User with Docker permissions

Install Docker on Remote Server

When you add a remote machine that doesn't have Docker installed, Senate will detect this and prompt you to install Docker directly from the dashboard. Simply click the install button and Senate will handle the installation automatically.

Adding a Remote Machine

# On the remote server
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
echo "ssh-ed25519 AAAA... senate-generated" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Architecture Patterns

Pattern 1: Single App, Multiple Servers

Scale a single application horizontally:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│            Load Balancer                │
└─────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                  │
    ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
    ▼             ▼             ▼
┌────────┐   ┌────────┐   ┌────────┐
│Server 1│   │Server 2│   │Server 3│
│ App    │   │ App    │   │ App    │
└────────┘   └────────┘   └────────┘

Pattern 2: Microservices Distribution

Distribute services across specialized servers:

┌──────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐
│   Server 1   │   │   Server 2   │   │   Server 3   │
│   Frontend   │   │   Backend    │   │   Database   │
│   Gateway    │   │   Workers    │   │   Cache      │
└──────────────┘   └──────────────┘   └──────────────┘

Pattern 3: Environment Separation

Isolate environments on different servers:

┌──────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌──────────────┐
│  Dev Server  │   │ Staging Srv  │   │  Prod Server │
│  All apps    │   │  All apps    │   │  All apps    │
│  (develop)   │   │  (staging)   │   │  (main)      │
└──────────────┘   └──────────────┘   └──────────────┘

Deploying to Specific Machines

When Creating a Service

1. In New Service form
2. Select target machine from dropdown
3. Create service

The service will deploy to the selected machine only.

Cross-Machine Communication

Using Public Domains

Services communicate via public URLs:

// Service on Server 1 calling Server 2
const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');

Private Networking

Troubleshooting

Cannot connect to remote machine

1. Test SSH manually: ssh user@host
2. Check firewall allows port 22
3. Verify SSH key is in authorized_keys
4. Check Docker is running on remote

Related

• Machines - Machine management
• Services - Service configuration
• Gateway - Routing and SSL