Introduction

The best operations are the ones you don’t have to do.

When managing multiple VPS instances, websites, and microservices, the biggest pain point isn’t the lack of individual tools — it’s information fragmentation. You open a panel to check resources, a monitoring tool for availability, and logs for errors. Every tool has its own interface, and troubleshooting requires switching between three browser tabs.

This guide walks you through building a three-in-one DevOps dashboard:

• CloudPanel — Lightweight VPS panel for managing sites, databases, and SSL certificates
• Uptime Kuma — Open-source monitoring with HTTP/TCP/Ping/DNS alerting support
• Gatus — Minimalist health-check engine driven by YAML configs with a built-in beautiful dashboard

All self-hosted on a single VPS. Total cost: approximately $0.

1. Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Your VPS (Ubuntu 24.04)             │
│                                                  │
│  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐             │
│  │  CloudPanel   │  │ Uptime Kuma  │             │
│  │  :8080        │  │ :3001        │             │
│  │  Site Mgmt    │  │ Monitoring   │             │
│  └──────────────┘  └──────┬───────┘             │
│                           │                      │
│                    ┌──────▼───────┐              │
│                    │   Gatus      │              │
│                    │  :8081       │              │
│                    │  Health Check│              │
│                    └──────────────┘              │
│                                                  │
│         Nginx Reverse Proxy (Unified Ports)       │
│    panel.yourdomain.com / monitor.yourdomain.com  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. Installing CloudPanel

CloudPanel is a lightweight panel designed for high-performance applications, built on Nginx + MySQL/PostgreSQL + PHP/Node.js/Python.

2.1 One-Click Installation

# SSH into your VPS and run:
curl -sSf https://www.cloudpanel.io/sh/install.sh | bash

After installation, you’ll see output similar to:

CloudPanel installed successfully!
Please visit: http://YOUR_IP:8080
Username: admin
Password: xxxxxxxxxx

2.2 Initial Configuration

1. Visit http://your-ip:8080, log in with default credentials
2. Change password immediately on first login
3. Configure SMTP server (for SSL certificate notifications and alerts)
4. Add your first site:

Site Type → Website → Enter Domain → Create

2.3 Key Configuration

3. Deploying Uptime Kuma

Uptime Kuma is a good-looking open-source monitoring tool supporting multiple protocols and alert channels.

3.1 Docker Deployment

docker run -d \
  --name uptime-kuma \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 3001:3001 \
  -v uptime-kuma-data:/app/data \
  louislam/uptime-kuma:1

3.2 Adding Monitors

After logging in, click “Add New Monitor”:

HTTP Monitor Example (Website Availability)

Display Name: My Blog
Type: HTTP(s)
URL: https://blog.yourdomain.com
Method: GET
Interval: 1 minute
Keywords: "Welcome"

TCP Monitor Example (Database Port)

Display Name: MySQL Primary
Type: TCP
Host: 127.0.0.1
Port: 3306
Interval: 30 seconds

Ping Monitor Example (Server Liveness)

Display Name: Edge Node
Type: Ping
Host: edge.yourdomain.com
Interval: 1 minute

3.3 Alert Configuration

Uptime Kuma supports rich alert channels:

Telegram Alert Setup:

1. Open @BotFather, send /newbot
2. Get Bot Token: 123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz
3. Search @userinfobot, get your Chat ID: 987654321
4. In Uptime Kuma alert settings:
   - Type: Telegram
   - Bot Token: 123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz
   - Chat ID: 987654321
   - Message: Alert: {monitor.name} {status}

4. Deploying Gatus

Gatus is an automated service status engine. Define health check rules via YAML and get a beautiful dashboard out of the box.

4.1 Docker Compose Deployment

Create docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"

services:
  gatus:
    image: twinproduction/gatus:v5
    container_name: gatus
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
    command: ["-config", "/config/config.yaml"]

4.2 Health Check Configuration

Create config/config.yaml:

storage:
  type: sqlite
  path: /config/sqlite.db
  cache: true

metrics: true

endpoints:
  # Blog website
  - name: Blog
    url: https://blog.yourdomain.com
    interval: 1m
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"
      - "[BODY] contains 'Hello'"
      - "[RESPONSE TIME] < 500ms"

  # CloudPanel dashboard
  - name: CloudPanel
    url: http://localhost:8080
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"

  # MySQL database
  - name: MySQL
    url: tcp://localhost:3306
    conditions:
      - "[CONNECTED] == true"

  # Redis cache
  - name: Redis
    url: tcp://localhost:6379
    conditions:
      - "[CONNECTED] == true"

  # API endpoint
  - name: User API
    url: https://api.yourdomain.com/health
    interval: 30s
    conditions:
      - "[STATUS] == 200"
      - "[BODY].status == 'ok'"
      - "[RESPONSE TIME] < 200ms"

  # DNS resolution
  - name: DNS Check
    url: dns://blog.yourdomain.com
    conditions:
      - "[IP] != null"

alerts:
  - type: telegram
    enabled: true
    bot-token: "123456789:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz"
    chat-id: "987654321"
    send-on-resolved: true
    failure-threshold: 3
    description: "Alert after 3 consecutive failures"

4.3 Gatus Key Advantages

5. Nginx Unified Entry

Configure Nginx reverse proxy so all three tools are accessible via domains:

# /etc/nginx/sites-available/devops-dashboard

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name panel.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    # CloudPanel
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name monitor.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    # Uptime Kuma
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3001;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    }
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name status.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem;

    # Gatus
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}

# Enable config and reload
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/devops-dashboard /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

6. Automation & Advanced

6.1 Daily Health Report

Create a cron job to summarize daily status at 9 AM:

# crontab -e
0 9 * * * curl -s http://localhost:8081/api/v1/status | \
  jq '{total: (.endpoints | length), up: ([.endpoints[] | select(.statuses[0].success)] | length)}' | \
  curl -s -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/botBOT_TOKEN/sendMessage" \
  -d "chat_id=CHAT_ID" \
  -d "text=📊 Daily Health Report: \(.total) total services, \(.up) online" \
  -d "parse_mode=HTML"

6.2 Automatic Failure Recovery

Combine with CloudPanel’s CLI tools for common auto-recovery:

#!/bin/bash
# /usr/local/bin/auto-restart-service.sh

SERVICE_NAME=$1
CONTAINER_ID=$(docker ps -q -f name=$SERVICE_NAME)

if [ -z "$CONTAINER_ID" ]; then
    echo "$(date): $SERVICE_NAME container stopped, restarting..." >> /var/log/service-restart.log
    docker start $CONTAINER_ID
    curl -s -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/botTOKEN/sendMessage" \
      -d "chat_id=CHAT_ID" \
      -d "text=⚠️ $SERVICE_NAME has been auto-restarted"
fi

6.3 Security Hardening

7. Resource Usage Estimate

For a 2-core 2GB VPS, this stack adds less than 15% overhead — easily manageable.

8. Summary

Together they form a complete VPS operations loop:

CloudPanel (Management) → Uptime Kuma (Monitoring) → Gatus (Health Checks)
                                                        ↓
                                              Alerts (Telegram/DingTalk)
                                                        ↓
                                              Auto-Recovery (Scripts)

Next Steps:

1. Deploy CloudPanel first to manage your sites
2. Add Uptime Kuma to establish a monitoring baseline
3. Deploy Gatus for YAML-driven health checks
4. Configure alert channels for timely notifications

The beauty of this setup: all data stays on your own VPS, no third-party SaaS dependency. True self-hosting starts with taking control of your own operations dashboard.