[Demo] Building a self-hosted automation stack

Building a self-hosted automation stack

From a blank VPS to scheduled workflows, tracing and backups in one weekend.

Why self-host at all?

Hosted automation tools are great until you hit rate limits, pricing tiers, or a workflow that needs to touch a private network. Owning the stack means you decide where the data lives. This post walks through the setup I use, with the config files inline.

The best automation is the one you forget exists, until the day it saves you an hour.

What we will build

A Docker host with Caddy for TLS
n8n for workflows, backed by Postgres
OpenTelemetry traces shipped to a collector
Nightly backups to S3-compatible storage

Inline code works too: run docker compose up -d and check the logs. Docs live at n8n.io.

[demo] Developer workspace with a laptop and coffee — The whole stack runs on one small VPS.

Step by step

Provision the server and harden SSH
Install Docker and the compose plugin
Write the compose file below
Point DNS at the box and let Caddy fetch certificates

Each step is small on purpose, so a failed step is easy to retry without starting over.

docker-compose.yml

1services:
2  n8n:
3    image: n8nio/n8n:latest
4    environment:
5      - DB_TYPE=postgresdb
6      - DB_POSTGRESDB_HOST=postgres
7    ports:
8      - "5678:5678"
9  postgres:
10    image: postgres:16
11    volumes:
12      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
13volumes:
14  pgdata: {}

Minimal compose file for n8n and Postgres.

trace.ts

import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api'

const tracer = trace.getTracer('workflows')

export async function runStep<T>(name: string, fn: () => Promise<T>): Promise<T> {
  return tracer.startActiveSpan(name, async (span) => {
    try {
      return await fn()
    } finally {
      span.end()
    }
  })
}

Monthly cost comparison (approximate)
Option	Cost	Limits
Hosted plan	$50	10k executions
Self-hosted VPS	$8	CPU-bound only
Home server	$3 power	Your uplink

[demo] Minimal desk setup with a monitor

Monitoring dashboard

Workflow editor

[demo] Laptop with code on screen beside a plant

Trace view

backup-checklist.md

Backup checklist

Nightly pg_dump to object storage
Keep 7 daily and 4 weekly copies
Test a restore once a month

A backup you have never restored is only a hope.

pg_dump -Fc "$DATABASE_URL" | aws s3 cp - s3://backups/n8n-$(date +%F).dump

Which workflows run where
Workflow	Trigger	Runs on
RSS digest	Cron, 07:00	n8n
Invoice export	Webhook	n8n
DB backup	Cron, 03:00	Host cron

Example embedded video.

Wrapping up

That is the whole stack. Start small, add tracing early, and test your restores. If you build something similar, I would love to hear about it.

[demo] Hands typing on a laptop — Back to building.

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