Deploy to production

This guide explains how to set up and run Ory Kratos in an exemplary production environment. It uses Postgres as database, Nginx as reverse proxy, Digital Ocean as cloud provider, and the Ory Kratos Node.js UI Reference as user interface. You can use another relational database, a different reverse proxy, deploy on any other cloud host, and spin up a custom interface in your favorite language - this is just an example!

Create a Droplet

Spin up a Droplet (virtual machine) with the following configuration:

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04
• Plan: Basic
• CPU options: Regular with SSD
• RAM: 1Gb
• SSD: 25Gb
• VPC network: default
• Authentication: SSH Keys. Don't forget to add your SSH key.
• Region: Choose your region

note

This example shows a basic configuration of Ory Kratos on a single virtual machine (VM). The configuration of a VM may vary depending on the scale of your application.

Wait for the Droplet to start up and copy the IP address.

This guide uses accounts.example.com as a hostname to run Ory Kratos. Replace it with <something>.<your-domain> for your purposes. At your hosting provider, configure DNS, create an A type record, and point it to the Droplet IP.

Install required dependencies

Connect to your Droplet via SSH or use the Droplet Console.

First, upgrade all packages in your Droplet.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Since the default version of Node.js is outdated we need to install a newer version. You can use the following script to install Node.js 16 on a Ubuntu system.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x -o /tmp/nodesource_setup.sh
bash /tmp/nodesource_setup.sh
apt-get install nodejs jq unzip -y
# Install Node.js 16.x and other dependencies

Confirm the correct version of Node.js is installed:

node -v
v16.14.2

Install PostgreSQL

1. Install PostgreSQL by running the following command:

   sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib -y
   sudo -i -u postgres

2. Create the database:

   createdb kratos

3. Change the default password encryption to a stronger one as recommended by PostgreSQL:

   psql
   # Postgres command line
   ALTER SYSTEM SET password_encryption = 'scram-sha-256';
   # Change the default password encryption to stronger one
   SELECT pg_reload_conf();
   # Reload configuration

4. Create a user for Kratos (Use your own password / hash!):

   CREATE USER kratos PASSWORD '<YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE>';

5. Give the newly created account access to the database:

   GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE kratos to kratos;

6. Change the Postgres configuration to enable scram-sha-256 encryption. Open the file at /etc/postgresql/12/main/pg_hba.conf, and add the following content:

   host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            scram-sha-256

7. Check your credentials against PostgreSQL:

   psql -U kratos -W -h 127.0.0.1

8. Use the password for the Ory Kratos user we created before to log into Postgres. If everything works correctly you should see a prompt similar to this:

   Password:
   psql (12.9 (Ubuntu 12.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.1))
   SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, bits: 256, compression: off)
   Type "help" for help.
   
   kratos=>

Congratulations, you have installed and configured the PostgreSQL database to store your identities. Next, we will setup Ory Kratos.

Install Ory Kratos

1. Create a new user with prohibited login:

   useradd -s /bin/false -m -d /opt/kratos kratos

2. Create folders to hold the installation data and configuration files.

   mkdir /opt/kratos/{bin,config}

3. Install Ory Kratos:

   
   cd /opt/kratos/bin
   # Download a new version of Ory Kratos
   wget https://github.com/ory/kratos/releases/download/<version-you-want>/kratos_<ersion-you-want>-linux_64bit.tar.gz
   # Extract contents
   tar xfvz kratos_<ersion-you-want>-linux_64bit.tar.gz
   # Remove redundant files
   rm *md
   rm LICENSE

4. Download the Quickstart configuration files:

   cd ../config
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/kratos/<version-you-want>/contrib/quickstart/kratos/email-password/identity.schema.json
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/kratos/<version-you-want>/contrib/quickstart/kratos/email-password/kratos.yml

5. Add configuration for Ory Kratos in kratos.yml to use the Postgres database. Open kratos.yml and change the dsn configuration. By default dsn: memory is configured, so Ory Kratos is storing data in the temporary memory. Change the DSN key to use the Postgres database you configured before:

   - dsn: memory
   + dsn: postgres://kratos:CHANGE-ME-INSECURE-PASSWORD@127.0.0.1:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable&max_conns=20&max_idle_conns=4

6. Change the default location of the identity schema:

   identity:
   default_schema_id: default
   schemas:
      - id: default
   -    url: file:///etc/kratos/config/identity.schema.json
   +    url: file:///opt/kratos/config/identity.schema.json

7. Apply migrations:

   /opt/kratos/bin/kratos -c /opt/kratos/config/kratos.yml migrate sql -y postgres://kratos:CHANGE-ME-INSECURE-PASSWORD@127.0.0.1:5432/kratos?sslmode=disable

8. Test your setup using the serve command:

   /opt/kratos/bin/kratos -c /opt/kratos/config/kratos.yml serve

You should see something like this once the service has been started:

INFO[2022-05-10T20:51:56Z] TLS has not been configured for public, skipping  audience=application service_name=Ory Kratos service_version=v0.9.0-alpha.3
INFO[2022-05-10T20:51:56Z] Starting the public httpd on: 0.0.0.0:4433    audience=application service_name=Ory Kratos service_version=v0.9.0-alpha.3
INFO[2022-05-10T20:51:56Z] TLS has not been configured for admin, skipping  audience=application service_name=Ory Kratos service_version=v0.9.0-alpha.3
INFO[2022-05-10T20:51:56Z] Starting the admin httpd on: 0.0.0.0:4434     audience=application service_name=Ory Kratos service_version=v0.9.0-alpha.3

Run Ory Kratos using systemd

1. Change the owner of /opt/kratos directory to the kratos user:

   chown -R kratos /opt/kratos/

2. Create a /etc/systemd/system/kratos.service file:

   cd /etc/systemd/system
   nano kratos.service

3. Add the following to configure systemd to start Ory Kratos using the serve command from earlier:

   [Unit]
   Description=Kratos Service
   After=network.target
   StartLimitIntervalSec=0
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=1
   User=kratos
   ExecStart=/opt/kratos/bin/kratos -c /opt/kratos/config/kratos.yml serve
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target

4. To run Ory Kratos using systemd add the systemd service to startup:

   systemctl enable kratos.service
   Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/kratos.service → /etc/systemd/system/kratos.service.

5. Start kratos.service using systemd:

   systemctl start kratos.service

6. Check running processes with ps ax | grep kratos. If everything worked correctly you should see something like this:

   19191 ?        Ssl    0:00 /opt/kratos/bin/kratos -c /opt/kratos/config/kratos.yml serve
   19206 ?        Ss     0:00 postgres: 12/main: kratos kratos 127.0.0.1(36094) idle

7. Check if it's accessible (if your DNS record is not set yet - it can take up to 24h to propagate - you can also send the request here directly to your Droplet IP)

   curl -s  http://accounts.example.com:4433/sessions/whoami | jq
   {
     "error": {
       "code": 401,
       "status": "Unauthorized",
       "reason": "No valid session cookie found.",
       "message": "The request could not be authorized"
     }
   }

We have Ory Kratos up and running, but we need to configure a reverse proxy to make the Kratos Admin API inaccessible via the public internet. We need to set serve.public.host and serve.admin.host to 127.0.0.1 to ensure Ory Kratos is listening on the loopback interface.

8. Change the following sections in your kratos.yml (in case you forgot: you can find it in /opt/kratos/config):

   serve:
     public:
       base_url: http://127.0.0.1:4433/
   +    host: 127.0.0.1
       cors:
         enabled: true
     admin:
       base_url: http://kratos:4434/
   +    host: 127.0.0.1

9. Restart Kratos by running

   service kratos restart
   curl -I http://accounts.example.com:4433
   curl: (7) Failed to connect to accounts.example.com port 4433: Connection refused

Install and configure Nginx

We'll use Nginx as reverse proxy and load balancer for our service. You can use another reverse proxy and load balancer instead.

1. Install Nginx (and certbot) by running:

   apt-get install nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx

2. Create a default configuration for the virtual host. To do this create the file accounts.example.com at /etc/nginx/sites-available/ with the following content

   cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/
   nano accounts.example.com

   server {
           listen 80;
           server_name accounts.example.com;
   }

3. Create a symlink to the sites-enabled directory

   ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/accounts.example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/accounts.example.com

4. Configure SSL via Certbot. Run the following command and answer the questions to set it up. When prompted choose to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

   certbot --nginx -d accounts.example.com

After running Certbot your configuration file will look like this:

cat /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/accounts.example.com
server {
      listen 80;
      server_name accounts.example.com;
      if ($host = accounts.example.com) {
               return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
      } # managed by Certbot
}
server {
   listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
   listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
   ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/accounts.example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
   ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/accounts.example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
   include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
   ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

Some parts are missing in your configuration at this point, and we need to configure locations and upstream APIs. You can balance network traffic between different instances of Ory Kratos running on the various virtual machines. We need two upstream APIs:

• public_api to proxy traffic to the Public API of Ory Kratos
• admin_api to proxy traffic to the admin API of Ory Kratos

5. Add the following configuration before server section to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/accounts.example.com file

   upstream public_api {
           server 127.0.0.1:4433;
           server 127.0.0.1:4433; # We can load balance the traffic to support scaling
   }
   upstream admin_api {
           server 127.0.0.1:4434;
           server 127.0.0.1:4434;
   }
   server {
   ...

6. Add your locations and the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/accounts.example.com has the following content

   upstream public_api {
           server 127.0.0.1:4433;
           server 127.0.0.1:4433; # We can load balance the traffic to support scaling
   }
   upstream admin_api {
           server 127.0.0.1:4434;
           server 127.0.0.1:4434;
   }
   server {
           listen 80;
           server_name accounts.example.com;
           if ($host = accounts.example.com) {
                   return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
           } # managed by Certbot
   }
   server {
       listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
       listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
       ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/accounts.example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
       ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/accounts.example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
       include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
       ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
       location / {
                   proxy_pass http://public_api;
                   proxy_redirect          off;
                   proxy_set_header        Host            $host;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       }
       location /admin {
       # Example of managing access control
       # for the /admin endpoint
       # in that example we allow access
       # either from the subnet
       # or by checking query parameter ?secret=
                   set $allow 0;
       # Check against remote address
                   if ($remote_addr ~* "172.24.0.*") {
                           set $allow 1;
                   }
       # Check against ?secret param
                   if ($arg_secret = "GuQ8alL2") {
                           set $allow 1;
                   }
                   if ($allow = 0) {
                           return 403;
                   }
   
                   rewrite /admin/(.*) /$1  break;
   
                   proxy_pass http://admin_api;
                   proxy_redirect          off;
                   proxy_set_header        Host            $host;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       }
   
       location /identities {
                   proxy_pass http://admin_api;
                   proxy_redirect          off;
                   proxy_set_header        Host            $host;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
                   proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       }
   }

7. Test the Nginx configuration:

   nginx -t

If your configuration is correct, you should get the following outputs:

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

8. Now reload the Nginx service:

   service nginx reload
   
   curl -s  http://accounts.example.com/sessions/whoami|jq
   {
     "error": {
       "code": 401,
       "status": "Unauthorized",
       "reason": "No valid session cookie found.",
       "message": "The request could not be authorized"
     }
   }

Install Ory Kratos UI

1. The installation of the Ory Kratos Node.js UI is straightforward:

   useradd -s /bin/false -m -d /opt/uinode uinode
   cd /opt/uinode
   wget https://github.com/ory/kratos-selfservice-ui-node/archive/refs/tags/<version-you-want>.zip
   unzip <version-you-want>.zip
   rm  <version-you-want>.zip
   mv kratos-selfservice-ui-node-<ersion-you-want>/ ui
   cd ui
   npm i
   chown -R uinode /opt/uinode

2. The UI needs a configuration file for systemd. Create a file named uinode.service at /etc/systemd/system/ with the following content (change https://accounts.example.com to your domain):

   [Unit]
   Description=Kratos Service
   After=network.target
   StartLimitIntervalSec=0
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=1
   User=uinode
   ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm start
   Environment=KRATOS_PUBLIC_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4433
   Environment=KRATOS_BROWSER_URL=https://accounts.example.com
   WorkingDirectory=/opt/uinode/ui
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target

3. Enable the systemd service:

   systemctl enable uinode

You should get the following response:

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/uinode.service → /etc/systemd/system/uinode.service.

4. Start the self-service UI:

   systemctl start uinode

You can use ps ax | grep node to confirm it is running.

Configure User Interface

1. In kratos.yml change URLs to use the user interface you installed in the step before:

   serve:
     public:
   -    base_url: http://127.0.0.1:4433/
   +    base_url: https://accounts.example.com/
       host: 127.0.0.1
       cors:
         enabled: true
     admin:
       host: 127.0.0.1
       base_url: http://127.0.0.1:4434/
   
   selfservice:
   -  default_browser_return_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/
   +  default_browser_return_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/
     allowed_return_urls:
   -    - http://127.0.0.1:4455
   +    - https://accounts.example.com
   
     methods:
       password:
         enabled: true
   
     flows:
       error:
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/error
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/errors
   
       settings:
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/settings
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/settings
         privileged_session_max_age: 15m
   
       recovery:
         enabled: true
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/recovery
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/recovery
   
       verification:
         enabled: true
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/verification
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/verification
         after:
   -        default_browser_return_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/
   +        default_browser_return_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/
   
       logout:
         after:
   -        default_browser_return_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/login
   +        default_browser_return_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/login
   
       login:
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/login
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/login
         lifespan: 10m
   
       registration:
         lifespan: 10m
   -      ui_url: http://127.0.0.1:4455/registration
   +      ui_url: https://accounts.example.com/auth/registration
         after:
           password:
             hooks:
               -
                 hook: session

2. Configure Nginx and add the missing configuration for your UI:

     upstream ui_node {
       server 127.0.0.1:3000;
     }
   ...
     location /auth {
       rewrite /auth/(.*) /$1  break;
   
       proxy_pass http://ui_node;
       proxy_redirect          off;
       proxy_set_header        Host            $host;
       proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
     }
   ...
     error_page 401 = @error401;
     # Catch if 401/unauthorized and redirect for login
     location @error401 {
       return 302 https://accounts.example.com/auth/login;
     }
   

3. Test the Nginx configuration:

   nginx -t

4. You should get the following response if the configuration is correct:

   nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
   nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

5. Reload the Nginx and Ory Kratos services:

   service nginx reload
   service kratos restart

Open https://accounts.example.com/auth/login and you should see the Login Screen.

Secure secrets

We covered a basic deployment of Ory Kratos to production with Nginx. However, the configuration of Kratos itself is not production-ready.

We need to set up secure keys and run Ory Kratos in production mode:

1. Generate secure keys using the following openssl command:

   openssl rand -base64 32

2. Edit /opt/kratos/config/kratos.yml file and replace the following values with unique and generated strings: :

   secrets:
     cookie:
   -    - PLEASE-CHANGE-ME-I-AM-VERY-INSECURE
   +    - xgrxYZLM0jGgJqijvvf73x30URJkRENoCm2ExQw9+CE=
     cipher:
   -    - 32-LONG-SECRET-NOT-SECURE-AT-ALL
   +    - rtxrVjiWwe85nxB9XeWoDP8U17+sT6kHo0E1t3Tr5uY=

3. Change log.leak_sensitive_values to false, as to not leak any sensitive values like secrets in the logs:

   log:
   -  leak_sensitive_values: true
   +  leak_sensitive_values: false

4. Save changes and restart Ory Kratos:

   systemctl restart kratos

Next Steps

• Fork the Ory Kratos Node.js UI Reference or build a custom UI in the language of your choice.
• Add Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to your App
• Configure The Password Policy
• Integrate using webhooks