How it helps your business
Best for:Privacy-conscious IndividualsSmall to Medium Businesses (SMBs)Non-profit OrganizationsEducational InstitutionsDistributed Teams
Sandstorm is an open-source "operating system" for your personal cloud. It solves the biggest problem with self-hosting: the difficulty of setup and the risk of security vulnerabilities. In a traditional setup, every app you install is a potential entry point for hackers. In Sandstorm, every app instance (called a "grain") is isolated in its own secure sandbox, ensuring that a vulnerability in one app cannot compromise your entire server or your other data.
With Sandstorm, you get a beautiful, unified interface for your entire suite of productivity tools—from chat and task management to document editing and file storage. Installing a new app is as simple as clicking a button in the app market. Sharing a document or project with a colleague is equally easy, thanks to a robust, capability-based sharing model that replaces complex password management.
Self-hosting Sandstorm provides you with the ultimate level of data sovereignty and privacy, giving you a professional-grade cloud environment that YOU own and control completely.
Key Benefits
- Unrivaled Security: Every app runs in an isolated, fine-grained sandbox by default.
- Easy Self-Hosting: No more complex server configurations or manual updates.
- Unified Interface: One dashboard for all your apps and documents.
- One-Click Apps: Install dozens of the best open-source tools instantly.
- Privacy First: Your data never leaves your server, and third-party developers have no access.
Production Architecture Overview
A production Sandstorm environment is a highly integrated stack:
- Sandstorm Core: The main server and orchestrator (Go/C++).
- App Grains: Isolated containers for each instance of an app.
- Mongo DB: Stores platform-level metadata, users, and organization data.
- Sandstorm Front-End: The web interface and sharing platform.
- Persistent Storage: High-speed SSDs for grain data and platform metadata.
- Reverse Proxy: Integrated (or external) NGINX to handle SSL and subdomains.
How we deploy this for you
Security Hardened
Firewalls, SSL, and hardened kernels out of the box.
Performance Tuned
Optimized for speed with cache and DB fine-tuning.
Automated Backups
Daily off-site backups so you never lose your data.
Private Cloud
You own the server and the data. No middleman.
Implementation Blueprint
Prerequisites
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
# Sandstorm's official installer handles most dependencies automaticallyshell
Standard Production Installation
The easiest and most reliable way to install Sandstorm is via the official install script.
curl https://install.sandstorm.io | bashDuring installation, you will be prompted to:
- Choose a domain (Sandstorm provides free sandcats.io subdomains with automatic HTTPS).
- Set up an admin account.
- Configure your network and storage settings.
Scaling & Management
- Storage Scaling: For organizations, ensure your Sandstorm instance is backed by large, high-speed persistent volumes.
- Resource Management: Monitor individual grain resource usage through the Sandstorm admin dashboard to identify resource-heavy apps.
- App Packaging: Use the Sandstorm Vagrant-based tooling (spk) to package your own internal web applications for secure deployment on the platform.
Security Best Practices
- App Selection: Always install apps from the official Sandstorm App Market to ensure they have been properly reviewed and sandboxed.
- Regular Updates: Sandstorm updates itself automatically by default; ensure this feature remains active.
- Authentication: Use the built-in support for Google, GitHub, or LDAP to provide secure team-wide authentication.
- Grain Backups: Regularly use the "Download Backup" feature for critical grains to ensure data portability.
Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Full System Backup: Regularly back up the entire Sandstorm directory (usually
/opt/sandstorm) and your MongoDB instance. - Automatic Snapshots: If running on a virtual server, use host-level snapshots daily.
- Data Portability: Remember that all data in Sandstorm is portable; individual grains can be downloaded as
.zipfiles and restored on any other Sandstorm instance.
Includes Security & performance standards
Best place to host Sandstorm.io
We recommend Hostinger for its reliability and low cost. It's the perfect home for your new apps, featuring easy setup and 24/7 support.
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