Part 2: Self-hosted insights on Hetzner
A German client needed production in the EU on Hetzner — clear control over where customer data and login live. The product is Arc Rider Universe: the SaaS behind universe.arc-rider.com — Mission: Interface, a UI toolkit for builders (tables, Kanban, Gantt, layouts, and more via JSON instead of hand-rolled UI code). Dev already ran happily on Netlify and managed Supabase — and still does. The goal was a dedicated prod environment on Hetzner, not a big-bang migration that would slow down the team.
Why Hetzner, and why not “move everything at once”
The client is in Germany. Prod had to sit on EU infrastructure they can point to — Hetzner VMs for the app and the database.
That did not mean touching dev:
- dev.universe.arc-rider.com (dev) stays on Netlify + managed Supabase.
- Prod — app, login, Postgres — runs on Hetzner at universe.arc-rider.com.
If you are planning something similar: you can add EU prod on Hetzner in one weekend — without replatforming dev.
What prod looks like (in plain terms)
Prod users open the React app on Hetzner. Sign-in and data for prod live on Hetzner too. Dev keeps using Netlify and managed Supabase unchanged.
Infra and deploys are automated with OpenTofu (servers, firewall, DNS) and GitHub Actions (build, deploy, quick smoke checks after a release).
Once prod was stable, we added self-hosted observability on a dedicated VM — metrics, logs, traces, cost guardrails, and agent-friendly ops. See Part 2.
What we learned (short version)
- Phased beats big bang — dev stayed on Netlify + managed Supabase while Hetzner prod came online.
- Self-hosted login is not a copy-paste from cloud Supabase — prod OAuth and magic links need prod-specific URLs and config; dev config stays separate.
- Predictable cost and EU hosting — VMs on Hetzner for app, login, and data.
Prod is live at universe.arc-rider.com. For this product stage, the tradeoff worked: control where it mattered on EU infrastructure the client can point to.
Hetzner migrations — how I can help
On Netlify, managed Supabase, or AWS for dev and need prod in the EU on Hetzner? I help with planning, OpenTofu, CI deploys, self-hosted Supabase on prod VMs, and self-hosted observability (Grafana LGTM, Alloy, cost guardrails, Grafana MCP for agent-friendly ops).
office@martinmueller.dev · calendly.com/martinmueller_dev · LinkedIn
