What is Tenkai?

Tenkai is a deployment platform for servers you own. From its dashboard you prepare servers, then deploy applications from a Git repository or a container image. Your code runs on your servers, not on compute supplied by Tenkai.

Your servers, your provider account

Enroll a Debian or Ubuntu server you already administer, or connect a Hetzner Cloud, DigitalOcean, Scaleway or Infomaniak Public Cloud account and let Tenkai create one there. The provider bills your account directly: a Tenkai subscription does not include compute, storage or bandwidth.

Tenkai reaches your servers over SSH. Your team members can log in to them as root with their own SSH keys. A cluster groups the servers that run your applications and managed services. They share one CPU architecture and talk over a private encrypted network, the cluster network.

From a server to a running application

1. Prepare a cluster. Enroll or create a server, and wait for its setup to succeed. See Prepare a cluster.
2. Create a project. Its production environment runs its resources on a cluster. See projects, environments and clusters.
3. Configure an application. Choose a Git repository, Dockerfile or container image, then set its variables and runtime port. A web application serves HTTP on 0.0.0.0, at the port you choose: 8080 by default.
4. Deploy. Tenkai checks the health of the new release before it switches traffic to it. Then check the HTTPS route of the application. The first-deployment guide walks through an example.

Creating an application starts nothing until you deploy it.

What Tenkai automates

Server setup installs the container runtime, the firewall, the cluster network and the routing components, and turns off password logins over SSH. Builds run on your server.

A web application gets a default route with HTTPS, and you can connect your own domain. A successful deployment does not mean HTTPS is ready: check both before you send visitors.

Tenkai provisions PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis® and Valkey as managed services. Bind one to an application to give it a connection variable at its next deployment. A cluster can also host S3-compatible buckets, and the marketplace installs ready-made apps such as Umami or WordPress.

What you remain responsible for

You manage your provider account or hardware, enough server capacity, and the network access Tenkai needs. You own your application code, its secrets, and the DNS zone of any custom domain.

A web application keeps no file between two deployments unless it keeps a directory. A kept directory and the data of a managed service live in a volume on one node: if that node or its disk is lost, the data is lost.

Backups are encrypted and go to a storage bucket that you own. They stay off until you choose that bucket. A restore puts the data back on the same node only. Read the storage and recovery limits before you store important data, and test a restore before you rely on it.

Tenkai does not update a marketplace app for you.

Where to start

Without a ready cluster, prepare one first. With one, go to deploy your first application.

To understand what runs on your servers, read How Tenkai runs your applications. Coming from Coolify or Dokploy? Read Compare Tenkai with Coolify and Dokploy.

Compare shared hosting, PaaS and your own servers to choose who handles the server work.

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