Deploying a Containerized Backend to a VPS with Docker Compose + GitHub Actions (A Beginner's Runbook)

Short summary

Complete guide to containerizing and deploying a backend application to a Linux VPS using Docker Compose and GitHub Actions. Covers multi-stage Docker builds, container health checks, CI/CD pipelines with security scanning, and SSH deployment workflows. Includes copy-paste Dockerfile examples, compose configurations, and a troubleshooting section for real-world deployment errors.

• •Multi-stage Docker builds to minimize image size and improve security
• •Complete docker-compose setup with database, cache, migrations, and worker processes
• •GitHub Actions pipeline for building, scanning, and deploying with SSH

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