Installing ThingsBoard on DigitalOcean

This guide walks you through installing ThingsBoard Community Edition on DigitalOcean.

• Active DigitalOcean account

Log in to your DigitalOcean account. Click the Droplets menu item and then the Create Droplet button.

Select Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as your image and choose your plan.

Select a datacenter region from the available list.

• Optional: Enable backups. Although optional, we highly recommend this.
• Optional: Add block storage.

• Use an existing or create a new SSH key. Make sure you have access to the SSH key — you will need it later to connect via SSH.
• Enter a meaningful hostname.
• Click Create Droplet.

Once the droplet is created, copy the IP address to a safe place. You will use it later.

Configure firewall rules to allow MQTT, CoAP, and HTTP traffic.

1. Navigate to Networking → Firewalls and click Create Firewall.

   

2. Give your firewall a meaningful name and configure inbound rules:

   Port	Protocol	Description
   22	TCP	SSH access
   80	TCP	HTTP access
   443	TCP	HTTPS access
   1883	TCP	MQTT protocol
   5683	UDP	CoAP protocol

   

3. Leave outbound rules as-is. Select your droplet or tag to assign this firewall, then click Create Firewall.

   

Use the official guide and the SSH key you created during Step 1.4.

Follow the Docker installation guide to install and configure ThingsBoard.

You may want to configure HTTPS access using HAProxy. This is possible if you have a valid DNS name assigned to your instance. Follow the HAProxy HTTPS guide to install HAProxy and generate a valid SSL certificate using Let’s Encrypt.

To maintain database integrity and system stability, perform upgrades sequentially (e.g., v4.0.2 → v4.1.0 → v4.2.0). See the Upgrade Instructions for detailed steps.

ThingsBoard logs are stored in /var/log/thingsboard. To check for errors:

cat /var/log/thingsboard/thingsboard.log | grep ERROR