Self-hosted PaaS in 20 MB of RAM: Architectural Decisions of Pier

Developers have introduced Pier, an open-source deployment platform positioned as a lightweight alternative to Coolify, Dokku, or CapRover. The project's key feature is extreme resource optimization, consuming only 20 MB of RAM. In the article, the authors share their seven-month development journey, explaining which components of classic architecture were sacrificed to achieve these metrics. Pier automates deployment from Git repositories, Traefik configuration, Let's Encrypt SSL management, and S3 database backups. The developers detail the architectural trade-offs and technical challenges faced while building a system with strict resource constraints. This article is useful for DevOps engineers and developers interested in creating efficient infrastructure management tools for resource-constrained environments.