Docker Full-Stack

DevOps Monitoring and Reverse Proxy Stack (Docker + Traefik)

I built and published a production-style DevOps monitoring and reverse proxy stack using Docker Compose to demonstrate modern observability, security, and ingress patterns commonly used in real-world environments. This stack is designed to be secure by default, fully observable end-to-end, modular, and safe to share publicly with no secrets committed.

Core Stack Components

  • Traefik serves as the central reverse proxy and ingress controller, providing automatic HTTPS using Cloudflare DNS-01 challenges.
  • Pi-hole provides network-wide DNS filtering and visibility.
  • Prometheus handles metrics collection across the host and containers.
  • Grafana visualizes metrics and logs through dashboards.
  • Loki and Promtail provide centralized log aggregation.
  • NGINX serves a static website securely behind Traefik.
All external access routes through Traefik and is protected with TLS. Administrative services are secured with BasicAuth and security headers.
Key Highlights
  • Centralized ingress with automatic HTTPS
  •  DNS-based certificate validation (no exposed port 80 challenges)
  • Metrics and logs fully integrated into Grafana
  •  No services exposed directly to the internet
  •  Infrastructure-as-code using Docker Compose
  •  Public-safe configuration with runtime secrets excluded

Observability in Practice

  • Prometheus scrapes host and container metrics
  • Grafana dashboards provide visibility into CPU, memory, disk, network activity, and container resource usage.
  • Promtail collects Docker and optional host logs, which are indexed by Loki and queried directly inside Grafana, enabling unified metrics and log correlation.

Security Approach

  • HTTPS enforced everywhere
  • Cloudflare DNS-01 ACME for certificates
  • BasicAuth for administrative endpoints
  • Security headers enabled (HSTS, XSS protection, no sniffing)
  • Least-privilege exposure model
  • No secrets stored in GitHub
Design Philosophy

This project intentionally mirrors real-world DevOps patterns rather than a one-off demo. It emphasizes modular services, centralized ingress, separation of metrics and logs, and configurations that are safe to publish while remaining extensible.

The stack is suitable for homelabs, learning environments, and as a foundation for larger infrastructure projects.
Repository GitHub: https://github.com/mikecozier/docker-traefik-stack
  • This repository uses example values only.
  • Replace placeholders and review security settings before deploying in a production environment.
If this project helped you learn or build something useful, feel free to star the repo.