Alerts for self-hosted customer deployments

Source: Dev.to

Distr is an open‑source platform for distributing applications to on‑prem, BYOC, and air‑gapped customers. It now includes an alerts system so you’re notified about failed updates, crash loops, or unreachable deployments before your customers notice.

Overview

• Your own infrastructure – you already have Grafana alerts, PagerDuty, etc., and you’re aware of production issues within minutes.
• Self‑hosted customer deployments – traditionally you get radio silence until a ticket is opened, leaving you blind to problems in customer‑controlled environments.

How Alerts Work in Distr

Vendor‑side alerts

• Configure alerts once in the Vendor portal.
• Settings apply to all deployments you manage.
• You can also apply granular configurations when needed.

Customer‑side alerts

• For customers who manage and update their own deployments, enable alerts in the Customer portal.
• Customers can configure who receives notifications and how.

Benefits of the Dual‑Approach

• Proactive monitoring: Catch issues such as failed or stuck updates, loss of contact with a deployment (network problems, dead instance), and application crash loops.
• Noise reduction: Normal restarts from successful updates are filtered out, preventing unnecessary spam.
• Flexibility: Supports varied relationships—some customers prefer you monitor their deployments, while others want full control over their own alerts.

Real‑world example

One customer experienced a crash loop for two days because the app restarted quickly enough to appear “up.” With alerts, the issue would have been detected within the first 10 minutes.

Setup

1. Open the Vendor portal (or Customer portal for your clients).
2. Enable alerts and choose the notification channels you prefer.
3. Save – the configuration takes about 30 seconds.

Detailed instructions are available in the alerts documentation.

Next Steps

• If you’re already using Distr: Alerts are ready to enable now.
• If you’re not yet using Distr and need a solution for on‑prem or customer‑controlled distribution, let’s talk.

We’d love to hear your feedback. You can also support the project by starring the repository:

⭐ distr-sh/distr ⭐