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Last Updated2026-04-28
README
Digital Slide Archive (DSA) Deployment Guide
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Purpose:
> This guide explains how to deploy a
Digital Slide Archive (DSA) instance, from a quick container-based startup to production-scale deployment considerations.
> It is intended for both:
Technical administrators responsible for deployment.
Non-technical stakeholders who need to understand infrastructure requirements and decisions.
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Table of Contents
Quickstart: From Zero to Running
Deployment Architecture Options
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Option A: Public Internet Deployment
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Option B: Secure Tunnel Deployment Behind Firewall
Infrastructure Decisions Guide
Detailed Deployment Steps
Storage Architecture Planning
Scaling Considerations
Security and SSL Deep Dive
Secure Tunnel Deep Dive
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Quickstart: From Zero to Running
This section gets a DSA instance running on your local machine in minutes. This is
not yet a production deployment it is a way to verify the software works and to begin exploring configuration before making infrastructure decisions.
Prerequisites
Before starting, ensure you have:
Docker and Docker Compose installed. If you are running on a desktop machine (Windows or macOS), Docker Desktop includes both. If you are running on a headless Linux server (the more common case for production), install Docker Engine and the Docker Compose plugin through your package manager (e.g., apt install docker-compose-plugin on Ubuntu). The Docker Compose V2 plugin is invoked as docker compose (with a space), not docker-compose (with a hyphen).
Git installed
At least 4 GB of RAM available for containers (DSA services, the web app, database, and background workers, all run in containers simultaneously)
At least 20 GB of free disk space for the container images and a small test dataset
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Why these requirements? DSA runs ...