Essentials

Guide for understanding and configuring an Essentials stack

The Essentials stack provides a robust, streamlined foundation for applications that do not yet require horizontal scaling. It provisions a comprehensive, all-in-one environment on a single, highly optimized server.

Architecture: Single-server deployment.

How it Works: A single server accommodates the complete application stack, including the web tier, an NFS shared filesystem, cron execution, relational database (MySQL or MariaDB), caching (Valkey), message brokering (RabbitMQ), and search (OpenSearch).

Best For: Baseline workloads, staging environments, or applications with predictable, moderate traffic.

Supported variants

Magento (type: essentials-magento)
Shopware (type: essentials-shopware)

Variables

Variable name	Type	Description
`region`	`string`	Required The region to deploy the stack.
`zone`	`string`	Optional. Availability zone. Specify only when a specific zone is required. Otherwise, derived from the `region`.
`size`	`string`	Required Plan size. Must be one of `dev`, `micro`, `mini`, `small`, `medium`, `large`, or `xlarge`.
`server_size`	`object`	Optional override for core server compute. Must map to a specific ARM64 instance type based on vCPU and memory.
↳`vcpu`	`number`	vCPU count.
↳`memory`	`number`	GiB.
`server`	`object`	Optional core server settings.
↳`deletion_protection`	`bool`	Whether to block termination of the core server. Defaults to `true`. While `true`, requests to delete the stack fail with a `409 Conflict` error. See Deleting the stack .
`data_disk_size`	`number`	Optional. The size of the data disk in GiBs. If this is provided, it will override the default disk size.
`db_endpoint`	`string`	Optional. Only provide when an add-on database has been created. Typically a reference to an RDS stack output.
`db_password_secret_name`	`string`	Optional. Only provide when an add-on database has been created. A reference to a Secrets Manager secret for retrieving the database password. Typically a reference to an RDS stack output.
`stacker_variables`	`object`
↳`mysql`	`object`	Optional Mysql configuration variables. See MySQL for details.
↳`php`	`object`	Optional PHP configuration variables. See PHP-FPM for details.
↳`vinyl`	`object`	Optional Vinyl configuration variables. See Vinyl for details.

Example:

{
  "type": "essentials-magento",
  "environment": "/v2/environments/tu8aovkn7waj",
  "service": "/v2/services/2tpkjj7e0b28",
  "name": "magento-production-store",
  "variables": {
    "region": "us-east-1",
    "size": "medium",
    "stacker_variables": {
      "php": {
        "version": "8.3"
      },
      "mysql": {
        "variant": "mariadb",
        "version": "10.5.18"
      }
    }
  }
}

Outputs

Output name	Description
`data_subnets`	Array of subnet IDs for backend services [subnet].
`public_subnets`	Array of subnet IDs for public services [primary, secondary].

Deleting the stack

Deletion protection is on by default to stop the core server from being removed by accident. Before you delete the stack, turn it off:

Update the stack to set server.deletion_protection to false.
Wait for the stack to finish synchronizing.
Delete the stack.

If deletion protection is still on, the delete request returns a 409 Conflict error and no resources are removed.

For an example, see Deletion protection .

Have questions not answered here? Contact Support to get more help.

Last modified on October 27, 2026