# Move from standalone container to separate web and data containers

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413
**Category:** Sysadmins
**Tags:** docker, how-to, advanced-setup, two-container
**Created:** [May 29, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413 "2015-05-29T14:12:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 145

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### Author: ![Falco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/falco/32/179432_2.png) [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2026, 8:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413/145 "2026-02-23T20:21:55Z")

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> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> in the next while I’ll re-write my [dashboard.literatecomputing.com](http://dashboard.literatecomputing.com) to stop doing standard installs (since it can’t pipe answers into discourse-setup anymore) and will continue to make a 2-container install an option there.

And that is what is great about open source; people have the choice to pick their own adventure!

> [@philh](#):
>
> Burden for whom? In this thread? The support has been provided by volunteers/users, not so much by Team.

⬇

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> was helping people who never bothered to update the data container.

Dozens of people running outdated containers completely forgotten is not great and caused much confusion every time PostgreSQL needed a major update, which in turn made our PostgreSQL happen less often, making the overall product worse.

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> Arguably, if you don’t know cp and nano, you shouldn’t run a two-container setup.

I agree 😛

> [@merefield](#):
>
> I’m not a fan. This feels like one step closer to dropping support for two-containers overall, and that would be a huge shame.

It is not possible to really drop support for two (or N) container installs; Discourse natively connects to external databases, like documented in [Configure Discourse to use a separate PostgreSQL server](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-discourse-to-use-a-separate-postgresql-server/46375).

No flexibility was removed, but analogous to [The Power of Defaults](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-power-of-defaults/), every option in tooling we create becomes something that needs to be accounted for.

Removing thousands of script lines and streamlining the installer to cover the vast more common use case was a conscious choice, but Discourse still supports all the same use cases, and people are free to venture their own path if they choose to.

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