Deploy to Azure

This hosting guide shows you how to self-host n8n on Azure. It uses n8n with Postgres as a database backend using Kubernetes to manage the necessary resources and reverse proxy.

Prerequisites

You need The Azure command line tool

Self-hosting knowledge prerequisites

Self-hosting n8n requires technical knowledge, including:

• Setting up and configuring servers and containers

• Managing application resources and scaling

• Securing servers and applications

• Configuring n8n

n8n recommends self-hosting for expert users. Mistakes can lead to data loss, security issues, and downtime. If you aren't experienced at managing servers, n8n recommends n8n Cloud.

Stable and Beta versions

n8n releases a new minor version most weeks. The stable version is for production use. beta is the most recent release. The beta version may be unstable. To report issues, use the forum.

Current stable: 2.42.7 Current beta: 2.43.4

Hosting options

Azure offers several ways suitable for hosting n8n, including Azure Container Instances (optimized for running containers), Linux Virtual Machines, and Azure Kubernetes Service (containers running with Kubernetes).

This guide uses the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) as the hosting option. Using Kubernetes requires some additional complexity and configuration, but is the best method for scaling n8n as demand changes.

The steps in this guide use a mix of the Azure UI and command line tool, but you can use either to accomplish most tasks.

Open the Azure Kubernetes Service

From the Azure portal select Kubernetes services.

Create a cluster

From the Kubernetes services page, select Create > Create a Kubernetes cluster.

You can select any of the configuration options that suit your needs, then select Create when done.

Set Kubectl context

The remainder of the steps in this guide require you to set the Azure instance as the Kubectl context. You can find the connection details for a cluster instance by opening its details page and then the Connect button. The resulting code snippets shows the steps to paste and run into a terminal to change your local Kubernetes settings to use the new cluster.

Clone configuration repository

Kubernetes and n8n require a series of configuration files. You can clone these from this repository. The following steps tell you which file configures what and what you need to change.

Clone the repository with the following command:

git clone https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n-hosting.git

And change directory:

cd n8n-hosting/kubernetes

Configure Postgres

For larger scale n8n deployments, Postgres provides a more robust database backend than SQLite.

Configure volume for persistent storage

To maintain data between pod restarts, the Postgres deployment needs a persistent volume. The default storage class is suitable for this purpose and is defined in the postgres-claim0-persistentvolumeclaim.yaml manifest.

Specialized storage classes

If you have specialised or higher requirements for storage classes, read more on the options Azure offers in the documentation.

Postgres environment variables

Postgres needs some environment variables set to pass to the application running in the containers.

The example postgres-secret.yaml file contains placeholders you need to replace with your own values. Postgres will use these details when creating the database..

The postgres-deployment.yaml manifest then uses the values from this manifest file to send to the application pods.

Configure n8n

Create a volume for file storage

While not essential for running n8n, using persistent volumes is required for:

• Using nodes that interact with files, such as the binary data node.

• If you want to persist manual n8n encryption keys between restarts. This saves a file containing the key into file storage during startup.

The n8n-claim0-persistentvolumeclaim.yaml manifest creates this, and the n8n Deployment mounts that claim in the volumes section of the n8n-deployment.yaml manifest.

…
volumes:
  - name: n8n-claim0
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: n8n-claim0
…

Pod resources

Kubernetes lets you optionally specify the minimum resources application containers need and the limits they can run to. The example YAML files cloned above contain the following in the resources section of the n8n-deployment.yaml file:

…
resources:
  requests:
    memory: "250Mi"
  limits:
    memory: "500Mi"
…    

This defines a minimum of 250mb per container, a maximum of 500mb, and lets Kubernetes handle CPU. You can change these values to match your own needs. As a guide, here are the resources values for the n8n cloud offerings:

Tier	RAM	CPU
Starter	320mb	10 millicore burstable
Pro (10k executions)	640mb	20 millicore burstable
Pro (50k executions)	1280mb	80 millicore burstable

Optional: Environment variables

You can configure n8n settings and behaviors using environment variables.

Create an n8n-secret.yaml file. Refer to Environment variables for n8n environment variables details.

Deployments

The two deployment manifests (n8n-deployment.yaml and postgres-deployment.yaml) define the n8n and Postgres applications to Kubernetes.

The manifests run PostgreSQL 18. Setting up for the first time needs nothing extra.

If you already have a database running an older PostgreSQL major version, don't apply this to it. PostgreSQL 18 can't open a data directory written by an older major version, and moving the folder doesn't help. The pod stays in CrashLoopBackOff with database files are incompatible with server. PostgreSQL leaves your data alone, and you can pin the image back to the version you were on.

To move an existing database across, follow the official PostgreSQL upgrade guide first.

The manifests define the following:

• Send the environment variables defined to each application pod

• Define the container image to use

• Set resource consumption limits with the resources object

• The volumes defined earlier and volumeMounts to define the path in the container to mount volumes.

• Scaling and restart policies. The example manifests define one instance of each pod. You should change this to meet your needs.

Services

The two service manifests (postgres-service.yaml and n8n-service.yaml) expose the services to the outside world using the Kubernetes load balancer using ports 5432 and 5678 respectively.

Send to Kubernetes cluster

Send all the manifests to the cluster with the following command:

kubectl apply -f .

Namespace error

You may see an error message about not finding an "n8n" namespace as that resources isn't ready yet. You can run the same command again, or apply the namespace manifest first with the following command:

kubectl apply -f namespace.yaml

Set up DNS

n8n typically operates on a subdomain. Create a DNS record with your provider for the subdomain and point it to the IP address of the n8n service. Find the IP address of the n8n service from the Services & ingresses menu item of the cluster you want to use under the External IP column. You need to add the n8n port, "5678" to the URL.

Static IP addresses with AKS

Read this tutorial for more details on how to use a static IP address with AKS.

Delete resources

Remove the resources created by the manifests with the following command:

kubectl delete -f .

Next steps

• Learn more about configuring and scaling n8n.

• Or explore using n8n: try the Quickstarts.

Related resources

• Use a cloud provider

• DigitalOcean

• Heroku

• Hetzner Cloud

• AWS

• Google Cloud Run

• Google Kubernetes Engine

• OpenShift Local (CRC)

• Use Docker Compose