Server File System Layout
  • 30 Jun 2025
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Server File System Layout

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Article summary

If installing the Polarity Server onto a single server (ie. single instance), we recommend separate partitions for the various components from your Operating System (OS) partition (see Default Mount Points below).  In addition, we recommend placing your system audit logs (found by default in /var/logs/audit) into their own partition so that in the event application logs fill up your OS partition, the system audit logs can continue to be written.

In general, we recommend a mirrored (RAID 1) setup for your OS partition, and a RAID 10 (1+0) setup for your database partition.  The size of the partitions and the types of disks used will depend on the number of simultaneous users you expect to be connected as well as the amount of data (tag, entities, and comments) that you expect to store directly in Polarity.

For the PostgreSQL partition we recommend sizing the disks so that the total disk space is equal to the required space for your data plus 30% for the overhead of Postgres logs, caches, and other database operations.   We recommend the use of SSD-type drives over spinning disks to ensure adequate performance.

Important File System Locations

Log File Locations

Software

Directory

Filename

Polarity Platform

/var/lib/docker/containers/<platform_container_name>

<platform_container_name>-json.log

Polarity Integrations

/app/integrations/<integration_name>/logs

integration.log

Polarity Web

/var/lib/docker/containers/<web_container_name>

<web_container_name>-json.log

Redis Caches & OS

/var/log

messages

PostgreSQL

/var/lib/pgsql/<version>/data/logs

Postgresql-<day>.log

System Audit

/var/log/audit

audit.log

Default File System Locations

Location

Description

/app

Contains Polarity Software

/app/caddy

Contains Polarity Web Configurations

/app/certs/polarity.pem
/app/caddy/config/server.crt

SSL Public Key Certificate

/app/certs/polarity_key.pem
/app/caddy/config/server.key

SSL Private Key Certificate

/app/certs/ca/<CA_public_key{{.crt||.pem}}>

Certificate Authority Public Keys (may be multiple files)

/var/lib/pgsql/{{13||15}}/data

PostgreSQL configuration and database data (if running as a service and not as a container)

/var/lib/docker

Contains Polarity Server container images

Default Mount Points

When installing Polarity software onto a single server (single instance), we recommend partitioning the server with XFS formatting on separate volumes, as described below.

Purpose

Mount Point

Recommended Minimum Size

Operating system

/

20 GB

Docker containers

/var/lib/docker

40 GB

Polarity Server software

/app

40 GB

System logs

/var/log

25 GB

PostgreSQL server (if installed as a service)

/var/lib/pgsql

40 GB


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