Server File System Layout

Updated on 30 Jun 2025
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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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Server Environment Variables

Table of contents

Important File System Locations