CoreControl - One Dashboard for All Your Self-Hosted Infrastructure

Most self-hosters end up with the same problem: services spread across multiple servers, uptime tracked in a bookmark folder, and “is that thing still running?” answered by opening five browser tabs.

CoreControl was built to fix that.

It is a lightweight, self-hosted infrastructure dashboard that gives you a single place to track your servers, catalogue your applications, monitor their uptime, and visualise your network topology.

What is CoreControl?

CoreControl is an open-source self-hosted dashboard focused on infrastructure organisation and awareness.

You register your servers with their hardware specs and management links, add your self-hosted applications with their URLs, and CoreControl monitors them continuously — alerting you when something goes down and keeping a history of availability.

“The only dashboard you’ll ever need to manage your entire server infrastructure.”

CoreControl Source Code on GitHub CoreControl Discord Community

What sets it apart

• 🖥️ Server catalogue — register servers with CPU/RAM/storage specs and quick-access links to management panels (Cockpit, Proxmox, Portainer, etc.)
• 📱 Application tracking — add all your self-hosted services with URLs and let CoreControl poll their status continuously
• 📈 Uptime history — see timeline graphs of availability, not just “is it up right now”
• 🌐 Network visualiser — build drag-and-drop network topology flowcharts that document how your infrastructure connects
• 🔔 Notifications — alerts when services go down or come back up
• 🤖 Go agent — lightweight monitoring component that collects server metrics via Glances
• ⚖️ MIT licensed — simple, permissive, truly free ❤️

CoreControl Tech Overview

CoreControl ships as three Docker containers sharing a PostgreSQL 17 database. The architecture is deliberately simple:

Browser → web container (Next.js, port 3000) → PostgreSQL
                                                    ↑
                          agent container (Go) ─────┘
                          (polls Glances on managed servers)

web — the Next.js application serving both the frontend UI and the API. Handles authentication (JWT), all CRUD operations for servers and applications, uptime polling logic, network topology storage, and the settings panel.

agent — a lightweight Go binary that reads server metrics from the Glances monitoring API and writes them to PostgreSQL. This gives CoreControl the server hardware monitoring data without requiring an SSH connection or a heavy agent.

db — PostgreSQL 17, the single source of truth for all data.

The frontend is built with TailwindCSS and shadcn/ui components, with React Flow powering the network topology builder and selfh.st/icons providing application icons — a nice touch that makes the app catalogue visually recognisable at a glance.

The GitHub repository is currently undergoing a backend rewrite using Elysia (TypeScript) on Bun, adding team-based multi-tenancy. The Docker images ship the current stable version.

Self-Hosting CoreControl with Docker

The setup is three services, one volume — as simple as it gets.

services:
  web:
    image: haedlessdev/corecontrol:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      JWT_SECRET: "replace_with_a_long_random_string"
      DATABASE_URL: "postgresql://postgres:postgres@db:5432/postgres"
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
    restart: unless-stopped

  agent:
    image: haedlessdev/corecontrol-agent:latest
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: "postgresql://postgres:postgres@db:5432/postgres"
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
    restart: unless-stopped

  db:
    image: postgres:17
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
      POSTGRES_DB: postgres
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U postgres"]
      interval: 2s
      timeout: 2s
      retries: 10

volumes:
  postgres_data:

Save this as docker-compose.yml, then:

docker compose up -d

Open http://your-server-ip:3000 and log in:

• Email: [email protected]
• Password: admin

Change the default password immediately in Settings after first login.

Services explained

The only required configuration is JWT_SECRET — replace the placeholder with any long random string (e.g., openssl rand -hex 32). Everything else works with the defaults shown above.

The postgres_data volume holds all your servers, applications, uptime history, and network diagrams. Back it up with a regular docker exec db pg_dump or by snapshotting the Docker volume.

services:
  web:
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: "postgresql://corecontrol:strongpassword@db:5432/corecontrol"

  agent:
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: "postgresql://corecontrol:strongpassword@db:5432/corecontrol"

  db:
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: corecontrol
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: strongpassword
      POSTGRES_DB: corecontrol

corecontrol.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

What to do after install

1. Add your servers — go to Servers → Add Server. Fill in the hostname, IP address, hardware specs (CPU, RAM, storage), and any quick-access URLs (your Cockpit URL, Proxmox web UI, Portainer, etc.).

2. Add your applications — go to Applications → Add Application. Enter the name, URL, and pick an icon from the selfh.st/icons library. CoreControl immediately starts polling the URL for uptime.

3. Check the Uptime page — after a few minutes, the uptime page shows availability timelines for all your registered applications. Tune notification settings if you want alerts on state changes.

4. Build a network map — go to Networks and drag your servers and applications onto the canvas. Connect them with edges to document how your infrastructure is laid out. Useful during incidents.

Conclusion

CoreControl hits a genuinely useful spot between “just a bookmark folder” and “full-blown monitoring stack.” It does not replace Prometheus + Grafana for deep metrics, but for most self-hosters the question is not “what is the p99 latency of my Nextcloud instance?” but “is Nextcloud up, and where is the admin panel link again?” — and CoreControl answers both instantly.

The three-container Docker setup means the only barrier to entry is copy-pasting a compose file. The MIT licence and active Discord community suggest it will keep growing.

Alternatives worth comparing:

• Homarr — polished homepage with app links and widgets; no uptime history or network topology
• Uptime Kuma — best-in-class uptime monitoring; no server catalogue or network view
• Homer — ultra-minimal static homepage; YAML-configured, no dynamic monitoring
• Homepage — highly configurable dashboard with service widgets; more setup, more power