Self-host Open WebUI + Ollama in production — the config nobody writes about

Open WebUI's quickstart is great for local dev. One command, it's running. But putting it on a real server for a team
requires a lot more — SSL, auth lockdown, WebSocket proxy, backups.

Here's the full production config I use.

## The stack

ollama — LLM runner
openwebui — Chat UI
nginx — Reverse proxy + SSL

## The nginx config that trips everyone up

Open WebUI uses WebSockets for streaming. Without this, responses just hang:


nginx
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  proxy_read_timeout 300s;

  Also set client_max_body_size 50M — users will upload documents and images.

  Lock down auth

  By default Open WebUI allows anyone to sign up. For a team setup:

  WEBUI_AUTH=true
  ENABLE_SIGNUP=false

  Now only the admin can create accounts. Add SMTP config to send email invites.

  GPU passthrough (NVIDIA)

  In docker-compose.yml, uncomment:

  deploy:
    resources:
      reservations:
        devices:
          - driver: nvidia
            count: all
            capabilities: [gpu]

  Then install nvidia-container-toolkit and restart. Without this, Ollama runs on CPU — still works but much slower.

  Automated backups

  docker run --rm \
    --volumes-from "$(docker compose ps -q openwebui)" \
    -v "$(pwd)/backups:/backup" \
    alpine \
    tar czf "/backup/openwebui_$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz" /app/backend/data

  Add to cron: 0 2 * * * /opt/openwebui/scripts/backup.sh

  Recommended free VPS

  Oracle Cloud Always Free — 4 vCPU / 24GB RAM ARM. Enough for llama3.2 (2B) with a small team.

  Full kit

  I packaged everything above into a ZIP — docker-compose, nginx config, backup + model scripts, .env.example.

  Gumroad: https://peachjed.gumroad.com/l/cazucc