> Note: This walkthrough uses the hostname `dokku.me` in commands. When deploying to your own server, you should set the `DOKKU_DOMAIN` value in the `Vagrantfile` before you initialize the Vagrant VM.
Once you have configured Dokku with at least one user, you can deploy applications using `git push`. To quickly see Dokku deployment in action, try using [the Heroku Ruby on Rails "Getting Started" app](https://github.com/heroku/ruby-getting-started).
Dokku by default **does not** provide datastores (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL) on a newly created app. You can add datastore support by installing plugins, and the Dokku project [provides official plugins](/docs/community/plugins.md#official-plugins-beta) for common datastores.
The Getting Started app requires a PostgreSQL service, so install the plugin and create the related service as follows:
> Warning: Your app should respect the `PORT` environment variable, otherwise it may not respond to web requests. You can find more information in the [port management documentation](/docs/networking/port-management.md).**
Now you can deploy the `ruby-getting-started` app to your Dokku server. All you have to do is add a remote to name the app. Applications are created on-the-fly on the Dokku server.
> Note: Your private key should be registered with `ssh-agent` in your local development environment. If you get a `permission denied` error when pushing, you can register your private key as follows: `ssh-add -k ~/<your private key>`.
- [Heroku buildpacks](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/buildpacks) via [Herokuish](https://github.com/gliderlabs/herokuish#buildpacks): See the [herokuish buildpacks documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/herokuish-buildpacks.md) to learn about the different ways to specify a buildpack.
- [Dockerfile](https://docs.docker.com/reference/builder/): See the [dockerfile documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/dockerfiles.md) to learn about the different ways to configure Dockerfile-based deploys.
- [Docker Image](https://docs.docker.com/get-started/overview/#docker-objects): See the [docker image documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/images.md) to learn about how to deploy a Docker Image.
Dokku uses Git locally (i.e. not a Docker image) to build its own copy of your app repo, including submodules, as the `dokku` user. This means that in order to deploy private Git submodules, you need to put your deploy key in `/home/dokku/.ssh/` and potentially add `github.com` (or your VCS host key) into `/home/dokku/.ssh/known_hosts`. You can use the following test to confirm your setup is correct:
Dokku is, at its core, a Docker container manager. Thus, it does not necessarily play well with other out-of-band processes interacting with the Docker daemon.
Prior to every deployment, Dokku will execute a cleanup function. As of 0.5.x, the cleanup removes all containers with the `dokku` label where the status is either `dead` or `exited` (previous versions would remove _all_`dead` or `exited` containers). The cleanup function also removes all images with `dangling` status.
See the [user management documentation](/docs/deployment/user-management.md) for more information on how to manage users with access to your Dokku server.
See the [Git documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/git.md#changing-the-deploy-branch) for more information on deploying a non-master branch to your application.
See the [image tagging documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/images.md) for more information on how Docker images can be tagged and deployed for a given application.
See the [herokuish buildpack documentation](/docs/deployment/methods/herokuish-buildpacks.md) for more information on how to specify a set of custom buildpacks for your application.
See the [application management documentation](/docs/deployment/application-management.md#removing-a-deployed-app) for more information on how to remove an application from your Dokku server.
See the [application management documentation](/docs/deployment/application-management.md#renaming-a-deployed-app) for more information on how an application can be renamed and the impact of doing so upon the application and associated resources.
See the [zero-downtime deploy documentation](/docs/deployment/zero-downtime-deploys.md) for more information on how Dokku enables zero-downtime deploys.
