A tool for managing NixOS hosts, providing multi-host deployment with health checks and secret management.
Morph is a NixOS host management tool that automates the deployment of system configurations across multiple servers. It acts as a wrapper around Nix commands like nix-build and nix copy, adding features like health checks, secret uploads, and host filtering to streamline fleet operations. It solves the problem of safely and efficiently updating NixOS machines in production environments.
System administrators and DevOps engineers managing NixOS-based infrastructure, particularly those with multiple servers requiring coordinated deployments and health validation.
Developers choose Morph for its tight integration with NixOS, safety features like health checks, and ability to handle complex multi-host deployments without introducing external state. It fills a gap in the Nix ecosystem by providing a dedicated, scriptable tool for production deployments.
NixOS deployment tool
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Supports multi-host deployments with host filtering, tagging, and selective rollouts via glob patterns and limits, enabling controlled updates across server fleets as shown in the examples.
Implements command-based and HTTP-based health checks, plus experimental pre-deploy checks, to validate system readiness before activating changes, reducing deployment risks.
Uses SCP to upload sensitive files without storing them in the Nix store, with automatic directory creation, enhancing security for deployment secrets as detailed in the secrets example.
Operates without persistent state, relying solely on Nix expressions and SSH connections, which simplifies the tool and avoids state management overhead.
Pre-deploy checks are labeled as experimental and likely to change, making them unreliable for production use without careful consideration and potential breaking updates.
Lacks pre-built binaries; users must fork the repository and build from source with nix-build, adding setup complexity compared to drop-in deployment tools.
Primarily tested and designed for NixOS, with prerequisites like nix and ssh, limiting usability for teams managing heterogeneous or non-NixOS infrastructure.