Sovereign DBaaS on Civo: Running OpenEverest in Minutes

When Civo launched a few years ago, it stood out for one thing: speed and simplicity. Spinning up a Kubernetes cluster took at most two minutes and a single command. That’s still true today — but Civo has grown into something more. A strong focus on data sovereignty has been added to the mix, which is exactly what we care about at OpenEverest.

With growing legal requirements, compliance mandates, and geopolitical tensions, knowing where your workloads and data run is no longer optional — it’s a requirement. You need to be in control.

OpenEverest is built on this same principle: your databases run where you want them, managed by you, with no lock-in. In this post, we show you how to spin up OpenEverest on Civo Kubernetes and get a fully sovereign DBaaS running in minutes.

TL;DR

Want to fully automate the setup from your terminal? Grab the Taskfile.yml included with this post.

Prerequisites

You’ll need the following tools installed:

• Civo CLI — to manage your Civo resources from the terminal
• kubectl — to interact with your Kubernetes cluster
• everestctl — the OpenEverest CLI

Install everestctl on macOS:

brew tap openeverest/tap
brew install everestctl

Install civo CLI on macOS:

brew install civo

1. Configure Civo

API Key

Get your API key from the Civo dashboard. A pre-generated key is usually already waiting for you. If you can’t find it, follow the Civo API keys guide.

Save your key to the Civo CLI:

civo apikey save playground <YOUR_API_KEY>

Region

For sovereign deployments, picking the right region matters. List available regions:

civo region list

Set your preferred region:

civo region current lon1

2. Object Storage (Optional)

If you plan to use database backups and restores, you need S3-compatible object storage. Civo provides its own managed solution — here’s how to set it up:

Create storage credentials:

civo objectstore credential create openeverest-creds

Create the backup bucket:

civo objectstore create openeverest-backups --owner-name openeverest-creds

You can also use any other S3-compatible storage, including self-hosted solutions like RustFS.

3. Create a Kubernetes Cluster

Create a Civo Kubernetes cluster and automatically merge its kubeconfig:

civo kubernetes create openeverest --wait --save --switch

Your cluster will be ready in 1–2 minutes. The --wait flag holds until it’s fully provisioned, --save writes the kubeconfig locally, and --switch sets it as the active context.

Need a custom setup? You can specify node size, count, Kubernetes version, and more. See the Civo cluster creation docs.

4. Install OpenEverest

Install OpenEverest using everestctl. We use --skip-wizard here for a non-interactive installation, and expose the UI via a LoadBalancer service so it’s reachable from outside the cluster:

everestctl install \
  --namespaces everest \
  --operator.mongodb=true \
  --operator.postgresql=true \
  --operator.mysql=true \
  --skip-wizard \
  --helm.set server.service.type=LoadBalancer

Security note: Exposing OpenEverest via LoadBalancer is convenient for a playground. The UI and API are protected by authentication, but for production workloads it’s recommended to keep OpenEverest internal and use a VPN or ingress with proper access controls.

5. Access the UI

Once installation completes, get the external IP of the LoadBalancer:

kubectl get svc everest -n everest-system \
  -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'

Open a browser and navigate to http://<IP>:8080.

Log in with:

• Username: admin
• Password: retrieve it with:

everestctl accounts initial-admin-password

Automate with Taskfile

We’ve put together a Taskfile.yml that automates the entire workflow above. It supports configuration via environment variables and falls back to interactive prompts when they aren’t set.

Download: Taskfile.yml

Install Task

brew install go-task

Environment Variables

Available Tasks

Full Deployment

Run everything with a single command:

task deploy

Or with environment variables pre-set:

CIVO_API_KEY=your-key CIVO_REGION=lon1 task deploy

Teardown

To remove the cluster and free up resources:

task teardown

You’ll be prompted to confirm before anything is deleted.

Civo Marketplace

We’re also working on adding OpenEverest to the Civo Marketplace, which will make the installation even simpler — a one-click deploy directly from the Civo dashboard. Stay tuned.

Running OpenEverest on Civo gives you fast provisioning, a clean developer experience, and the data sovereignty your teams and compliance frameworks require. The Civo infrastructure paired with OpenEverest’s operator-based database management means you’re not handing control over to anyone — your data stays where you put it.

Clone the Taskfile and run it yourself. Questions or feedback? Join the OpenEverest community.