Fly.io Reference Architecture

Overview

Production architecture for Fly.io: multi-region web tier, Postgres with read replicas, Redis for caching, background workers, and private networking.

Architecture

           ┌─────────── Fly.io Anycast DNS ──────────┐
           │                                          │
    ┌──────▼──────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌─────────────▼───┐
    │  Web (iad)  │  │  Web (lhr)   │  │   Web (nrt)     │
    │  shared-1x  │  │  shared-1x   │  │   shared-1x     │
    └──────┬──────┘  └──────┬───────┘  └────────┬────────┘
           │                │                    │
    ───────┴────────────────┴────────────────────┴─── .internal DNS
           │                │                    │
    ┌──────▼──────┐  ┌──────▼───────┐  ┌────────▼────────┐
    │ Postgres    │  │ Postgres     │  │   Redis          │
    │ Primary     │  │ Replica      │  │   (upstash.io)   │
    │ (iad)       │  │ (lhr)        │  │                  │
    └─────────────┘  └──────────────┘  └──────────────────┘
           │
    ┌──────▼──────┐
    │  Worker     │
    │  (iad)      │
    │  shared-1x  │
    └─────────────┘

Setup Commands

# 1. Web app — multi-region
fly launch --name my-web --region iad
fly scale count 1 --region lhr
fly scale count 1 --region nrt

# 2. Postgres with replica
fly postgres create --name my-db --region iad
fly postgres attach my-db -a my-web
# Add read replica in Europe
fly machine clone <primary-machine-id> --region lhr -a my-db

# 3. Background worker (same codebase, different process)
fly launch --name my-worker --region iad --no-deploy
# fly.toml for worker: no [http_service], use [processes]

# 4. All communicate via .internal DNS
# my-db.internal:5432 (Postgres)
# my-web.internal:3000 (internal API)

fly.toml Configurations

Web App

app = "my-web"
primary_region = "iad"

[http_service]
  internal_port = 3000
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = "suspend"
  min_machines_running = 1

[[vm]]
  cpu_kind = "shared"
  cpus = 1
  memory = "512mb"

Background Worker

app = "my-worker"
primary_region = "iad"

[processes]
  worker = "node dist/worker.js"

# No [http_service] — worker doesn't serve HTTP

[[vm]]
  cpu_kind = "shared"
  cpus = 1
  memory = "512mb"

Key Design Decisions

Decision	Choice	Rationale
Web tier	3 regions	Low latency for global users
Database	Fly Postgres + replica	Read replicas near users
Cache	Upstash Redis (or Fly Redis)	Managed, multi-region
Workers	Separate Fly app	Independent scaling
Networking	6PN (.internal DNS)	Zero-trust, no public exposure
Storage	Fly Volumes (NVMe)	Fast, region-local

Resources

• Fly.io Docs
• Multi-Region Postgres
• Private Networking