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title Server profiles
icon /assets/icons/gear-six.svg
sidebarTitle Server profiles
description Choose minimal, standard or suite to decide which optional parts of the control plane start, and switch later without losing data.

A profile is one setting that decides which optional subsystems start. The default, standard, is the install you have always had. minimal keeps a one-server install as light as Dokku. suite turns on everything for power users.

Idle CPU and memory were never the problem (see Performance). What a profile changes is how many things run, listen, warn and grow your disk, so there is less to explain on a small box.

What each profile starts

minimal standard (default) suite
Mesh and WireGuard off off on
Plugins and marketplace off off on
Experimental features off off all on
Metrics and log retention 3 days 15 days (7 days on a disk under 20 GiB) same as standard
Backup scheduler and WAL shipping start when a backup is scheduled start at boot start at boot
Agent listener (port 9443) loopback only until a remote node exists all interfaces all interfaces
Security score backup and key rotation are recommendations, not score items scored scored
Doctor RAM and CPU floors 512 MiB and 1 core 896 MiB and 2 cores 896 MiB and 2 cores
Build SBOMs off off on
Host disk, memory and patch history with the mesh with the mesh on (mesh is on)

A pipeline engine that only polls while a run is active, a retention default that follows disk size, and the corrected doctor floors apply to every profile.

Choose a profile

At install time:

curl -fsSL https://levelrail.com/install.sh | sudo sh -s -- --profile minimal

LEVELRAIL_PROFILE=minimal does the same. The installer writes Environment=APP_SERVER_PROFILE=minimal to the systemd drop-in and keeps it on upgrades. A machine with under 2 GB of RAM is told that minimal fits it, but is never switched silently.

Later, from Settings, Beta features, Server profile, or from the CLI:

levelrail-cli settings profile get
levelrail-cli settings profile set suite --restart
levelrail-cli settings profile set minimal --dry-run

Only an administrator can change it. The choice is saved at once and applies at the next restart of the control plane, because most subsystems are wired at startup. --restart (or the Restart now button) asks for one.

Which setting wins

  1. APP_SERVER_PROFILE in the server environment. When set, the dashboard and CLI show it as pinned and refuse to change it.
  2. The profile saved from Settings or the CLI.
  3. standard.

Inside a profile the same order holds for each part: APP_MESH_ENABLED beats the mesh toggle in Network settings, which beats the profile. APP_EXPERIMENTAL beats a switch saved on the Beta features page, which beats the profile. A retention variable (APP_METRICS_RETENTION, APP_LOGS_RETENTION) beats any profile default.

Moving between profiles never deletes data

Moving up only starts things. Moving down stops loops and makes gated routes return 404, and keeps every row. A few moves are checked first:

Move What happens
Down to minimal with remote nodes enrolled Refused. Minimal binds the agent listener to loopback, so remote agents could not reach it. Remove the nodes or choose standard.
Away from suite while the profile is the only reason the mesh runs and nodes use it Refused. Pin the mesh on in Network settings or remove the nodes.
Down while plugins are enabled Refused. Disable them first so their containers are not left unsupervised.
Down to a shorter retention Needs a confirm (--confirm), because the next hourly sweep deletes samples and log lines older than the new window.

--dry-run prints the same checks without saving. The profile is stored in the control plane database, so restoring an older snapshot restores the older profile.

Tuning knobs

Variable Default Meaning
APP_SERVER_PROFILE unset Pins the profile to minimal, standard or suite.
APP_PROFILE_MINIMAL_RETENTION 72h Retention on the minimal profile.
APP_SMALL_DISK_BYTES 20 GiB Data disks below this get the shorter default retention.
APP_SMALL_DISK_RETENTION 168h That shorter retention.
APP_LOW_RAM_BYTES 2 GiB Memory below which the dashboard recommends minimal.
APP_PROFILE_LAZY_START_INTERVAL 5m How often minimal checks whether a deferred loop has work.
APP_PIPELINE_IDLE_INTERVAL 1m Pipeline engine poll while no run is active.

APP_PROFILE is a different setting: it names the CLI credentials profile.

What it costs

Measured with the real boot harness on one machine (the table is in Performance): minimal runs 116 goroutines and 35 loops, standard 118 and 38, suite 128 and 41. The difference is small by design: the process was already light at about 162 MB. The gain is fewer things running, listening, warning and filling the disk, not a smaller process.