Create a Private Location

In this guide, you'll set up a private location — a monitoring probe running on your own infrastructure. This lets you monitor internal applications, private APIs, and network resources behind your firewall without exposing them to the public internet.

For background on when to use a private location and how the connection works, see Understanding private locations.

Step 1: create a private location

1. Navigate to Settings > Private Locations in your openstatus dashboard
2. Click Create Private Location
3. Give your location a descriptive name (e.g., "Office Network", "AWS us-east-1 VPC")
4. Save the configuration

After creation, you'll receive a token. Copy this token — you'll need it in the next step.

Step 2: deploy the Docker probe

Run the monitoring probe on your server using Docker:

docker run -d \
  --name openstatus-probe \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -e OPENSTATUS_KEY=<your-token> \
  ghcr.io/openstatushq/private-location:latest

Replace <your-token> with the token from Step 1.

Verify the container is running

docker ps --filter name=openstatus-probe

You should see the container listed with a status of Up:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                          STATUS         NAMES
abc123         ghcr.io/openstatushq/private-location:latest   Up 2 minutes   openstatus-probe

Step 3: assign monitors to your private location

1. Go to Settings > Private Locations and select your location
2. Choose which monitors should run from this private location
3. Alternatively, edit an individual monitor and select your private location in its settings

Checkpoint: Within a couple of minutes, you should see monitoring data appearing in your monitor's overview from your private location.

What you've accomplished

• Created a private location in openstatus
• Deployed a monitoring probe on your own infrastructure
• Assigned monitors to check from your private location

Troubleshooting

Container exits immediately

Check the container logs for errors:

docker logs openstatus-probe

Common causes:

• Invalid token — double-check the token value; ensure no extra spaces or newlines.
• Wrong variable name — the probe reads OPENSTATUS_KEY. OPENSTATUS_TOKEN is ignored, so the probe starts unauthenticated and fetches no monitors.
• Network issues — ensure the container can reach openstatus-private-location.fly.dev on port 443.

No data appearing in the dashboard

1. Verify the container is running: docker ps --filter name=openstatus-probe
2. Check that you've assigned at least one monitor to the private location
3. Wait for the probe to pick up the change. It fetches its monitor list on startup and then every 10 minutes, so a monitor assigned after the probe started can take that long to appear. Restart the container to apply it immediately.

Container can't reach internal services

If the probe needs to reach services on your host machine, use Docker's host networking:

docker run -d \
  --name openstatus-probe \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network host \
  -e OPENSTATUS_KEY=<your-token> \
  ghcr.io/openstatushq/private-location:latest

What's next

• Read our Raspberry Pi deployment guide — deploy probes on low-cost hardware.
• Create a monitor — set up more monitors to run from your private location.