QGIS Server on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS by cloudimg

QGIS Server on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

QGIS Server is the OGC compliant map server of the QGIS project. It reads a QGIS project file and publishes the layers inside it as standards compliant web services: WMS 1.3.0 and 1.1.1 for rendered map images, WFS for vector features, WCS for coverages and WMTS for cached tiles. Because it shares its rendering engine with QGIS on the desktop, the symbology, labelling and layer order a cartographer designed are exactly what clients receive over the web, with no second styling step and no translation into another server's rule language.

What is included

• QGIS Server 3.44 Long Term Release, installed from the official QGIS apt repository so the runtime stays patchable with apt upgrade
• Two persistent FastCGI worker processes supervised by spawn fcgi, tuned one per vCPU for the recommended VM size
• OGC services on /ogc/ behind an nginx reverse proxy, with the map server itself reachable only over local unix sockets
• A per VM password generated on first boot, gating every OGC request and the bundled viewer, with no shared default credential
• A browser map viewer with a live WMS legend and click to identify GetFeatureInfo, served locally with no CDN dependency
• A working sample QGIS project and dataset, authored by cloudimg, on a dedicated Azure data disk at /srv/qgis
• An end to end OGC self test you can re run at any time, and an unauthenticated health endpoint for load balancer probes
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Secure by default

QGIS Server has no authentication and no user accounts of its own, so published as shipped it exposes every layer of every project to anyone who finds the address. cloudimg closes that before the service is ever reachable: the rendering workers listen only on local unix sockets owned by the web server user, nginx is the sole network listener, and every OGC request, the viewer and its assets sit behind an HTTP Basic Auth gate whose password is generated uniquely on the first boot of each VM and written to a root only file. No plaintext password ships in the image and no two VMs share a login. Only the static health endpoint is unauthenticated.

Licensing and support

QGIS Server is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later and is free. The cloudimg charge of 0.04 US dollars per vCPU hour covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 expert support. Standard_B2s is the recommended starting size. Guide: https://www.cloudimg.co.uk/guides/qgis-server-on-ubuntu-24-04-azure/