ERPNext 15 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Stop bolting together QuickBooks, a CRM, spreadsheets, and a separate inventory tool. ERPNext 15 is a single open-source ERP that covers accounting, CRM, inventory, HR, manufacturing, projects, and helpdesk — pre-installed on a hardened Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base, ready to run on first boot.

What you get

• One-command provisioning — first-boot setup automatically initializes MariaDB, nginx, redis, and a default ERPNext site. No manual bench init. Admin password is generated per-VM and written to /var/lib/erpnext/admin-password.
• Full ERPNext module catalog — Accounting, CRM, Inventory, HR, Manufacturing, Projects, Helpdesk, Asset Management, Website, Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, Non-Profit. All included; enable per-company.
• Trusted Launch + Secure Boot enabled by default. vTPM attestation at deploy. Meets Azure Confidential VM-adjacent security posture without the CVM cost.
• Monthly security patches — every image release rolls forward Ubuntu CVE fixes, ERPNext patches, Frappe Framework patches, and Node.js 20 LTS updates. Replace the image, restore the bench data, done.
• 33 documented hardening traps applied at build time — kernel boot params, sysctl knobs, SSH hardening, auditd, fail2ban defaults, locked-down nginx config. Customer doesn't re-discover them.

Who this is for

SMB and mid-market teams replacing legacy QuickBooks + spreadsheet workflows with one unified business platform. ISVs delivering ERPNext as a turnkey offering to clients. Consultancies who deploy ERPNext repeatedly and want a clean, supported baseline instead of building from upstream every time.

Target industries & use cases

• Light manufacturing — work orders, BOM tracking, capacity planning
• Distribution & wholesale — inventory ledgers, multi-warehouse
• Professional services — projects, time-tracking, recurring billing
• Education & non-profit, healthcare clinics, agriculture
• Multi-company consolidation — multiple legal entities in one instance

Why this VM instead of self-installing

Installing ERPNext on Ubuntu is technically possible but operationally painful: Frappe bench has 8+ system dependencies, mariadb tuning that nobody documents the same way twice, a node toolchain that breaks every minor release, and a first-boot dance that needs to happen exactly once. This image does that dance for you — and re-does it cleanly every month.

Recommended deployment

Minimum: Standard_D2as_v5 (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM) — small teams, < 25 active users. Recommended: Standard_D4as_v5 (4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM) with Premium SSD — production workloads, 25-200 users. Storage: attach a separate data disk for /home/frappe/frappe-bench so image upgrades don't replace your data.

Azure integration

Trusted Launch with Secure Boot and vTPM is on by default. The Azure Linux Agent is pre-installed. Managed Identity hooks work out of the box (assign at the VM-resource level; ERPNext sees them via standard environment variables). Azure Monitor, Defender for Cloud, and Update Manager extensions all install cleanly without conflicting with the baked stack.

What's in each release

ERPNext 15 (current stable) + Frappe Framework v15 + MariaDB 11.4 + Redis 7 + Node 20 LTS + yarn + nginx 1.24 + wkhtmltopdf + Python 3.12. Built monthly with rolling CVE patches.

Support & documentation

• ERPNext official documentation
• Frappe Framework documentation
• Community forum (responsive maintainer team)
• DCA support contact

ERPNext GPL v3; Frappe MIT. BYOC.