Deploying Laravel with Kamal 2: Lessons from a Real Production Setup

A real-world account of deploying an existing Laravel application to production using Kamal 2 and Docker without modifying the application itself. Key lessons include: using SSH config aliases instead of raw IP strings for reliable connections with Docker Buildx, setting up a remote builder early when dealing with cross-architecture builds, and treating health check endpoints as a first-class requirement for zero-downtime deployments. Once the process stabilized, deployments became repeatable and predictable, reducing operational stress for the team.