Great questions. Here is a practical guide for deploying Odoo Community Edition in production.

Deployment approach: The most common and recommended method is to deploy Odoo on a Linux server (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is widely used) using either a direct installation (from source or the official .deb package) or Docker/Docker Compose. Docker is popular for easier maintenance and isolation. For high-availability setups, some teams use Kubernetes, but that is usually overkill for smaller deployments.

Server sizing guidelines from the official Odoo documentation:

• For up to 10 concurrent users: 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB storage

For 10 to 50 concurrent users: 4 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM, 100+ GB storage

• For 50 to 100 concurrent users: 8 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, 200+ GB storage
• The number of Odoo workers should be set to (CPU cores x 2) + 1 as a starting point, then tuned based on actual load.

Key things to configure before going live:

1. Use a reverse proxy (Nginx or Apache) in front of Odoo for SSL termination and static file serving.
2. 2. Enable the Odoo longpolling port (default 8072) for live chat and notifications.
3. 3. Set up PostgreSQL on a separate server or at minimum tune it (shared_buffers, work_mem).
4. 4. Configure daily automated backups of your PostgreSQL database and the Odoo filestore.
5. 5. Set up a monitoring tool such as Prometheus + Grafana or a simple uptime monitor.
6. 6. Use a dedicated system user for Odoo, never run it as root.
7. 7. Set odoo.conf with db_maxconn, workers, max_cron_threads, and limit_memory_hard appropriate to your server size.

Common beginner mistakes to avoid:

• Running Odoo without a reverse proxy (exposes it directly on port 8069)

Forgetting to configure the filestore backup (attachments, documents)

• Not setting limit_memory_hard and limit_time_cpu, which can lead to runaway processes

Skipping SSL setup

• Using the default PostgreSQL configuration without tuning

The official Odoo deployment documentation is at https://www.odoo.com/documentation/17.0/administration/install.html and is a solid starting reference.