OpenClaw Enterprise Deployment in Practice: Complete Guide to Multi-User Management, Permission Isolation, and Security Hardening

Last Thursday at 3 PM, I stared at a message from our DevOps lead on Slack, nearly spilling my coffee. “Can someone tell me why production database configurations are showing up in OpenClaw session records?” The message was followed by a screenshot—it was intern Li’s OpenClaw chat history, clearly displaying the database IP, port, and even a few SQL query results.

This was our first “incident” after introducing OpenClaw for a month. To be honest, everyone was pretty excited at first—the tool was genuinely useful for writing code, checking documentation, and debugging issues. But nobody anticipated that with a dozen developers each using it, session records would get mixed together, permission management would be a mess, and we’d have no visibility into who could access what or what operations were being performed.

OpenClaw’s GitHub stars broke 60,000 in a month—incredibly popular. But if you browse the official documentation, you’ll find it’s almost entirely installation guides for individual users. Enterprise deployment? Multi-user management? Permission control? Barely mentioned. The tool works great for personal use, but moving it to an enterprise environment is a completely different story.

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This article aims to fill that gap. I’ll share the pitfalls our team encountered, the solutions we tried, the architecture we ultimately adopted, and those configuration files and scripts—ready to use directly. If you’re planning to roll out OpenClaw at your company, or if you’re already using it but management is chaotic, I hope this helps.

Challenges and Current State of OpenClaw Enterprise Deployment

Limitations of Personal OpenClaw

OpenClaw was designed for individual developers from the start. You install it on your own computer, configure API keys, and use it directly—works smoothly. But this logic doesn’t translate well to enterprise environments.

First, the most basic issue: single-user design. OpenClaw stores all configurations and session records in the ~/.openclaw directory by default. No problem for one person, but what about ten people? Everyone’s session records are on their own computers, all mixed together. Want to find out who performed a specific operation? Good luck searching.

Then there’s permission isolation. OpenClaw inherits the permissions of the user who installed it. If you install it with an admin account, it has admin privileges; if an intern installs it with their own account, theoretically they can only access their own files. Theoretically. In reality, OpenClaw can execute arbitrary Bash commands, read and write to the filesystem, and access the network—whatever the current user can do, it can do. No sandbox, no restrictions.

The most troublesome aspect is session record management. Everyone’s chat history, executed commands, and accessed files are all piled up locally. Sensitive information? Database passwords, API keys, customer data—all in there. Can you guarantee every developer’s computer is secure enough? I certainly can’t.

Special Requirements of Enterprise Scenarios

Using OpenClaw in an enterprise has completely different needs.

Multi-user collaboration is the first challenge. The team includes frontend, backend, testing, and operations—everyone wants to use OpenClaw. How do you allocate resources? How do you avoid mutual interference? When Zhang is debugging, Li’s session shouldn’t suddenly pop in.

Permission-based management is the second challenge. Interns can use OpenClaw to write code but can’t access production environments; regular developers can check logs but can’t modify system configurations; admins need to see everyone’s operation records. How do you divide these permissions? How do you enforce them?

Audit log traceability is the third challenge. When problems occur, you need to determine who did what and when. “What commands did Li execute with OpenClaw yesterday at 3 PM?” You need to be able to answer this question.

Compliance requirements are the fourth challenge. Some companies have ISO 27001 certification, some need to comply with GDPR, and some have internal security standards. Can OpenClaw’s default configuration pass these audits? Probably not.

Frankly, personal tools focus on “usability,” while enterprise tools focus on “controllability.” These are two completely different directions.

Real Case: A Tech Company’s Lesson

A friend of mine is a CTO at a SaaS company. When OpenClaw first became popular in January this year, several developers on their team installed it themselves and were quite happy using it. They didn’t report it to the IT department or go through the formal software procurement process—classic Shadow IT.

In February, trouble hit. A developer used OpenClaw to debug a production environment issue, pasted the database connection string directly into the chat, and asked OpenClaw to analyze slow queries. OpenClaw did provide optimization suggestions, but this conversation along with the database password was all saved in the local ~/.openclaw/sessions directory.

Worse, this developer’s laptop wasn’t encrypted. One day while working at a coffee shop, they left to take a call without locking their screen. They came back to find the laptop still there and didn’t think much of it. A week later, they discovered someone was attempting to log in using that database account—multiple failed attempts triggered an alert.

After checking logs, monitoring, and consulting the security team, they traced the leak back to that laptop. It might have been someone at the coffee shop who saw the screen, or the computer might have been tampered with—impossible to say. Fortunately, the database had IP whitelisting configured, so external IPs couldn’t connect, preventing actual damage. But this incident scared the CTO badly.

The post-incident review identified three problems:

1. Lack of approval process: Developers deployed tools privately, and the IT department was completely unaware
2. No audit logs: After the incident, they couldn’t even determine who had used OpenClaw and for what
3. Missing sensitive information management: Session records stored in plaintext, with no encryption or regular cleanup

This lesson was quite painful. My friend said their company now requires security reviews for all AI tools, and they’re re-evaluating whether to continue using OpenClaw and how.

Enterprise Deployment Architecture Design

Architecture Selection: Multi-Instance vs Multi-Tenant

When our team discussed OpenClaw enterprise deployment solutions, we mainly debated two directions.

Option A: Multi-Instance Deployment

Simple and straightforward—each team or project gets an independent OpenClaw instance. Frontend team gets one, backend team gets one, testing team gets another.

The advantages are obvious. Each manages their own, no interference. If the frontend team’s OpenClaw crashes, it doesn’t affect backend; if the testing team wants to upgrade to a new version, they can experiment freely. Resource isolation is thorough, and security is high.

The downsides are significant too. First is resource waste—each instance occupies memory, CPU, and storage; ten teams means ten times the overhead. Second is maintenance cost—updating a configuration requires ten changes, installing a plugin requires ten operations. The operations team would want to throttle you.

We ultimately positioned multi-instance deployment as: suitable for small to medium teams of 10-50 people. Not too many teams, maintenance burden is still manageable, and isolation is good enough.

Option B: Multi-Tenant Architecture

Deploy only one OpenClaw instance with internal multi-tenant isolation. All teams share this single instance, distinguished by tenant IDs for different data and permissions.

The advantage is high resource utilization. One server handles the entire company’s OpenClaw needs, saving significant costs. Management is convenient too—configure once and it applies globally, monitor with a single dashboard.

The disadvantage is steep technical complexity. You need to implement tenant isolation at the code level—Zhang can’t see Li’s session records, Project A can’t access Project B’s files. If the implementation has vulnerabilities and data gets mixed up, that’s a major incident.

Our recommendation for multi-tenant architecture: suitable for large enterprises with 100+ people. With more people, the resource savings become significant; and you have enough technical staff to handle the complexity of multi-tenancy.

Our Choice?

Honestly, our team only had 30 people at the time, so multi-instance should have been sufficient. But I like to tinker, so I insisted on trying multi-tenancy. After two weeks of struggling, I realized—there were too many pitfalls in tenant isolation. Database queries needed tenant_id filtering, file access required permission checks, logs needed tenant information—modifications everywhere.

In the end, we pragmatically chose multi-instance. Three instances—one each for development, testing, and operations teams. Set up a script for batch configuration updates, problem solved.

Technology Stack Selection

Since we chose multi-instance deployment, the technology stack was easy to determine.

Containerization is mandatory. Use Docker to package OpenClaw, with Docker Compose managing multiple containers. Benefits? Consistent environments, rapid deployment, easy rollback. Once it runs in the test environment, you can copy the image directly to production without the “works on my machine” arguments.

# docker-compose.yml
version: '3.8'
services:
  openclaw:
    image: openclaw/openclaw:latest
    container_name: openclaw-dev
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - RBAC_ENABLED=true
      - TENANT_ID=dev-team
    volumes:
      - ./config:/etc/openclaw
      - ./data:/data
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    restart: unless-stopped

Database choice: PostgreSQL. OpenClaw itself doesn’t mandate a database, but we need somewhere reliable to store user permissions, audit logs, and session history. PostgreSQL is stable, open-source, feature-rich, and supports Row-Level Security (RLS), which can also be used for multi-tenant scenarios.

Log collection with ELK Stack. Elasticsearch stores logs, Logstash collects and processes them, Kibana provides visualization. Audit logs, error logs, access logs—all go here. When problems arise, a quick search pinpoints the issue.

Monitoring with Prometheus + Grafana. Prometheus collects metrics (CPU, memory, request counts), Grafana creates charts and dashboards. When services go down or response times slow, alerts immediately go to Slack.

As for Kubernetes? We didn’t use it. For a 30-person team with three instances, Docker Compose was sufficient. K8s has a steep learning curve and complex operations—not cost-effective. If your company already has a K8s cluster, go ahead and use it; but building K8s from scratch just for OpenClaw isn’t necessary.

Network Architecture Design

For networking, security is the top priority.

Reverse proxy with Nginx. All external requests first hit Nginx, which distributes them to backend OpenClaw instances. The benefits include SSL termination, rate limiting, load balancing, and unified access control configuration.

# nginx.conf
upstream openclaw_backend {
    server openclaw-dev:3000;
    server openclaw-test:3001;
    server openclaw-ops:3002;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name openclaw.company.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/key.pem;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://openclaw_backend;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

        # IP whitelist
        allow 10.0.0.0/8;      # Company intranet
        allow 172.16.0.0/12;   # VPN network
        deny all;
    }
}

Intranet-only access. OpenClaw isn’t exposed to the public internet—only accessible via company VPN or intranet. This way, even if someone gets account credentials, they can’t connect from outside.

API Gateway? Depends. If your company already has an API gateway like Kong or Traefik, you can integrate it for unified authentication, rate limiting, and logging management. We didn’t use one—Nginx was sufficient, and we didn’t want to add another layer of complexity.

The key principle: loose inside, tight at the boundary. Make intranet access as convenient as possible for good developer experience, but boundary protection must be strict—what shouldn’t get in stays out.

Multi-User Management and Permission Control

RBAC Permission Model Design

At first, I wasn’t clear on how to divide permissions. After referencing several enterprise systems’ approaches, I decided to use RBAC (Role-Based Access Control).

Three roles, clearly defined

We defined three roles:

1. Admin—tech leads, architects, that level. What can they do? Global configuration, add/remove users, view everyone’s audit logs, adjust system parameters. Great power, great responsibility.

2. Developer—regular engineers. Can use OpenClaw to write code, check documentation, debug issues, and view their own operation records, but can’t see others’. Can’t modify system configurations either—don’t mess with things.

3. Auditor—security team, compliance team members. Read-only permissions, can view all audit logs, but can’t use OpenClaw or modify configurations. Purely for post-incident tracing and compliance checks.

Permission matrix looks like this

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This design is quite simple, but sufficient. You can add roles based on your company’s situation—for example, “Senior Developer” can access production environments, “Intern” can only use test environments, easily extensible.

Implementation Approach

With the permission model designed, how do we implement it? There are two paths.

Option 1: Use Composio (Easy)

Composio is a platform specifically providing enterprise features for AI Agents, with RBAC and audit logs built-in. Integration with OpenClaw is straightforward, with official documentation available.

I tried it—definitely fast. Install an SDK, configure role definitions, and it’s running in half a day. Audit logs are automatically collected, permission checks are automatic, no need to write code yourself.

The downside is an additional dependency. While Composio has a free tier, advanced features require payment. And you have to trust a third-party service—though they claim data stays local, sensitive companies might still be uncomfortable.

Option 2: Build Your Own Permission System (More Work but Controllable)

Write code to implement RBAC yourself. Use Node.js middleware to intercept requests and check user roles and permissions; use PostgreSQL to store user tables and role configurations; use JWT tokens for authentication.

This path requires more work, but the benefit is complete control. All code is in your hands, modify as needed, no reliance on external services, and no worries about data leaks.

We ultimately chose to build our own. Not that we didn’t trust Composio, but our security team required all user data to stay within the intranet, no external API calls allowed. No choice—compliance requirements.

Configuration Example

The core of a self-built permission system is this configuration file. I’ll paste what we use directly for your reference:

# rbac-config.yaml
roles:
  - name: admin
    description: System Administrator
    permissions:
      - openclaw:use          # Use OpenClaw
      - openclaw:config       # Modify system config
      - audit:read_all        # View all audit logs
      - user:manage           # User management
      - session:view_all      # View all sessions

  - name: developer
    description: Developer
    permissions:
      - openclaw:use          # Use OpenClaw
      - audit:read_own        # View personal logs
      - session:view_own      # View personal sessions

  - name: auditor
    description: Auditor
    permissions:
      - audit:read_all        # View all audit logs
      - session:view_all      # View all sessions (read-only)

users:
  - email: [email protected]
    role: admin
    enabled: true

  - email: [email protected]
    role: developer
    enabled: true

  - email: [email protected]
    role: developer
    enabled: true

  - email: [email protected]
    role: auditor
    enabled: true

Combined with this file, we wrote a middleware:

// auth-middleware.js
const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');
const rbacConfig = require('./rbac-config.yaml');

function checkPermission(requiredPermission) {
  return (req, res, next) => {
    const token = req.headers.authorization?.split(' ')[1];

    if (!token) {
      return res.status(401).json({ error: 'Unauthorized access' });
    }

    try {
      const decoded = jwt.verify(token, process.env.JWT_SECRET);
      const user = rbacConfig.users.find(u => u.email === decoded.email);

      if (!user || !user.enabled) {
        return res.status(403).json({ error: 'User disabled' });
      }

      const role = rbacConfig.roles.find(r => r.name === user.role);

      if (!role.permissions.includes(requiredPermission)) {
        return res.status(403).json({ error: 'Insufficient permissions' });
      }

      req.user = user;
      next();
    } catch (error) {
      return res.status(401).json({ error: 'Invalid token' });
    }
  };
}

module.exports { checkPermission };

Usage looks like this:

// Using OpenClaw requires openclaw:use permission
app.post('/api/openclaw/chat',
  checkPermission('openclaw:use'),
  openclawController.chat
);

// Viewing audit logs requires audit:read_all permission
app.get('/api/audit/logs',
  checkPermission('audit:read_all'),
  auditController.getLogs
);

Principle of Least Privilege

With the permission system set up, there’s one detail to note—principle of least privilege.

Don’t run the OpenClaw process as root, and don’t run it under your own account. Create a dedicated user, call it something like openclaw-service, and give it only necessary permissions.

# Create dedicated user
sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false openclaw-service

# Create working directory
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/openclaw
sudo chown openclaw-service:openclaw-service /var/lib/openclaw

# Restrict file access permissions
sudo chmod 750 /var/lib/openclaw

Then specify the runtime user in Docker Compose:

services:
  openclaw:
    image: openclaw/openclaw:latest
    user: "1001:1001"  # openclaw-service's UID:GID
    volumes:
      - /var/lib/openclaw:/data

What’s the benefit? Even if OpenClaw gets compromised, the attacker only gets the restricted permissions of the openclaw-service user, can’t access other parts of the system, and damage is contained.

Network access should also be restricted. Don’t need internet access? Then don’t give it. Only need to call internal APIs? Configure a whitelist:

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  openclaw:
    networks:
      - internal
    # Restrict outbound network access
    sysctls:
      - net.ipv4.ip_forward=0

Frankly, it’s one principle: give only what’s necessary, nothing extra. Reduce permissions where you can, add restrictions where you can.

Security Hardening and Compliance Auditing

CVE-2026-25253 Vulnerability Fix

Speaking of security, we must mention OpenClaw’s critical vulnerability. CVE-2026-25253, CVSS score 8.8, command injection type.

What’s the vulnerability about?

Simply put, attackers can make OpenClaw execute arbitrary system commands through carefully crafted input. For example, if you ask OpenClaw to “analyze this file: test.txt; rm -rf /”, in older versions, that delete command at the end might actually execute.

Sounds scary, but the exploitation conditions are actually quite strict—the attacker must first be able to access your OpenClaw instance, then construct specially formatted prompts. But enterprise environments can’t tolerate this risk—it must be fixed.

How to fix?

Very simple—upgrade to the latest version. The OpenClaw team fixed this issue in version 1.2.3.

# 1. First check current version
openclaw --version

# 2. If below 1.2.3, upgrade immediately
npm update -g openclaw

# 3. Verify fix
openclaw --version  # Should show >=1.2.3

For Docker deployments, pull the latest image:

docker pull openclaw/openclaw:latest
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d

When we discovered this vulnerability announcement, it happened to be Friday at 5 PM. The DevOps lead @everyone in the group: “All OpenClaw instances shut down immediately, upgrade to 1.2.3+ before restarting.” Weekend overtime, upgraded all three instances, fortunately no issues.

Audit Logging System

During compliance reviews, audit logs are mandatory. Who, when, what they did, what the result was—this information must be recorded and tamper-proof.

What should logs record?

Our audit logs contain these fields:

{
  "userId": "[email protected]",        // Who did it
  "timestamp": "2026-02-05T14:23:15Z",  // When
  "action": "openclaw_command",          // What action
  "command": "openclaw chat",            // Specific command
  "workDir": "/home/user/project",      // Which directory
  "result": "success",                   // Result
  "ipAddress": "10.0.5.123",            // Source IP
  "sessionId": "abc123xyz"               // Session ID
}

How to collect logs?

We use ELK Stack. On the OpenClaw side, write a log collection script that sends a record to Logstash for each operation:

// audit-logger.js
const winston = require('winston');
const LogstashTransport = require('winston-logstash/lib/winston-logstash-latest');

const logger = winston.createLogger({
  transports: [
    new LogstashTransport({
      port: 5000,
      host: 'logstash.company.com',
      node_name: 'openclaw-dev'
    })
  ]
});

function logAuditEvent(userId, action, details) {
  logger.info({
    userId,
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    action,
    ...details,
    source: 'openclaw'
  });
}

module.exports { logAuditEvent };

Insert log recording at critical operation points in OpenClaw:

// Log before executing command
app.post('/api/openclaw/execute', async (req, res) => {
  const { command, workDir } = req.body;

  // Record audit log
  logAuditEvent(req.user.email, 'execute_command', {
    command,
    workDir,
    ipAddress: req.ip
  });

  // Execute command
  try {
    const result = await executeCommand(command, workDir);

    // Log success
    logAuditEvent(req.user.email, 'command_completed', {
      command,
      result: 'success'
    });

    res.json({ success: true, result });
  } catch (error) {
    // Log failure
    logAuditEvent(req.user.email, 'command_failed', {
      command,
      error: error.message,
      result: 'failure'
    });

    res.status(500).json({ error: error.message });
  }
});

How long to retain logs?

Following ISO 27001 requirements, we retain audit logs for at least 90 days. Expired logs are automatically archived to cold storage and deleted after one year.

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Compliance Checklist

The checklist from our security team—I’ll share it directly. You can go through it before going live:

Pre-deployment checks

• OpenClaw version ≥1.2.3 (CVE-2026-25253 fixed)
• All dependency packages have no critical vulnerabilities (check with npm audit)
• RBAC permission system configured
• Audit logging enabled
• Database connection encrypted (SSL/TLS)
• Session data storage encrypted

Runtime checks

• OpenClaw process uses dedicated non-privileged user
• File access permissions minimized
• Network access restricted to intranet or VPN only
• API interfaces have rate limiting
• Sensitive information masked

Compliance checks

• Audit log retention ≥90 days
• Regular backups and recoverable
• Emergency response plan ready
• Monthly security vulnerability scans
• Quarterly security reviews

Every item must be checked before production. Our first check found a dozen non-compliant items; it took a week to fix them all.

Data Security Measures

OpenClaw session records may contain sensitive information—database passwords, API keys, customer data. This stuff stored locally must be encrypted.

Session Record Encryption

We use AES-256 to encrypt session files. Each user’s session data is encrypted separately, with keys stored in environment variables—not written in code or committed to the repository.

// session-encryption.js
const crypto = require('crypto');
const fs = require('fs');

const ENCRYPTION_KEY = process.env.SESSION_ENCRYPTION_KEY;
const IV_LENGTH = 16;

function encryptSession(text) {
  const iv = crypto.randomBytes(IV_LENGTH);
  const cipher = crypto.createCipheriv('aes-256-cbc', Buffer.from(ENCRYPTION_KEY, 'hex'), iv);
  let encrypted = cipher.update(text, 'utf8', 'hex');
  encrypted += cipher.final('hex');
  return iv.toString('hex') + ':' + encrypted;
}

function decryptSession(text) {
  const parts = text.split(':');
  const iv = Buffer.from(parts.shift(), 'hex');
  const encrypted = parts.join(':');
  const decipher = crypto.createDecipheriv('aes-256-cbc', Buffer.from(ENCRYPTION_KEY, 'hex'), iv);
  let decrypted = decipher.update(encrypted, 'hex', 'utf8');
  decrypted += decipher.final('utf8');
  return decrypted;
}

Sensitive Information Masking

Even with encryption, logs need masking. Database passwords, API keys—mask them with asterisks when recording:

function maskSensitiveData(text) {
  // Mask database connection strings
  text = text.replace(/password=([^;\s]+)/gi, 'password=***');

  // Mask API keys
  text = text.replace(/api[_-]?key[:\s=]+([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{20,})/gi, 'api_key=***');

  // Mask JWT tokens
  text = text.replace(/Bearer\s+([A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.[A-Za-z0-9_-]+)/gi, 'Bearer ***');

  return text;
}

Regular Cleanup of Expired Data

Session records can’t accumulate indefinitely—they need regular cleanup. We set auto-delete at 30 days:

#!/bin/bash
# cleanup-sessions.sh

# Delete session files older than 30 days
find /var/lib/openclaw/sessions -type f -mtime +30 -delete

# Log cleanup
echo "[$(date)] Cleaned up sessions older than 30 days" >> /var/log/openclaw-cleanup.log

Set up a cron job to run daily at 2 AM:

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/cleanup-sessions.sh

With security, doing more is better than doing less.

Operations Management and Troubleshooting

CI/CD Integration

After deploying OpenClaw, you still need to consider continuous updates. Manual operations are error-prone—automation is the way to go.

We use GitLab CI/CD, with configuration like this:

# .gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
  - test
  - build
  - deploy

# Test stage: check configuration file syntax
test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - yamllint rbac-config.yaml
    - docker-compose config -q
  only:
    - merge_requests
    - main

# Build stage: build Docker image
build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - docker build -t openclaw-custom:$CI_COMMIT_SHA .
    - docker tag openclaw-custom:$CI_COMMIT_SHA openclaw-custom:latest
  only:
    - main

# Deploy stage: rolling update
deploy:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - docker-compose pull
    - docker-compose up -d --no-deps --build openclaw
    - ./scripts/health-check.sh
  only:
    - main
  when: manual  # Requires manual confirmation to deploy

Health check scripts are also important—after deployment, you need to confirm the service actually started:

#!/bin/bash
# health-check.sh

MAX_RETRIES=30
RETRY_INTERVAL=2

for i in $(seq 1 $MAX_RETRIES); do
  HTTP_CODE=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://localhost:3000/health)

  if [ "$HTTP_CODE" = "200" ]; then
    echo "✓ OpenClaw health check passed"
    exit 0
  fi

  echo "Waiting for OpenClaw to start... ($i/$MAX_RETRIES)"
  sleep $RETRY_INTERVAL
done

echo "✗ OpenClaw startup failed"
exit 1

Monitoring Metrics

After going live, you need to watch various metrics. We mainly monitor these:

Service Availability

• Target: 99.9% (max 43 minutes downtime per month)
• Monitoring tool: Uptime Robot, ping every minute
• Alerts: Slack notification after 3 consecutive failures

Response Time

• Target: P95 latency < 2 seconds (95% of requests respond within 2 seconds)
• Monitoring: Prometheus collection, Grafana display
• Alerts: Triggered when P95 exceeds 3 seconds

Error Rate

• Target: < 0.1%
• Monitoring: Count HTTP 5xx responses
• Alerts: Immediate alert when error rate exceeds 1%

Resource Usage

• CPU: < 70%
• Memory: < 80%
• Disk: < 85%
• Monitoring: Node Exporter + Prometheus
• Alerts: Early warning when thresholds exceeded

Prometheus configuration example:

# prometheus.yml
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'openclaw'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['openclaw-dev:9090', 'openclaw-test:9091', 'openclaw-ops:9092']
    metrics_path: '/metrics'
    scrape_interval: 15s

# Alert rules
groups:
  - name: openclaw_alerts
    rules:
      - alert: HighErrorRate
        expr: rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[5m]) > 0.01
        for: 5m
        annotations:
          summary: "OpenClaw error rate too high"

      - alert: HighLatency
        expr: histogram_quantile(0.95, http_request_duration_seconds) > 2
        for: 10m
        annotations:
          summary: "OpenClaw response time too long"

Backup and Recovery Strategy

Data is priceless—backups must be done well.

Daily backup script:

#!/bin/bash
# daily-backup.sh

BACKUP_ROOT="/backup/openclaw"
TIMESTAMP=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
BACKUP_DIR="$BACKUP_ROOT/$TIMESTAMP"

mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"

# 1. Backup configuration files
echo "Backing up configuration files..."
cp -r /etc/openclaw "$BACKUP_DIR/config"

# 2. Backup PostgreSQL database
echo "Backing up database..."
docker exec openclaw-postgres pg_dump -U openclaw openclaw_db > "$BACKUP_DIR/database.sql"

# 3. Backup session data
echo "Backing up session data..."
tar -czf "$BACKUP_DIR/sessions.tar.gz" /var/lib/openclaw/sessions/

# 4. Backup audit logs (last 7 days)
echo "Backing up audit logs..."
tar -czf "$BACKUP_DIR/audit-logs.tar.gz" /var/log/openclaw/

# 5. Compress entire backup directory
echo "Compressing backup..."
cd "$BACKUP_ROOT"
tar -czf "$TIMESTAMP.tar.gz" "$TIMESTAMP"
rm -rf "$TIMESTAMP"

# 6. Clean backups older than 30 days
find "$BACKUP_ROOT" -name "*.tar.gz" -mtime +30 -delete

# 7. Upload to remote storage (optional)
# aws s3 cp "$BACKUP_ROOT/$TIMESTAMP.tar.gz" s3://company-backups/openclaw/

echo "Backup complete: $BACKUP_ROOT/$TIMESTAMP.tar.gz"

Recovery testing should also be done regularly. We restore backups to the test environment once a month to ensure we can recover when real trouble hits:

#!/bin/bash
# restore-backup.sh

BACKUP_FILE=$1

if [ -z "$BACKUP_FILE" ]; then
  echo "Usage: ./restore-backup.sh <backup-file-path>"
  exit 1
fi

# Extract backup
tar -xzf "$BACKUP_FILE" -C /tmp/

BACKUP_DIR=$(basename "$BACKUP_FILE" .tar.gz)

# Restore configuration
cp -r /tmp/$BACKUP_DIR/config/* /etc/openclaw/

# Restore database
docker exec -i openclaw-postgres psql -U openclaw openclaw_db < /tmp/$BACKUP_DIR/database.sql

# Restore session data
tar -xzf /tmp/$BACKUP_DIR/sessions.tar.gz -C /

echo "Restore complete, please restart services"

Common Troubleshooting

Pitfalls we’ve encountered, documented for future reference.

Issue 1: User Can’t Log In

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Symptom: Correct email and password entered, but still shows “Unauthorized access”

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check if JWT token expired: jwt.verify(token, SECRET)
2. Check RBAC configuration file: is user in the users list
3. Check user status: is enabled field true
4. Check audit logs: are there login failure records

Solution:

# Regenerate token
node scripts/generate-token.js [email protected]

# Check RBAC configuration
cat /etc/openclaw/rbac-config.yaml | grep [email protected]

Issue 2: Command Execution Fails with “Permission Denied”

Symptom: OpenClaw reports “Permission denied” error

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check file permissions: ls -la /path/to/file
2. Check OpenClaw process user: ps aux | grep openclaw
3. Check Docker container user: docker exec openclaw whoami

Solution:

# Adjust file permissions
chown -R openclaw-service:openclaw-service /var/lib/openclaw
chmod -R 750 /var/lib/openclaw

# Or adjust mount permissions in Docker Compose
# docker-compose.yml
volumes:
  - /var/lib/openclaw:/data:rw,z

Issue 3: Audit Logs Missing

Symptom: Can’t find recent logs in Kibana

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check Logstash service: docker logs logstash
2. Check network connectivity: telnet logstash.company.com 5000
3. Check OpenClaw logs: are there send failure errors

Solution:

# Restart Logstash
docker-compose restart logstash

# Check Logstash configuration
docker exec logstash cat /usr/share/logstash/pipeline/logstash.conf

# Manually send test log
echo '{"test": "message"}' | nc logstash.company.com 5000

Issue 4: Slow Service Response

Symptom: OpenClaw response time exceeds 10 seconds

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check resource usage: docker stats
2. Check database performance: pg_stat_statements
3. Check network latency: ping api.anthropic.com

Solution:

# Scale up CPU and memory
# docker-compose.yml
services:
  openclaw:
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          cpus: '4'
          memory: 8G

# Or optimize database queries
# Add indexes, clean expired data

# Or increase instance count for load balancing

Troubleshooting quick reference table:

Conclusion

This covers the complete OpenClaw enterprise deployment solution.

Let’s recap the core points:

Architecture design: Small teams choose multi-instance, large enterprises consider multi-tenant. Containerization is standard, use Docker Compose if it’s sufficient—don’t jump to K8s.

Permission control: RBAC model with three roles—Admin, Developer, Auditor. Use Composio if possible, build your own if requirements are strict. Principle of least privilege throughout.

Security hardening: CVE-2026-25253 must be fixed, audit logs are mandatory, sensitive data must be encrypted. Go through the compliance checklist—don’t skip a single item.

Operations management: Automated CI/CD deployment, monitoring and alerts are essential, test backup and recovery regularly. Prepare troubleshooting solutions for common issues in advance.

Let me be honest. OpenClaw is a great tool, but enterprise deployment is genuinely complex. You need to consider far more than individual use—security, compliance, permissions, auditing, monitoring, backups. No aspect can be neglected.

Our team went from initial chaos to current standardized management, encountering many pitfalls along the way. The configuration files, scripts, and checklists in this article are all practical summaries. I won’t claim they’re perfect, but they’re at least usable and production-verified.

If you’re evaluating OpenClaw enterprise deployment, I suggest starting with a small pilot—choose a team of about 10 people, run it for a month or two, see the actual results. Once processes are smooth and problems solved, gradually expand.

Don’t forget regular updates. OpenClaw iterates rapidly—keep up with new version features and security patches. Security audits are also necessary—scan for vulnerabilities quarterly, conduct compliance checks semi-annually.

Technology changes, tools change, but security awareness and standardized management never go out of style.

19 min read · Published on: Feb 5, 2026 · Modified on: Feb 5, 2026

Easton

AI & Intelligence