Scaling applications and ensuring service availability are essential parts of any project, and at some stage of development, they become a necessity. Kubernetes is one of the tools that can address all these needs, but it comes with its costs — support and setup. However, in the end, it’s worth it for large projects. But what about small projects? To avoid using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, we decided to use Docker Swarm. It doesn’t require such hefty investments in support and setup but still allows scaling applications and ensuring high-level service availability. In this article, I’ll explain how to set up a Docker Swarm cluster and configure monitoring using Prometheus and Grafana with Slack notifications.