Ansible NAS

After getting burned by broken FreeNAS updates one too many times, I figured I could do a much better job myself using just a stock Ubuntu install, some clever Ansible config and a bunch of Docker containers.

What Ansible-NAS Does

You can configure Ansible-NAS to set up any (or all!) of the applications listed below on your home server.

If you have a spare domain name you can configure applications to be accessible externally to your home LAN too; they'll be configured with a sensible hostname and DNS gets updated accordingly if your home IP address changes.

Available Applications

Airsonic - catalog and stream music
Bazarr - companion to Radarr and Sonarr for downloading subtitles
Bitwarden_rs - Self-Hosting port of password manager
Booksonic - The selfhosted audiobook server
Calibre-web - Provides a clean interface for browsing, reading and downloading eBooks using an existing Calibre database.
Cloud Commander - A dual panel file manager with integrated web console and text editor
Cloudflare DDNS - automatically update Cloudflare with your IP address
CouchPotato - for downloading and managing movies
Deluge - A lightweight, Free Software, cross-platform BitTorrent client.
Dashy - A self-hosted startpage for your server. Easy to use visual editor, status checking, widgets, themes and tons more!
DokuWiki - A simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database.
Duplicacy - A web UI for the Duplicacy cloud backup program, which provides lock-free deduplication backups to multiple providers
Duplicati - for backing up your stuff
Emby - Media streaming and management
ESPHome - ESP8266/ESP32 programming and management for home automation
Firefly III - Free and open source personal finance manager
Fresh RSS - Self-hosted RSS feed aggregator like Leed or Kriss Feed
get_iplayer - download programmes from BBC iplayer
Gitea - Simple self-hosted GitHub clone
GitLab - Self-hosted GitHub clone of the highest order
Glances - for seeing the state of your system via a web browser
Gotify Self-hosted server for sending push notifications
Grafana - Dashboarding tool
Guacamole - Web based remote desktop gateway, supports VNC, RDP and SSH
Heimdall - Home server dashboard
Home Assistant - Open source home automation
InfluxDB - Time series database used for stats collection
Jackett - API Support for your favorite torrent trackers
Jellyfin - The Free Software Media System
Joomla - Open source content management system
Komga - a media server for your comics, mangas, BDs and magazines
Krusader - Twin panel file management for your desktop
Lidarr - Music collection manager for Usenet and BitTorrent users
Mealie - A self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner
MiniDLNA - simple media server which is fully compliant with DLNA/UPnP-AV clients
Miniflux - An RSS news reader
Mosquitto - An open source MQTT broker
Mylar - An automated Comic Book downloader (cbr/cbz) for use with SABnzbd, NZBGet and torrents
MyMediaForAlexa - Lets you stream your music collection to your alexa device
n8n - Nodemation, a node based workflow and automation service like IFTTT.
navidrome - Modern Music Server and Streamer compatible with Subsonic/Airsonic
netboot.xyz - a PXE boot server
Netdata - An extremely comprehensive system monitoring solution
Nextcloud - A self-hosted Dropbox alternative
NZBget - The most efficient usenet downloader
Ombi - web application that automatically gives your users the ability to request content
Organizr - ORGANIZR aims to be your one stop shop for your Servers Frontend.
openHAB - A vendor and technology agnostic open source automation software for your home
overseerr - open source software application for managing requests for your media library
Paperless_ng - Scan, index and archive all your physical documents
Piwigo - Photo Gallery Software
Plex - Plex Media Server
Portainer - for managing Docker and running custom images
Prowlarr - Indexer aggregator for Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, etc.
pyLoad - A download manager with a friendly web-interface
PyTivo - An HMO and GoBack server for TiVos.
Radarr - for organising and downloading movies
Route53 DDNS - Automatically update AWS Route53 with your IP address
RSS-Bridge - The RSS feed for websites missing it
Sabnzbd - A powerful usenet downloader that FreeNAS provides
Sickchill - for managing TV episodes
Sonarr - for downloading and managing TV episodes
Speedtest-Tracker - Continuously track your internet speed
Syncthing - sync directories with another device
Tautulli - Monitor Your Plex Media Server
Telegraf - Metrics collection agent
The Lounge - Web based always-on IRC client
TiddlyWiki - A unique non-linear notebook/wiki for capturing, organizing, and sharing complex information
TimeMachine - Samba-based mac backup server
Traefik - Web proxy and SSL certificate manager
Transmission - BitTorrent client (with OpenVPN if you have a supported VPN provider)
Ubooquity - Book and comic server
uTorrent - The best torrent downloading app for beginners
Virtual Desktop - A virtual desktop running on your NAS.
Wallabag - Save and classify articles. Read them later.
Watchtower - Monitor your Docker containers and update them if a new version is available
YouTubeDL-Material - Self-hosted YouTube downloader built on Material Design
ZNC - IRC bouncer to stay connected to favourite IRC networks and channels

What This Could Do

Ansible-NAS can run anything that's in a Docker image, which is why Portainer is included. A NAS configuration is a pretty personal thing based on what you download, what media you view, how many photos you take...so it's difficult to please everyone.

That said, if specific functionality you want isn't included and you think others could benefit, add it and raise a PR!

What This Doesn't Do

Ansible NAS doesn't set up your disk partitions, primarily because getting it wrong can be incredibly destructive. That aside, configuring partitions is usually a one-time (or very infrequent) event, so there's not much to be gained by automating it. Check out the docs for recommended setups.

Installation

See Installation.

Upgrading

The way Ansible-NAS configuration is structured has changed! See Upgrading for more information. See the Getting Help section if you get stuck.

Documentation

You can read the docs here. PRs for more documentation always welcome!

Migrating from FreeNAS

Assuming that your Ubuntu system disk is separate from your storage (it should be!):

Ensure you have a working backup of your data.
Check that the working backup you think you have actually works.
SSH to the server and run zpool list to determine available ZFS pools.
zpool import <pool_name> against each of the pools you want to attach.
chown -R root:root /mnt/<pool_name> to fix the ownership of the data.
Follow the Quick Start instructions above.

Requirements

Ansible NAS targets the latest Ubuntu LTS release, which is currently Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS.
You can run Ansible-NAS on whatever you like, read the docs for more info. I use an HP Microserver.

Getting Help

Getting help is easy! You can:

Read the docs
Start a discussion
Raise an issue if you think you've found a bug
Chat on Gitter

Contributing

Contributions are always welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first.

Support

If you've enjoyed Ansible-NAS as much as I do working on it, please consider buying me a coffee ☕️

Thanks

The awesome dudes at JetBrains for supplying core contributors with JetBrains Open Source licenses!

All of the awesome contributors to Ansible-NAS: