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 Can Set Up

An awesome dashboard to your home server (Heimdall)
Any number of Samba shares or NFS exports for you to store your stuff
A BitTorrent client
A Usenet downloader
Various media management tools - Sonarr, Sickchill, CouchPotato, Radarr, Bazarr, Lidarr
Media streaming via Plex or Emby
Music streaming with Airsonic
An RSS newsfeed reader - Miniflux
A Dropbox replacement via Nextcloud
Various ways to see stats about your NAS - Glances, dashboards in Grafana
A backup tool - allows scheduled backups to Amazon S3, OneDrive, Dropbox etc
An IRC bouncer and web-based client
Source control with Gitea
SSL secured external access to applications via Traefik
A Docker host with Portainer for image and container management
An automatic dynamic DNS updater if you use Cloudflare to host your domain DNS
A Personal finance manager
eBook management with Calibre-web
Content management with Joomla
A dual panel local file manager
Self-service media request web application
A PXE server to boot OS images over the network

Available Applications

Airsonic - catalog and stream music
Bazarr - companion to Radarr and Sonarr for downloading subtitles
Bitwarden_rs - Self-Hosting port of password manager
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.
DokuWiki - A simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database.
Duplicati - for backing up your stuff
Emby - Media streaming and management
Firefly III - Free and open source personal finance manager
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
Krusader - Twin panel file management for your desktop
Lidarr - Music collection manager for Usenet and BitTorrent users
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.
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
Plex - Plex Media Server
Portainer - for managing Docker and running custom images
pyLoad - A download manager with a friendly web-interface
PyTivo - An HMO and GoBack server for TiVos.
Radarr - for organising and downloading movies
Sickchill - for managing TV episodes
Sonarr - for downloading and managing TV episodes
Syncthing - sync directories with another device
Tautulli - Monitor Your Plex Media Server
Telegraf - Metrics collection agent
The Lounge - Web based always-on IRC client
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

Thanks to the awesome dudes at JetBrains for supplying core contributors with JetBrains Open Source licenses!