Introduction

In 2019, the motherboard of my FreeNAS server died. Instead of simply replacing it and continuing, I decided to switch to a self-created NAS based on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS with ZFS and containers (Docker). This document is based on the line-by line notes I made, and provided for anybody who is thinking about building such a system themselves.

However, you probably don’t want to do this. I’m no server expert, this machine is set up for a very special use case and threat scenario, and this text doesn’t even attempt to provide a complete guide. One reason I wrote it, in fact, is to learn reStructured text, Sphinx, and Read the Docs for other projects.

Still, if you feel you must, by all means read on.

Warning

Follow the instructions and suggestions in this text at your own risk. There is a very real chance that you could lose data, even all of it. I take no responsibility for anything bad or even mildly irritating that happens.

If you need more hand-holding:

FreeNAS (http://freenas.org) comes with extensive documentation and a very helpful community. It served me well for years, and if I hadn’t being trying to learn more about servers and containers, I would have stayed with it. FreeNAS comes with the ZFS file system as well.

If you need lots more hand-holding:

There are a bunch of commercial NAS vendors, for example Synology or QNAP. Usually, you just need to add the drive and the setup does the rest; however, they rarely come with ZFS.

If you need more power and features:

Ansible-NAS (https://github.com/davestephens/ansible-nas) is a far more ambitious variant of a Ubuntu NAS by Dave Stephens. As the name says, it makes extensive use of Ansible for configuration, and comes with a higher level of configuration. Full disclosure: I have contributed to the documentation.

The actual files for this text live at https://github.com/scotws/ubuntu-nas. For suggestions, corrections, and additions, please create a pull request there.

License: CC-BY-SA-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)