How to Install Ansible-NAS on NixOS

In this tutorial, we will guide you step by step through the process of installing Ansible-NAS on NixOS.

Ansible-NAS is a setup automation tool for creating a Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution based on OpenZFS, Samba, and various other software components. It is designed to simplify the creation and management of a NAS server and improve its reliability and performance.

Follow the steps below to install Ansible-NAS on NixOS.

Prerequisites

• A NixOS installation with administrative privileges or access to sudo.
• At least 8GBs of RAM is recommended.

Step 1: Install Git

First, let's install the Git package to clone the Ansible-NAS Github repository.

sudo nix-env -iA nixos.git

Step 2: Clone the Ansible-NAS Repository

Now, let's clone the Ansible-NAS repository to our system.

git clone https://github.com/DaveStephens/ansible-nas.git

Step 3: Install Ansible

We need to install Ansible to run Ansible-NAS.

sudo nix-env -iA nixos.ansible

Step 4: Configure the Inventory File

Next, we need to create an inventory file to define the target host for Ansible-NAS.

cp ~/ansible-nas/sample-inventory-file ~/ansible-nas/hosts

Edit the newly created hosts file to specify the IP address of your target host.

[nas]
192.168.1.50 ansible_user=root

Replace 192.168.1.50 with the IP address of your target host.

Step 5: Run Ansible-NAS Playbook

We are now ready to run the Ansible-NAS playbook.

cd ~/ansible-nas/
ansible-playbook -i hosts nas.yml

This will start the Ansible-NAS configuration and installation process.

Once the process is complete, your NAS server will be up and running with OpenZFS, Samba, and other software components.

Conclusion

We have successfully installed Ansible-NAS on NixOS using the Github repository provided by Dave Stephens. Ansible-NAS is a powerful setup automation tool for creating and managing NAS servers with ease. You can now enjoy the benefits of network-attached storage with improved performance and reliability.