Before we start
In this post, I want to show you my favorite docker containers for Unraid. I’m going to split them into categories and explain what they do and why I like them.
A quick word on organization
If you have a lot of containers like myself, you might want to organize them in your docker tab. Unraid does not have a feature to do this, but you can use the Docker Folder plugin from GuildDarts/Squid to achieve this. You can find it in the Unraid community apps but watch out, there are two versions of this plugin. One is incompatible with current Unraid versions.
My favorites
In addition to the containers below, I have some more I developed myself. With that out of the way, let’s get started with my favorite docker containers.
Network
- NginxProxyManager: This tool helps you to manage your reverse proxy, which you need to access the containers you want from the outside. I use it to generate SSL-Certificates and to map a port to a subdomain.
- Cloudflare-DDNS: This container is used to update the DNS record of my domain with my current IP address. This is necessary if you don’t have a static IP address, like most of us.
- Duckdns: This container does basically the same thing as the Cloudflare DDNS container but with Duckdns. I use both because I have a domain with Cloudflare and a subdomain with Duckdns.
- Authelia With Authelia you can secure all your services with a single login. So far I secured Dashy, VS-Code and Guacamole with a simple login page and Nextcloud with a direct Open ID Connect integration. I’m planning to secure more services in the future.
Infrastructure
- Mosquitto: This is a great MQTT broker. I need this for the communication between my HomeAssistant instance and all my Shelly devices.
- Nginx: I use this to host multiple websites I build over the years.
- Redis: This is a great in-memory data store which can be used as a database or cache.
- MongoDB: This is a document-based database I use for some of my projects.
- Postgres: This is a relational database I use for some of my projects. (This is my goto database for new projects)
- xBackbone: This tool pairs with the ShareX application on your PC to upload screenshots and files to your server. It is a great alternative to Imgur or other screenshot hosting services. I use it to host the images for my blog posts.
- MariaDB: This is a open source alternative to MySQL. I need it for some of my containers.
- VS-Code: Probably most of you know Visual Studio Code as the editor you install on your local machine. But did you know that there is also a docker container for it? This is possible due to the fact that it is written with web technologies. I use it to edit my configuration files on my server or to write code on the go when I don’t carry my laptop with me.
- Apache Guacamole: Apache Guacamole is a great tool to access all your VMs from anywhere.
Unfortunately, I have some issues with this container, and I’m currently looking for a solution.I fixed the issue I had by reinstalling everything from scratch.
Services
- Jellyseer: This is a great tool to discover new movies and TV shows. It is a fork of the original Overseer project but with Jellyfin support.
- Jellyfin: This is an open source alternative to Plex. I use it to stream my media to all my devices.
- Uptime Kuma: At some point you want to get a better overview of all your services and know if they are running. Uptime Kuma gives you this overview and also sends you notifications if a service is down.
- Bitwarden: This is an open source password manager like LastPass or 1Password. I use it to store all my passwords and to share them with my family. (It’s also great to manage your parents passwords 😉)
- Nextcloud: This is a self-hosted alternative to Google Drive or Dropbox. I use it to store all my files and to share them with my family.
- Home Assistant Core: To manage all my automations and smart home devices, I use Home Assistant. It is a great tool with so many supported devices and integrations.
- Listmonk: This is the tool I use to manage my mailing lists. It is a great alternative to Mailchimp and it is open source. (You can join my mailing list here)
- AMP: AMP is a tool to quickly spin up several game servers on your server. You have to pay about €10 once to use it, but I think it’s worth it. It was really easy to spin up a Minecraft server! (A free alternative would be Pterodactyl)
- Umami: As I want to be able to get some analytics about my website without needing to use Google Analytics, I use Umami as a privacy-focused alternative. It is also open source, and you can host it yourself, so no analytics data is sent to a third party.
- Dashy (Demo): If you have many services running like me, you will probably start to lose track of them at some point. Dashy helps you to organize all your services in nice looking dashboards.
Others
- HandBrake: If you need to transcode certain media files, this is the tool for you.
- Owncast: Your own livestreaming platform. I just tried it out of curiosity, but it is a great tool if you want to stream something to your friends and has a great user interface to set everything up.
- Jenkins: This is a great tool to automate your workflows. I want to create multiple pipelines to automate the build and deployment process for my projects. Especially for this blog, I want to create a pipeline that automatically builds and deploys the website when I push a new commit to the repository.
- Audiobookshelf: If you want to host your audiobooks or podcasts yourself, this is the tool for you. It was really easy to set up and a nice user interface. The only thing that it is missing in my opinion is a mobile app. Maybe I didn’t find it, but I think it would be a great addition to the project.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading this post. I hope you found some new containers you can use for your server. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me through my contact form. You can also join my mailing list to get notified when I publish a new post.
Have a nice day!☀️
~ Marco