netbird-docs/docs/getting-started/self-hosting.md

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Self-hosting Guide

NetBird is open-source and can be self-hosted on your servers.

It relies on components developed by NetBird Authors Management Service, Management UI Dashboard, Signal Service, a 3rd party open-source STUN/TURN service Coturn, and an identity provider (available options will be listed later in this guide).

If you would like to learn more about the architecture please refer to the Architecture section.

:::tip netbird as a service It might be a good idea to try NetBird before self-hosting. We run NetBird in the cloud, and it will take less than 5 minutes to get started with our managed version. Check it out! :::

Requirements

• Virtual machine offered by any cloud provider (e.g., AWS, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Google Cloud, Azure ...).
• Any Linux OS.
• Docker Compose installed (see Install Docker Compose).
• Domain name pointing to the public IP address of your server.
• Open TCP ports 80, 443, 33073, 10000 (Dashboard HTTP & HTTPS, Management gRCP & HTTP APIs, Signal gRPC API respectively) on your server.
• Coturn is used for relay using the STUN/TURN protocols. It requires a listening port, UDP 3478, and range of ports, UDP 49152-65535, for dynamic relay connections. These are set as defaults in setup file, but can be configured to your requirements.
• Maybe a cup of coffee or tea :)

For this tutorial we will be using domain demo.netbird.io which points to our Ubuntu 22.04 machine hosted at Hetzner.

Step 1: Get the latest stable NetBird code

#!/bin/bash
REPO="https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/"
# this command will fetch the latest release e.g. v0.8.7
LATEST_TAG=$(basename $(curl -fs -o/dev/null -w %{redirect_url} ${REPO}releases/latest))
echo $LATEST_TAG

# this comman will clone the latest tag
git clone --depth 1 --branch $LATEST_TAG $REPO

Then switch to the infra folder that contains docker-compose file:

cd netbird/infrastructure_files/

Step 2: Prepare configuration files

To simplify the setup we have prepared a script to substitute required properties in the docker-compose.yml.tmpl and management.json.tmpl files.

The setup.env.example file contains multiple properties that have to be filled. You need to copy the example file to setup.env before updating it.

# Dashboard domain. e.g. app.mydomain.com
NETBIRD_DOMAIN=""
# e.g. dev-24vkclam.us.auth0.com
NETBIRD_AUTH0_DOMAIN=""
# e.g. 61u3JMXRO0oOevc7gCkZLCwePQvT4lL0
NETBIRD_AUTH0_CLIENT_ID=""
# e.g. https://app.mydomain.com/ or https://app.mydomain.com,
# Make sure you used the exact same value for Identifier
# you used when creating your Auth0 API
NETBIRD_AUTH0_AUDIENCE=""
# e.g. hello@mydomain.com
NETBIRD_LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=""

• Set NETBIRD_DOMAIN to your domain, e.g. demo.netbird.io
• Configure NETBIRD_LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL property:

This can be any email address. Let's Encrypt will create an account while generating a new certificate.

:::tip Let's Encrypt will notify you via this email when certificates are about to expire. NetBird supports automatic renewal by default. :::

Step 3: Configure Identity Provider

NetBird supports generic OpenID (OIDC) protocol allowing for the integration with any IDP that follows the specification.

Check out the Available Integrations section, pick the one that suits your needs, follow the steps, and continue with this guide.

Step 4: Run configuration script

Make sure all the required properties set in the setup.env file and run:

./configure.sh

This will export all the properties as environment variables and generate docker-compose.yml and management.json files substituting required variables.

Step 5: Run docker compose:

docker-compose up -d

Step 5: Check docker logs (Optional)

 ```bash
 docker-compose logs signal
 docker-compose logs management
 docker-compose logs coturn
 docker-compose logs dashboard
```

Get in touch

Feel free to ping us on Slack if you have any questions

• NetBird managed version: https://app.netbird.io
• Make sure to star us on GitHub 🙏
• Follow us on Twitter