NasDash Overview
What NasDash does, who it is for, and what it does not aim to replace.
NasDash is a personal, self-hosted dashboard for NAS devices, home servers, and homelabs. It centralizes navigation, infrastructure monitoring, and certain Docker actions into a single interface.
Who is NasDash for?
- The person who administers multiple services and wants a useful homepage.
- The NAS or homelab operator who wants to visualize machines, containers, and the network.
- A family or small team using a read-only
vieweraccount. - The developer who wants to customize the appearance through settings, profiles, or custom CSS.
NasDash remains a single-instance application using JSON files. This choice simplifies self-hosting, but it is not a distributed database, a container orchestrator, or a replacement for network security.
The four main surfaces
- Home: categories, services, search, availability, and widget panels.
- Docker: hosts, containers, details, statistics, logs, images, volumes, and authorized actions.
- Networks: editable topology, connections, ports, and Tailscale information.
- Widgets: library and layout of reusable components.
Where does the data reside?
In a Docker production environment, all persistent state is located in /app/data. This directory contains, among other things, the configuration, local accounts, keys, encrypted credentials, and logos. A partial backup is therefore not sufficient.
NasDash can act on Docker
A Docker proxy allowing POST enables starting, stopping, and restarting containers. Deletion depends on the DELETE permission of the proxy. Protect administrator access and never expose an unauthenticated Docker API to the Internet.