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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.

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.

## example file, you can copy this file to setup.env and update its values
##
# Dashboard domain. e.g. app.mydomain.com
NETBIRD_DOMAIN=""
# OIDC configuration e.g., https://example.eu.auth0.com/.well-known/openid-configuration
NETBIRD_AUTH_OIDC_CONFIGURATION_ENDPOINT=""
NETBIRD_AUTH_AUDIENCE=""
# e.g. netbird-client
NETBIRD_AUTH_CLIENT_ID=""
# indicates whether to use Auth0 or not: true or false
NETBIRD_USE_AUTH0="false"
NETBIRD_AUTH_DEVICE_AUTH_PROVIDER="none"
# enables Interactive SSO Login feature (Oauth 2.0 Device Authorization Flow)
NETBIRD_AUTH_DEVICE_AUTH_CLIENT_ID=""
# 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. Pick the one that suits your needs, follow the steps, and continue with this guide:

Step 4: Disable single account mode (optional)​

NetBird Management service runs in a single account mode by default since version v0.10.1. Management service was creating a separate account for each registered user before v0.10.1. Single account mode ensures that all the users signing up for your self-hosted installation will join the same account/network. In most cases, this is the desired behavior.

If you want to disable the single-account mode, set --disable-single-account-mode flag in the docker-compose.yml.tmpl command section of the management service.

Step 5: 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 6: Run docker compose:​

docker-compose up -d

Step 7: Check docker logs (Optional)​

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