Saturday, July 14, 2018

Install Ubiquiti UniFi Controller as Docker container on Synology NAS

It's assumed your Synology NAS supports Docker and you've already installed the Synology Docker app on your Synology NAS. The guide assumes you are using a Synology NAS volume called "volume1". If not, just replace with name of the volume you are using.

  1. SSH into your Synology NAS (e.g. with PuTTy) using an account with administrative rights.
  2. Create a new folder called "unifi" located in "volume1/docker". This will be used to store all your UniFi Controller configs, so when you upgrade the Docker container your configs remain in place.
    mkdir /volume1/docker/unifi
  3. Pull the UniFi Controller Docker image from Docker Hub by typing the following command:
    sudo docker pull linuxserver/unifi-controller:latest
  4. Run the new UniFi Controller container using the following command (note: you can't do this using the Synology Docker app, since it's not possible to set all the configuration correctly through the UI):
    sudo docker run -d --name=unifi-controller --net=host --volume=/volume1/docker/unifi:/config -p 3478:3478/udp -p 10001:10001/udp -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 -p 8443:8443 -p 8843:8843 -p 8880:8880 -p 6789:6789 linuxserver/unifi-controller:latest
  5. Finally, open a web browser and go to: https://<SYNOLOGY_IP>:8443

Note: If you are going to adopt an existing UniFi Access Point, it may be necessary to reset it to factory settings before the controller will be able to discover it (well, it was for me at least).

Update (Nov. 24 2019): Updated commands to reflect UniFi image renaming (was: linuxserver/unifi, now is: linuxserver/unifi-controller)