jussih / backup-server-ansible

Ansible playbook for provisioning a Raspberry Pi backup NAS

Backup server configuration

This is an Ansible playbook which provisions a Raspbery Pi with Raspbian to act as a NAS server for storing backups from multiple other computers.

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi with Raspbian flashed on the memory card
• One external hard drive connected to the RPi. Use an external power source, such as a powered USB hub. RPi can't power a hard drive from its USB ports.

Usage

As it stands the playbook will provision the server and accounts for two backup clients, a desktop and a laptop. Each client can access their own backup directory on the hard drive and needs their own SSH key for connecting.

One privileged user account, called user will be created. It has passwordless sudo access and requires an SSH key for connecting. All password logins are disabled and a firewall is setup which allows traffic only from the 192.162.1.* subnet to port 22.

The default Raspbian pi user account is removed altogether.

• Format the USB drive and note down the filesystem UUID (lsblk --fs)
• Copy hosts.template as hosts and fill the correct IP address of the RPi
• Copy group_vars/vars.template as group_vars/vars and fill the drive UUID and SSH public keys for the clients and the privileged user.
• For the first run, change remote_user to pi in playbook.yml. Afterwards revert back to user as the first run removes the pi account.
• Install Ansible on some computer. Execute ansible-playbook -i hosts -v playbook.yml --ask-pass. On subsequent runs drop the --ask-pass and make sure ssh-agent is set up correctly for key authentication.

TODO

• Multiple hard drives for mirroring the data
• Off-site mirroring on some cloud storage service