NixOS as a server

NixOS is well-suited for server deployments, offering declarative, reproducible system configurations and atomic system upgrades and rollbacks. This page provides an overview of configuring, deploying, and maintaining NixOS systems in server environments.

Initial setup

Refer to the NixOS Installation Guide for detailed installation instructions.

For setting up NixOS in the cloud, refer to the NixOS friendly hosters.

For guidance on defining and maintaining your system configuration, consult NixOS system configuration.

NixOS infrastructure tools

Deployment orchestration

nixos-anywhere - Install NixOS everywhere via SSH

Colmena - A simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool modeled after NixOps and morph, written in Rust

Morph - NixOS deployment tool

Clan - Peer-to-peer computer management framework for NixOS

Krops - Lightweight toolkit to deploy NixOS systems

deploy-rs - A simple, multi-profile Nix-flake deploy tool

NixOps - Native NixOS deployment tool for cloud and virtual infrastructure (not currently recommended)

Binary cache and CI

See the main pages, Binary Cache and Continuous Integration (CI).

Cachix - Share binaries between CI, development and deployment environments

Attic - Self-hostable Nix Binary Cache server backed by an S3-compatible storage provider

Hydra - Tool for continuous integration testing and software release

Secrets management

Agenix - commandline tool for managing secrets in your Nix configuration
sops-nix - Atomic, declarative, and reproducible secret provisioning for NixOS based on sops

Refer to Comparison of secret managing schemes for additional tools and in-depth comparisions

Common server configurations

Web servers

Nginx - Web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache.
Apache Httpd - Free and open-source cross-platform web server
Caddy - Extensible, cross-platform, open-source web server written in Go

File sharing and storage

NFS - Unix-based network file sharing
Samba - Windows-compatible file and printer sharing

Backup and replication

ZFS - With native snapshots and replication
Syncthing - Decentralized file synchronization application
Restic - Fast and secure backup program
Borg backup - Deduplicating incremental backup program for local and remote data
Rclone - Command-line program that synchronizes files and directories between different cloud storage services

VPN and networking

WireGuard - Fast, modern, secure VPN tunnel

OpenVPN - Flexible VPN implementation for secure networking

Firewall - NixOS has an integrated firewall based on iptables or nftables

SSH - secure remote administration.