More than a page of tiles

A page of tiles or server management?

Homepage, Homarr, Heimdall or Dashy are good at collecting links and a few numbers about your services. In Deck, the Apps page does that. For me, that alone wasn’t enough. I also wanted to see how my servers, VMs, containers and backups are doing, and step in right away: restart a container, apply an image update and roll it back if needed, or start a backup. Whatever you change is in the log afterwards.

What the overview shows

Right at the top are five numbers: how many servers are online, how many containers are running, which backups had no run, how many notifications are unread and which actions are waiting for you. Below, Deck lists all servers, VMs and LXC with CPU, RAM, disk and uptime.

On the right is what you should take care of right now, such as an almost full disk or a failed backup. You can sort the widgets into groups, collapse them one by one and move them around in edit mode.

Not just looking, also acting

When a container hangs, you restart it right here. The same goes for starting a VM or applying pending updates. Before Deck changes anything, it asks you. What may run without asking is up to you, and afterwards every action is in the log.

For beginners and for pros

• You add a server in the interface, also with a username and password. You don’t need a terminal for it.
• You connect Proxmox in one step.
• For a first look there’s sample data, which you delete later.
• The defaults usually fit. More options are under “Advanced”.
• When something gets stuck, the message says what’s going on and what you can do now, instead of just an error code.

What you need

A machine with Docker and Docker Compose, for example a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with a 64-bit system or an x86-64 machine. Idle, Deck uses about 100 MB of RAM. You don’t need Proxmox, a Pi, a NAS or a few Docker hosts work too. More in the FAQ.