Why Nodvard Deck

Who Deck is for

For you, if you run a few servers at home and want to know how they are doing. That can be a Raspberry Pi, a Debian VM, a NAS or a few Docker hosts. You don’t need Proxmox, but Deck works with it if you have it.

Deck itself runs as a container in your home network. From outside, a VPN is the way in, not the open internet. It costs nothing for personal use. The license is PolyForm Noncommercial, and anyone can read the source code. More in the license in plain words.

What Deck does differently

• Deck talks to your servers over SSH. No agent of its own runs there, and Deck’s container gets no Docker socket.
• Server health, Proxmox, Docker and backups sit side by side instead of spread across several interfaces.
• Before Deck changes anything, it asks, and afterwards every action is in the log. Things only happen without asking if you turn on automation, and for Shield’s quarantine, which is on by default.
• Credentials are stored encrypted in the vault.
• You turn each module on or off on its own. You can write your own modules with the documented SDK.

Two evenings in the homelab

You open the overview after work. The backups say that one guest has no backup job at all. On the Proxmox backups page you create the missing job right in Deck.

A new service can’t find its database because the two sit in different Docker networks. In the Networks tab you connect the container to the database’s network. If a container would end up with no network at all, the confirmation warns you first. More under Docker.

What Deck is not

• Not an installer: you set up Docker and your applications yourself.
• Nothing without permissions: Deck needs SSH access. Some features need root rights or the docker group, which is practically just as powerful.
• Not a shield: scans, audits and warnings help you check things. They don’t make a server secure and don’t catch every attack.
• A personal project in beta: Deck runs around the clock at my place. There is still no guaranteed uptime or round-the-clock support, and data formats can still change.
• Not in English yet: the interface is only in German so far.