How to Install Portainer on Your Synology NAS

Portainer is a lightweight management UI which allows you to easily manage your Docker host or Swarm cluster. Portainer is meant to be as simple to deploy as it is to use. It consists of a single container that can run on any Docker engine (Docker for Linux, Docker for Synology DSM and Docker for Windows are all supported). Portainer allows you to manage your Docker stacks, containers, images, volumes, networks and more! It is compatible with the standalone Docker engine and with Docker Swarm. In this step by step guide I will show you how to install Portainer on your Synology NAS using Docker. This guide works perfectly for the latest Portainer CE 2.5.1 release.

STEP 1

Install Docker via Synology “Package Center”.

STEP 2

Go to File Station and open the docker folder. Inside the docker folder, create a new folder. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 3

Create a new folder and name it portainer then click ok. Follow the instructions in the image below.
Note: Be careful enter only lowercase, not uppercase letters.

STEP 4

Your docker folder in File Station will look like this:

STEP 5

Go to Control Panel / Terminal & SNMP / Terminal. Enable SSH on port 22 then click Apply.

STEP 6

Now open Windows Command Prompt Client. Search for command prompt on your Windows PC. Follow the instructions in the image below. You can also use the PuTTY Client or Mac Z Shell (Client) if you are a Mac user.

STEP 7

On Windows 10, open Command Prompt or use PuTTY or Mac Z Shell and type ssh yourNASusername@yourNASip -p22 then enter. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 8

In Command Prompt, this message “Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?” can sometimes appear, so type yes then enter. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 9

After you press enter, you will be prompted to type in your NAS password. Type it in and press enter. Your command prompt will look like this:

STEP 10

Now type:

sudo su -

Then press enter. Follow the instructions in the image below.
The su command switches to root user with high privileges.

STEP 11

After you press enter, you will be prompted to type in your NAS password then press enter. Now you have full root access to your NAS.

STEP 12

Copy/Paste the code below in your client then press enter.

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9000:9000 --name=portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v /volume1/docker/portainer:/data portainer/portainer-ce

Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 13

After you press enter, the installation of the docker portainer image will start and should be done in a few seconds or minutes, depending on your Internet speed connection. Follow the instructions in the image below. At this step, you can also install Watchtower or Ouroboros to automatically update containers on your Docker.

STEP 14

Now you can close your client. Open your browser and type in https://Synology-ip-address:9000/ Follow the instructions in the image below. Choose an admin password, confirm the password then press Create user.

Warning: Uncheck “Allow collection of anonymous statistics.”

STEP 15

Select Local (Manage the local Docker environment) then press the Connect button. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 16

Your Portainer administration page will look like this:

STEP 17

In the right sidebar, click on Endpoints then select local and click on it. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 18

The local configuration will open. On the public IP area type your NAS local IP which, in my case, is 192.168.0.182 then click Update endpoint. Follow the instructions in the image below.

STEP 19

If everything goes right, you will see this message at the top right of your screen: “Endpoint updated local“.

STEP 20

Now select local then Containers. Follow the instructions in the image below. In this area you will be able to see all the containers installed in your Synology Docker package. As you can see, in my screenshot below I have only Portainer installed. If you have more containers installed in your Synology Docker package, they will all show in this area.

STEP 21 Run Container via HTTPS

Note: Find out how to update Portainer container with the latest image.
Note: I recommend you use Reverse Proxy to allow Portainer to work over an HTTPS connection.
Note: CE stands for Community Edition.
Note: Now you can start adding more containers on your Synology Docker and have much more control over them using Portainer.
Note: If you receive the message: “Failure Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?” This happens when you try to install Portainer using the Docker Package through registry on your NAS without following the step by step guide in this article, especially STEP 13.