This uses Ubuntu's server cloud image as a stateless container to run the UBNT Unifi Controller software. Configuration data is stored in a directory outside the container. Cloud-init is used to automatically set up the container image, so a new version can be dropped in with minimal effort. This should work with pretty much any modern Linux distro with systemd.
Systemd-nspawn prefers to store its machines on btrfs, so if your /var/lib/machines is not currently btrfs, you should create one and mount it there. Otherwise it will automatically create an image file at /var/lib/machines.raw and mount it.