Installation: Running in a Docker Container

A RavenDB Server can run on Docker using our official images available in these channels:

• ravendb/ravendb containing stable, patch, rc and beta images
• ravendb/ravendb-nightly containing our nightly releases

Platforms

Server images are published on Docker for the following platforms:

• Ubuntu 16.04
• Windows Nano Server

Storage Requirements

NTFS, ext4 file systems and other non NFS volumes mounts are supported.

Tags

For version 4.0 following tags are available:

• 4.0-ubuntu-latest - contains the latest version of RavenDB 4.0 running on Ubuntu 16.04 container

• 4.0-windows-nanoserver-latest - contains the latest version of RavenDB 4.0 running running on Windows nanoserver

• every 4.0 release to has its own image set for both Ubuntu and Windows containers e.g. 4.0.7-ubuntu.16.04-x64 or 4.0.7-windows-nanoserver

Examples

To run latest image of RavenDB 4.0, you can issue a command as follows:

For Ubuntu:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -p 38888:38888 ravendb/ravendb:4.0-ubuntu-latest

For Windows:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -p 38888:38888 ravendb/ravendb:4.0-windows-nanoserver-latest

You can access the RavenDB Management Studio by going to http://localhost:8080 in your browser. This assumes that you are using the default networking configuration with Docker, and that the Docker instance is not exposed beyond the host machine. If you intend to host RavenDB on Docker and expose it externally, make sure to go through the security configuration first.

To install the latest tag but also persist the data to your hard disk if the container is removed, you can issue a command as follows:

docker run --rm -d -p 8080:8080 -p 38888:38888 -v c:/RavenDb/Data:/opt/RavenDB/Server/RavenData ravendb/ravendb

So now, if the container is removed, the data remains. Later on, you can start up a new instance of the image with the volume mounted to that same directory, the data comes back!

{INFO Sharing data with Docker host with Docker for Windows} This requires that your docker client application has sharing enabled and that the folder (in this case, C:\RavenDb\Data) exists. {INFO/}

Finally, you might not want to run through the Setup Wizard each time you wish to start RavenDB container on your localhost. To skip that Setup Wizard you can issue the following command:

docker run --rm -d -p 8080:8080 -p 38888:38888 -v c:/RavenDb/Data:/opt/RavenDB/Server/RavenData --name RavenDb-WithData -e RAVEN_Setup_Mode=None -e RAVEN_License_Eula_Accepted=true -e RAVEN_Security_UnsecuredAccessAllowed=PrivateNetwork ravendb/ravendb

This will skip the Setup Wizard and mount a volume for data persistence.

{WARNING} Running a docker container with RAVEN_Setup_Mode=None and RAVEN_Security_UnsecuredAccessAllowed=PrivateNetwork is going to start an unsecured server. {WARNING/}

{INFO EULA acceptance} By setting RAVEN_License_Eula_Accepted=true you're accepting our (terms & conditions)[https://ravendb.net/terms/commercial]. {INFO/}

Configuration

Configuration can be adjusted using environment variables. Server is going to pick up all environment variables preceded by RAVEN_ prefix and apply their values to specified configuration keys. All period . characters in configuration keys should be replaced with an underscore character (_) when used in environment variables.

Example

RAVEN_Setup_Mode=None
RAVEN_DataDir=RavenData
RAVEN_Certificate_Path=/config/raven-server.certificate.pfx

In addition our docker image allows to provide RAVEN_ARGS environment variable, which is going to be passed as server CLI arguments line.

FAQ

I'm using compose / doing automated installation. How do I disable setup wizard?

Set Setup.Mode configuration option to None like so:

RAVEN_ARGS='--Setup.Mode=None'

I want to try it out on my local / development machine. How do I run unsecured server?

Set env variables like so:

RAVEN_ARGS='--Setup.Mode=None'
RAVEN_Security_UnsecuredAccessAllowed='PrivateNetwork'

How can I pass command line arguments?

By modifying RAVEN_ARGS environment variable. It's passed as an CLI arguments line.

Can I see RavenDB logs in container logs?

In order to get logs available when running docker logs command, you need to enable it in RavenDB server. Setting below environment variables like so is going to enable logging to console. Please note such behavior may have performance implications. Log level may be modified using RAVEN_Logs_Mode variable.

RAVEN_ARGS='--log-to-console'

For more information about logging configuration make sure to check the following article;

How to use a custom config file?

Mount it as a docker volume and use --config-path PATH_TO_CONFIG command line argument in order to use settings file from outside of server directory. Alternatively you can pass your custom settings.json content via RAVENDB_SETTINGS environment variable.

How can I manage server running in a container?

Except the RavenDB Studio that you can access from the browser, you can connect to RavenDB administration console with the rvn utility like so:

> docker exec -it 4d63 /opt/RavenDB/Server/rvn admin-channel
Will try to connect to discovered Raven.Server process : 8...

       _____                       _____  ____
      |  __ \                     |  __ \|  _ \
      | |__) |__ ___   _____ _ __ | |  | | |_) |
      |  _  // _` \ \ / / _ \ '_ \| |  | |  _ <
      | | \ \ (_| |\ V /  __/ | | | |__| | |_) |
      |_|  \_\__,_| \_/ \___|_| |_|_____/|____/


      Safe by default, optimized for efficiency

 Build 40040, Version 4.0, SemVer 4.0.10, Commit dc2e9e3
 PID 8, 64 bits, 2 Cores, Phys Mem 1.934 GBytes, Arch: X64
 Source Code (git repo): https://github.com/ravendb/ravendb
 Built with love by Hibernating Rhinos and awesome contributors!
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
Connected to RavenDB Console through named pipe connection...

ravendb> help
...

For more information on using RavenDB Console please refer to Administration - RavenDB CLI article.

Dockerfiles

These images were built using the following Dockerfiles:

• Windows Nanoserver image Dockerfile

• Ubuntu image Dockerfile

Remarks

For more detailed information on how to use and setup RavenDB on Docker, please visit our Docker Hub page available here.