Sandboxes

Weaviate Cloud (WCD) provides two instance types.

• Sandbox clusters. Sandbox clusters are small, free clusters designed for learning and experimentation. Sandbox clusters not scalable and expire after 14 days.
• Serverless clusters. Serverless clusters are robust, paid clusters designed for production use. Manage clusters scale to meet your needs and don't expire.

Capabilities

Sandbox clusters run a full version of the Weaviate core database. When you create a sandbox, it has the latest version of Weaviate core.

Weaviate core uses modules to connect to vectorizers, rankers, generators, and other services. Modules provide programmatic connections to these services. WCD provides built in modules for more than a dozen services. To see the list of modules that are available for your cluster, check the cluster details panel in the Weaviate web console.

Suggested uses

Sandbox clusters are intended for learning, experimenting, and exploring. Sandboxes are fully featured, but they have a limited lifetime and they run on scaled down infrastructure compared to serverless clusters.

If you are working through a course in Weaviate Academy, consider using a sandbox to complete the lessons without having to install and configure a local instance.

Limitations

Sandboxes are not designed for production use. Compared to serverless instances, they are limited in size, duration, and operational resilience. Sandboxes have these limits:

• 14 day lifespan
• No backup
• One admin API key
• No read-only API key
• Fixed instance size
• Less memory capacity than the smallest serverless cluster
• Less processor capacity than the smallest serverless cluster
• Less storage capacity than the smallest serverless cluster

Export data

To export your data, iterate through each of your collections. For each collection, iterate through the objects in the collection and export them one by one. The process to iterate through collection objects depends on how your objects are configured. For details, see Read all objects.

The cursor API provides another way to export your data.

Switch to a serverless cluster

There is no direct path to convert a sandbox cluster to a serverless cluster. Follow these steps to move to a serverless cluster.

1. Export your data.
2. Export your schema.
3. Configure billing in your WCD account.
4. Create a serverless cluster.
5. Recreate your schema.
6. Import your data.

Export your data

To export your data, iterate through each of your collections. For each collection, iterate through the objects in the collection and export them one by one. The process to iterate through collection objects depends on how your objects are configured. For details, see Read all objects.

The cursor API provides another way to export your data.

Export your schema

To export your collection definitions, follow these steps:

Python Client v4

response = client.collections.list_all(simple=False)

print(response)

Python Client v3

response = client.schema.get()

print(json.dumps(response, indent=2))

JS/TS Client v2

const allCollections = await client.collections.listAll()
console.log(JSON.stringify(allCollections, null, 2));

Java

Result<Schema> result = client.schema().getter()
  .run();

String json = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create().toJson(result.getResult());
System.out.println(json);

Go

schema, err := client.Schema().Getter().
  Do(ctx)

b, err := json.MarshalIndent(schema, "", "  ")
fmt.Println(string(b))

Configure billing

To configure billing, follow these steps:

1. Click the cogwheel icon at the left hand side of the console.
2. Scroll down to Billing Information.
3. Fill out the form and click Save.
4. Enter your credit card information on the next screen.

Create a serverless cluster

Serverless clusters require billing details. WCD prompts you to add billing details if you have not already added them.

To create a serverless cluster, follow these steps:

1. Select the "Managed cluster" tab.
2. Give your cluster a name.
3. Select a version.
4. Select a region.
5. Accept the terms and conditions.
6. Click create.

It takes a minute or two to create the new cluster. When the cluster is ready, WCD displays a check mark (✔️) next to the cluster name.

The serverless cluster has new API keys. Update the API keys in your client code to use the new keys.

Recreate your schema

Use the exported (sandbox cluster) schema to recreate the collection schema in the serverless cluster.

For more details on creating schemas, see Manage collections.

Python Client v4

Refer to the exported schema to recreate the property definitions.

from weaviate.classes.config import Property, DataType

# Note that you can use `client.collections.create_from_dict()` to create a collection from a v3-client-style JSON object
client.collections.create(
    "Article",
    properties=[
        Property(name="title", data_type=DataType.TEXT),
        Property(name="body", data_type=DataType.TEXT),
    ]
)

Python Client v3

class_obj = {
    "class": "Article",
    "properties": [
        {
            "name": "title",
            "dataType": ["text"],
        },
        {
            "name": "body",
            "dataType": ["text"],
        },
    ],
}

client.schema.create_class(class_obj)  # returns null on success

JS/TS Client v2

import { dataType } from 'weaviate-client';

await client.collections.create({
  name: 'Article',
  properties: [
    {
      name: 'title',
      dataType: dataType.TEXT,
    },
    {
      name: 'body',
      dataType: dataType.TEXT,
    },
  ],
})

Import your data

Use the batch import API to import your data into the serverless cluster.

If your data file is very large, consider streaming your upload.

Duration

Sandboxes expire after 14 days. When the sandbox expires, the data is deleted and cannot be retrieved. WCD sends an email notification approximately three days before a sandbox is due to expire.

Sandboxes can be extended three times. Each extension is for an additional 14 day period. To extend your sandbox, contact support.

Support

For help with Serverless, Enterprise SaaS, and Bring Your Own Cloud accounts, contact Weaviate support directly to open a support ticket.

For questions and support from the Weaviate community, try these resources:

• Community forum
• GitHub
• Slack

To add a support plan, contact Weaviate sales.