Runtime configuration management

Technical preview

Runtime configuration management was added in v1.30 as a technical preview.

This means that the feature is still under development and may change in future releases, including potential breaking changes. We do not recommend using this feature in production environments at this time.

Weaviate supports runtime configuration management, allowing certain environment variables to be updated and read by Weaviate on the fly without the need for restarts. This feature helps you adapt settings in real time and fine-tune your instance based on evolving needs.

Set up runtime configuration

Follow these steps to set up runtime configuration management:

1. Enable the feature Set the environment variable RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_ENABLED to true.

2. Provide an overrides file Create a configuration file that contains the runtime overrides and point to it using the RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_PATH variable.

Example configuration override file

overrides.yaml

maximum_allowed_collections_count: 8
auto_schema_enabled: true
async_replication_disabled: false

3. Set the update interval Set the RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_LOAD_INTERVAL variable to define how often Weaviate should check for configuration changes (default is 2m).

4. Restart the instance In order to finish the setup, restart your Weaviate instance.

Configuration variables

The following environment variables are used to control runtime configuration management:

Variable	Description	Type
RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_ENABLED	If set, the runtime configuration management is enabled. Default: false	boolean
RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_PATH	Path of the configuration override file. Default: "/config/overrides.yaml"	string - file path
RUNTIME_OVERRIDES_LOAD_INTERVAL	Refresh rate for checking if there are configuration changes. Default: 2m	string - duration

Runtime configurable environment variables

Below you can find a list of the environment variables that can be changed at runtime and the names that should be used in the override file:

Environment variable name	Runtime override name
ASYNC_REPLICATION_DISABLED	async_replication_disabled
AUTOSCHEMA_ENABLED	auto_schema_enabled
MAXIMUM_ALLOWED_COLLECTIONS_COUNT	maximum_allowed_collections_count

For more details about the variables, check out the Environment variables page.

Operation and monitoring

Runtime configuration is based on tracking configuration file changes, which involves certain operational considerations. If Weaviate attempts to start with an invalid runtime configuration file (e.g., malformed YAML), the process will fail to start and exit.

When modifying the runtime configuration file for a running Weaviate instance, if the new configuration is invalid, Weaviate continues using the last valid configuration that is stored in memory. Error logs and metrics will indicate when configuration loading fails.

Weaviate provides the following metrics to help you monitor runtime configuration status:

Metric Name	Description
weaviate_runtime_config_last_load_success	Indicates whether the last loading attempt was successful (1 for success, 0 for failure)
weaviate_runtime_config_hash	Hash value of the currently active runtime configuration, useful for tracking when new configurations take effect

note

It's important to set up proper alerting based on these metrics and logs to quickly identify configuration issues. If any Weaviate process is failing to load its runtime configuration, it won't be able to start until the configuration is fixed.