How to install Weaviate
Weaviate is available as a hosted service, Weaviate Cloud (WCD), or as a self managed instance. If you manage your own instance, you can host it locally or with a cloud provider. Self-managed instances use the same Weaviate core database as WCD.
If you are upgrading from a previous version of Weaviate, see the Migration Guide for any changes that may affect your installation.
Installation methods
To install and configure Weaviate, see the following:
- Weaviate Cloud: Managed services for development and production environments.
- Docker Compose: Docker containers are well suited for development and testing.
- Kubernetes: Kubernetes is ideal for scalable, production deployments.
- Snowpark Container Services Deploy Weaviate in Snowflake's Snowpark environment.
- Embedded Weaviate: Experimental. Embedded Weaviate is a client based tool.
Configuration files
Docker Compose and Kubernetes use yaml files to configure Weaviate instances. Docker uses the docker-compose.yml file. Kubernetes relies on Helm charts and the values.yaml file. The Weaviate documentation also calls these files configuration yaml files.
If you are self-hosting, consider experimenting on a small scale with Docker and then transferring your configuration to Kubernetes Helm charts when you are more familiar with Weaviate.
Unreleased versions
DISCLAIMER: Release candidate images and other unreleased software are not supported.
Unreleased software and images may contain bugs. APIs may change. Features under development may be withdrawn or modified. Do not use unreleased software in production.
To run an unreleased version of Weaviate, edit your configuration file to use the unreleased image instead of a generally available image. The GitHub releases page lists generally available and release candidate builds.
For example, to run a Docker image for a release candidate, edit your docker-config.yaml to import the release candidate image.
image: cr.weaviate.io/semitechnologies/weaviate:1.23.0-rc.1
When you try upcoming features, please provide feedback. Your comments are appreciated and help us to make Weaviate more useful for you.
Related pages
Questions and feedback
If you have any questions or feedback, let us know in the user forum.