Get started with QuestDB via Docker

QuestDB has images for both Linux/macOS and Windows on Docker Hub.

Install Docker#

Before we start, you will need to install Docker. You can find guides for your platform on the official documentation.

QuestDB image#

Once Docker is installed, you will need to pull QuestDB's image from Docker Hub and create a container. You can do both in one command using docker run:

docker run -p 9000:9000 \
 -p 9009:9009 \
 -p 8812:8812 \
 -p 9003:9003 \
 questdb/questdb

Options#

Argument	Description
`-p`	Port to publish to the host
`-v`	To bind mount a volume.

`-p` parameter#

This parameter will publish a port to the host, you can specify:

-p 9000:9000 - REST API and Web Console
-p 9009:9009 - InfluxDB line protocol
-p 8812:8812 - Postgres wire protocol
-p 9003:9003 - Min health server

-v volumes#

The QuestDB root_directory is in the following location:

Linux
macOS
Windows

/var/lib/questdb

Container status#

You can check the status of your container with docker ps. It also lists the ports we published:

docker ps

Result

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                NAMES
dd363939f261        questdb/questdb     "/app/bin/java -m io…"   3 seconds ago       Up 2 seconds        8812/tcp, 9000/tcp   frosty_gauss

Importing data and sending queries#

Now that QuestDB is running, you can start interacting with it:

If you published the port 9000, you can follow our REST page
If you published the port 8812, follow our Postgres page
If you published the port 9009, follow our InfluxDB page

Data persistence#

Mounting a volume#

Volumes can be mounted to the QuestDB Docker container so that data may be persisted or server configuration settings may be passed to an instance. The following example demonstrated how to mount the current directory to a QuestDB container using the -v flag in a Docker run command:

docker run -p 9000:9000 \
 -p 9009:9009 \
 -p 8812:8812 \
 -p 9003:9003 \
 -v "$(pwd):/var/lib/questdb" questdb/questdb

The current directory will then have data persisted to disk for convenient migration or backups:

Current directory contents

├── conf
│   └── server.conf
├── db
└── public

For details on passing QuestDB server settings to a Docker container, see the Docker section of the server configuration documentation.

Writing logs to disk#

When mounting a volume to a Docker container, a logging configuration file may be provided in the container located at /conf/log.conf:

Current directory contents

└── conf
    ├── log.conf
    └── server.conf

For example, a file with the following contents can be created:

./conf/log.conf

# list of configured writers
writers=file,stdout,http.min

# file writer
w.file.class=io.questdb.log.LogFileWriter
w.file.location=questdb-docker.log
w.file.level=INFO,ERROR,DEBUG

# stdout
w.stdout.class=io.questdb.log.LogConsoleWriter
w.stdout.level=INFO

# min http server, used monitoring
w.http.min.class=io.questdb.log.LogConsoleWriter
w.http.min.level=ERROR
w.http.min.scope=http-min-server

The current directory can be mounted:

Mounting the current directory to a QuestDB container

docker run -p 9000:9000 \
 -p 9009:9009 \
 -p 8812:8812 \
 -p 9003:9003 \
 -v "$(pwd):/root/.questdb/" questdb/questdb

The container logs will be written to disk using the logging level and file name provided in the conf/log.conf file, in this case in ./questdb-docker.log:

Current directory tree

├── conf
│  ├── log.conf
│  └── server.conf
├── db
│  ├── table1
│  └── table2
├── public
│  ├── ui / assets
│  ├── ...
│  └── version.txt
└── questdb-docker.log

For more information on logging, see the configuration reference documentation.

Restart an existing container#

Running the following command will create a new container for the QuestDB image:

docker run -p 9000:9000 \
 -p 9009:9009 \
 -p 8812:8812 \
 -p 9003:9003 \
 questdb/questdb

By giving the container a name with --name container_name, we have an easy way to refer to the container created by run later on:

docker run -p 9000:9000 \
 -p 9009:9009 \
 -p 8812:8812 \
 -p 9003:9003 \
 --name docker_questdb \
 questdb/questdb

If we want to re-use this container and its data after it has been stopped, we can use the following commands:

# bring the container up
docker start docker_questdb
# shut the container down
docker stop docker_questdb

Alternatively, users can obtain a running container's ID with 'docker ps' and restart it using the UUID short identifier:

Starting a container by ID

docker start dd363939f261