Running Firebolt Core locally is the recommended starting point for new users. Local deployment allows you to test queries and familiarize yourself with the system before proceeding to remote cluster configuration (see Deployment and Operational Guide).

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Requirements

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Software

Software for your host OS:

Software for your Docker host:

  • Linux kernel version >= 6.1. Firebolt Core internally uses the io_uring kernel API for fast network and disk I/O, and some required features of this API have only been released in Linux 6.1.

In order to automatically install Docker Engine and run Firebolt Core you can use:

bash <(curl -s https://get-core.firebolt.io/)

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Resources

Resources for each node (either a local machine or a VM instance):

  • An amd64 CPU supporting at least SSE 4.2, or an arm64 CPU All published Firebolt Core Docker images are multi-arch images suitable for both amd64 and arm64.
  • At least 16 GB of RAM are recommended in order to run basic queries.
  • At least 25 GB of SSD space are recommended in order to run basic queries.
  • At least 10 GBit/s of inter-node network bandwidth is recommended for multi-node deployments.
  • TCP port 3473 open when using a single node.
  • TCP ports 3473, 1717, 3434, 5678, 6500, 8122, 3473, 16000 open when using multiple nodes; see Network for more information.

Note that there is no universally correct amount of RAM and disk space for running Firebolt Core, and the above are simply rough guidelines for running some simple queries as a way to get started. The ideal amount of RAM and disk space depends heavily on the specific workload that you are running against a Firebolt Core deployment (see Deployment and Operational Guide for details).

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Local Single-Node Deployment

Run the following command to start a single-node Firebolt Core cluster on your local machine (see Deployment and Operational Guide for details on the command-line arguments).

docker run --name firebolt-core --rm --ulimit memlock=8589934592:8589934592 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined -v ./firebolt-core-data:/firebolt-core/volume --publish 127.0.0.1:3473:3473 ghcr.io/firebolt-db/firebolt-core:preview-rc

The above command will pull the ghcr.io/firebolt-db/firebolt-core:preview-rc Docker image and start a single container running one Firebolt Core node, then expose its HTTP endpoint at localhost:3473 on the host system. All persisted data will be stored on a firebolt-core-data directory mounted through a bind mount; note that this directory will be owned by root user.

On a new shell you can start the interactive CLI to run queries:

$ docker exec -ti firebolt-core fbcli
Press Ctrl+D to exit.
=> SELECT 42;
 ?column?
---------
       42

It is also possible to directly send SQL queries to the HTTP endpoint via curl:

curl --silent "localhost:3473" --data-binary "SELECT 'H3ll0, w0rld'"

See also:

  • additional examples for the different ways to ingest and export data in Firebolt Core.
  • Connect for details on connecting to Firebolt Core.

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Multi-Node deployment

For multi-node deployments, see Multi-node setups