Deploy an application locally

Follow these steps to deploy a Vespa application on your own machine.

Alternative versions of this guide:

This is tested with vespaengine/vespa:8.620.35 container image.


Steps:

  1. Validate the environment:

    $ docker info | grep "Total Memory"
or
$ podman info | grep "memTotal"

    Make sure you see at minimum 4 GB.

  2. Install the Vespa CLI using Homebrew:

    $ brew install vespa-cli

    Windows/No Homebrew? See the Vespa CLI page to download directly.

  3. Set local target:

    $ vespa config set target local

  4. Start a Vespa Docker container:

    $ docker run --detach --name vespa --hostname vespa-container \
  --publish 8080:8080 --publish 19071:19071 \
  vespaengine/vespa

    Alternatively, use podman in the command above.

    The port 8080 is published to make the search and feed interfaces accessible from outside the container, 19071 is the deploy-endpoint. Only one container named vespa can run at a time, so change the name if needed. See Docker containers for more insights.

  5. Clone a sample application:

    $ vespa clone album-recommendation myapp && cd myapp

  6. Deploy the application:

    $ vespa deploy --wait 300 ./app

  7. Feed documents:

    $ vespa feed dataset/documents.jsonl

  8. Run queries:

    $ vespa query "select * from music where album contains 'head'"

    $ vespa query \
  "select * from music where true" \
  "ranking=rank_albums" \
  "ranking.features.query(user_profile)={{cat:pop}:0.8,{cat:rock}:0.2,{cat:jazz}:0.1}"

  9. Get documents:

    $ vespa document get id:mynamespace:music::a-head-full-of-dreams

    $ vespa visit

    Get a document by ID, or export all documents - see /document/v1 and vespa visit.


Congratulations, you have deployed your first Vespa application!


Next: Vespa applications