Docker Compose

To start Unity Catalog in Docker Compose in one command, install the latest version of Docker Desktop and run the following from the project’s root directory:

docker compose up -d

This starts the Unity Catalog server and UI. You can access the UI at http://localhost:3000 and the server at http://localhost:8080. Clients like DuckDB or Spark running on the host machine will be able to interact on those ports with the containers running Unity Catalog.

To use the Unity Catalog CLI, attach to a shell in the Unity Catalog server container:

docker exec -it unitycatalog-server-1 /bin/bash

Use the Unity Catalog CLI from the attached shell to interact with the server:

bin/uc table list --catalog unity --schema default

To remove the containers and persistent volumes, exit the attached shell and run the following from the host machine:

docker compose down --volumes --remove-orphans

Refer to the main Quickstart for more examples of how to interact with the catalog.

Configurations

Docker Compose is configured in the ./compose.yaml file.

The configuration will create a bind mount to the local files in ./etc/conf. The UC server can be configured by editing the configuration files on the host, and the mount will reflect the changes in the container.

The configuration will also create a persistent, named volume to store the server’s data. This will persist between restarts of the container. See the deployment page for more details on how to configure other databases like Postgres.