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Unity Catalog

Unity Catalog Docker Compose Guide

Docker Compose

Section titled “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:

Terminal window
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:

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

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

Terminal window
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:

Terminal window
docker compose down --volumes --remove-orphans

Configurations

Section titled “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 congfiguration will also create a persistent, named volume to store the server’s data. This will persist between restarts of the container.