How to Install and Run Milvus Vector Database with Docker Compose

Milvus Vector Database Overview

Milvus is an open‑source vector database designed for large‑scale vector data storage, retrieval, and analysis. It is widely used in machine‑learning, artificial‑intelligence, computer‑vision, and natural‑language‑processing scenarios where efficient similarity search is required. Official documentation: https://milvus.io/docs/zh

Key Features

Efficient vector search: Supports multiple high‑performance indexing algorithms (both memory‑based and disk‑based) for fast processing of massive vector datasets.

Flexible data model: Allows storage of structured and unstructured data in various formats.

High concurrency handling: Capable of serving many simultaneous queries, suitable for real‑time applications.

Scalability: Horizontal scaling by adding nodes to accommodate larger data volumes and query loads.

Multi‑language SDKs: Provides client libraries for Python, Java, Go, and C++.

Machine‑learning framework integration: Can be integrated with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other AI frameworks.

Multiple index types: Offers IVF, HNSW, ANNOY, etc., letting users choose the optimal index for their workload.

Various storage backends: Supports local disk and cloud storage options.

Typical Use Cases

Image and video retrieval: Similarity search in computer‑vision applications.

Natural‑language processing: Text‑embedding retrieval and analysis.

Recommendation systems: Personalized recommendations via vector similarity.

Bioinformatics: Gene and protein vector analysis.

Installation Steps

Prepare host directories for Etcd, Milvus, and MinIO:

mkdir -p /zpaas/volumes/etcd
mkdir -p /zpaas/volumes/milvus
mkdir -p /zpaas/volumes/minio
chmod 700 /zpaas/volumes/etcd

Create a docker-compose-milvus.yml file with the following services:

version: '3.5'
services:
  etcd:
    container_name: milvus-etcd
    image: hub-nj.iwhalecloud.com/zcm_k8s/etcd:3.5.6-0
    environment:
      - ETCD_AUTO_COMPACTION_MODE=revision
      - ETCD_AUTO_COMPACTION_RETENTION=1000
      - ETCD_QUOTA_BACKEND_BYTES=4294967296
      - ETCD_SNAPSHOT_COUNT=50000
    volumes:
      - /zpaas/volumes/etcd:/etcd
    ports:
      - "3379:3379"
    command: etcd -advertise-client-urls=http://127.0.0.1:3379 -listen-client-urls http://0.0.0.0:3379 --data-dir /etcd
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "etcdctl", "endpoint", "health"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 3s
      retries: 10

  minio:
    container_name: milvus-minio
    image: hub-nj.iwhalecloud.com/public/minio:RELEASE.2023-03-20T20-16-18Z
    environment:
      MINIO_ACCESS_KEY: minioadmin
      MINIO_SECRET_KEY: minioadmin
    ports:
      - "9001:9001"
      - "9000:9000"
    volumes:
      - /zpaas/volumes/minio:/minio_data
    command: minio server /minio_data --console-address ":9001"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:9000/minio/health/live"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 3s
      retries: 10

  standalone:
    container_name: milvus-standalone
    image: hub-nj.iwhalecloud.com/public/milvus:v2.4.5
    command: ["milvus", "run", "standalone"]
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined
    environment:
      ETCD_ENDPOINTS: etcd:3379
      MINIO_ADDRESS: minio:9000
    volumes:
      - /zpaas/volumes/milvus:/var/lib/milvus
    ports:
      - "19530:19530"
      - "9091:9091"
    depends_on:
      - etcd
      - minio
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:9091/healthz"]
      interval: 30s
      start_period: 90s
      timeout: 20s
      retries: 3
    networks:
      default:
        name: milvus

Start the services:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-milvus.yml up -d

Verify that the containers are running: docker ps -a | grep milvus Example output shows the Milvus, MinIO, and Etcd containers with their health status and port mappings.

Attu Management UI Installation

Attu is a graphical management tool for Milvus. Deploy it with Docker:

docker run -d \
  --name=attu \
  -p 8000:3000 \
  -e MILVUS_URL=10.10.194.210:19530 \
  hub-nj.iwhalecloud.com/public/attu:v2.3.9

Access the UI at http://x.x.x.x:8000.

MinIO Access

Default credentials are minioadmin / minioadmin. The web console is reachable at http://x.x.x.x:9001.