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title: Quickstart weight: 1

In this section we’ll walk through building and starting an instance of Zipkin for checking out Zipkin locally. There are two options: using Docker and running from source. If you are familiar with Docker, this is the preferred method to start. If you are unfamiliar with Docker, try running from source. {: .message}

Docker

The Docker Zipkin project is able to build docker images, provide scripts and a docker-compose.yml for launching pre-built images. All you need to do is enter the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/openzipkin/docker-zipkin
cd docker-zipkin
docker-compose up

Running from Source

Zipkin can be run from source if you are testing new features or chose not to use Docker. The bin directory of the source repository provides scripts to minimize the amount of copy-pasting.

1. Get the zipkin source and change to its directory.

   git clone https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
   cd zipkin
   

2. In separate terminal windows or tabs, start

   • The query server: ./bin/query
   • The collector server: ./bin/collector
   • The web server: ./bin/web

3. Create dummy traces: ./bin/tracegen

4. Open the UI at http://localhost:8080 and look at the traces!