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 three options: using Java, Docker or running from source. If you are familiar with Docker, this is the preferred method to start. If you are unfamiliar with Docker, try running via Java or from source.

Regardless of how you start Zipkin, browse to http://your_host:9411 to find traces! {: .message}

Java

The quickest way to get started is to fetch the latest released server as a self-contained executable jar. Note that the Zipkin requires minimum JRE 8. For example:

wget -O zipkin.jar 'https://search.maven.org/remote_content?g=io.zipkin.java&a=zipkin-server&v=LATEST&c=exec'
java -jar zipkin.jar

Docker

The Docker Zipkin project is able to build docker images, provide scripts and a docker-compose.yml for launching pre-built images. The quickest start is to run the latest image directly:

docker run -d -p 9411:9411 openzipkin/zipkin

Running from Source

Zipkin can be run from source if you are developing new features. To acheive this, you'll need to get zipkin and build it. Stop by and socialize with us on gitter, if you end up making something interesting!

# get the latest source
git clone https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin
cd zipkin
# Build the server and also make its dependencies
./mvnw -DskipTests --also-make -pl zipkin-server clean install
# Run the server
$ java -jar ./zipkin-server/target/zipkin-server-*exec.jar