id: getting-started-docker title: Run a standalone Pulsar cluster in Docker sidebar_label: “Run Pulsar in Docker” description: Get started with Apache Pulsar on your local machine using Docker.

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs';
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

For local development and testing, you can run Pulsar in standalone mode on your own machine within a Docker container.

Prerequisites

  • Docker (version 20.10+ recommended)
  • At least 4GB of available RAM
  • At least 5GB of free disk space

To run Pulsar in Docker, follow the steps below.

Step1: Start Pulsar in Docker

For macOS, Linux, and Windows, run the following command to start Pulsar within a Docker container.

<Tabs groupId="os-choice"
  defaultValue="macOS & Linux"
  values={[{"label":"macOS & Linux","value":"macOS & Linux"},{"label":"Windows","value":"Windows"}]}>

<TabItem value="macOS & Linux">

```shell
docker run -it \
-p 6650:6650 \
-p 8080:8080 \
--mount source=pulsardata,target=/pulsar/data \
--mount source=pulsarconf,target=/pulsar/conf \
apachepulsar/pulsar:@pulsar:version@ \
bin/pulsar standalone --advertised-address localhost
```

</TabItem>

<TabItem value="Windows">

```shell
docker run -it ^
-p 6650:6650 ^
-p 8080:8080 ^
--mount source=pulsardata,target=/pulsar/data ^
--mount source=pulsarconf,target=/pulsar/conf ^
apachepulsar/pulsar:@pulsar:version@ ^
bin/pulsar standalone --advertised-address localhost
```

</TabItem>

</Tabs>

:::tip

These examples set --advertised-address localhost to preserve the previous local Docker behavior. A client can connect to localhost:6650 on the host machine, and the broker will also advertise localhost back to the client as the address to use for subsequent connections.

If you omit this option, Pulsar uses the container's FQDN by default. That works when the advertised hostname is resolvable and reachable from your clients, such as from other containers on the same network or from remote hosts, but it can break host-machine clients if that FQDN is not reachable from outside the container.

By default, Pulsar uses RocksDB as the metadata store, which is recommended for standalone instances.

If you encounter issues with RocksDB or need compatibility with existing ZooKeeper-based installations, you can use ZooKeeper as the metadata store by adding:

...
-e PULSAR_STANDALONE_USE_ZOOKEEPER=1 \
...

Note: Switching metadata stores will create a new cluster. Don't apply this to existing instances unless you want to start fresh.

:::

If you want to change Pulsar configurations and start Pulsar, run the following command by passing environment variables with the PULSAR_PREFIX_ prefix. See default configuration file for more details.

<Tabs groupId="os-choice"
  defaultValue="macOS & Linux"
  values={[{"label":"macOS & Linux","value":"macOS & Linux"},{"label":"Windows","value":"Windows"}]}>

<TabItem value="macOS & Linux">

```shell
docker run -it \
-e PULSAR_PREFIX_xxx=yyy \
-p 6650:6650  \
-p 8080:8080 \
--mount source=pulsardata,target=/pulsar/data \
--mount source=pulsarconf,target=/pulsar/conf \
apachepulsar/pulsar:@pulsar:version@ sh \
-c "bin/apply-config-from-env.py \
conf/standalone.conf && \
bin/pulsar standalone --advertised-address localhost"
```

</TabItem>

<TabItem value="Windows">

```shell
docker run -it ^
-e PULSAR_PREFIX_xxx=yyy ^
-p 6650:6650  ^
-p 8080:8080 ^
--mount source=pulsardata,target=/pulsar/data ^
--mount source=pulsarconf,target=/pulsar/conf ^
apachepulsar/pulsar:@pulsar:version@ sh ^
-c "bin/apply-config-from-env.py ^
conf/standalone.conf && ^
bin/pulsar standalone --advertised-address localhost"
```

</TabItem>

</Tabs>

:::tip

  • The docker container runs as UID 10000 and GID 0 by default. You need to ensure the mounted volumes give write permission to either UID 10000 or GID 0. Note that UID 10000 is arbitrary, so it is recommended to make these mounts writable for the root group (GID 0).
  • The data, metadata, and configuration are persisted on Docker volumes to not start “fresh” every time the container is restarted. For details on the volumes, you can use docker volume inspect <sourcename>.
  • For Docker on Windows, make sure to configure it to use Linux containers.

:::

After starting Pulsar successfully, you can see INFO-level log messages like this:

08:18:30.970 [main] INFO  org.apache.pulsar.broker.web.WebService - HTTP Service started at http://0.0.0.0:8080
...
07:53:37.322 [main] INFO  org.apache.pulsar.broker.PulsarService - messaging service is ready, bootstrap service port = 8080, broker url= pulsar://localhost:6650, cluster=standalone, configs=org.apache.pulsar.broker.ServiceConfiguration@98b63c1
...

:::tip

  • To perform a health check, you can use the bin/pulsar-admin brokers healthcheck command. For more information, see Pulsar admin docs.
  • When you start a local standalone cluster, a public/default namespace is created automatically. The namespace is used for development purposes. All Pulsar topics are managed within namespaces. For more information, see Topics.

:::

Step 2: Use Pulsar in Docker

Pulsar offers a variety of client libraries, such as Java, Go, Python, C++.

If you're running a local standalone cluster, you can use one of these root URLs to interact with your cluster:

  • pulsar://localhost:6650
  • http://localhost:8080

The following example guides you to get started with Pulsar by using the Python client API.

Install the Pulsar Python client library directly from PyPI:

pip install pulsar-client

Consume a message

Create a consumer and subscribe to the topic:

import pulsar

client = pulsar.Client('pulsar://localhost:6650')
consumer = client.subscribe('my-topic', subscription_name='my-sub')

while True:
    msg = consumer.receive()
    print("Received message: '%s'" % msg.data())
    consumer.acknowledge(msg)

client.close()

Produce a message

Start a producer to send some test messages:

import pulsar

client = pulsar.Client('pulsar://localhost:6650')
producer = client.create_producer('my-topic')

for i in range(10):
    producer.send(('hello-pulsar-%d' % i).encode('utf-8'))

client.close()

Step 3: Get the topic statistics

In Pulsar, you can use REST API, Java, or command-line tools to control every aspect of the system. For details on APIs, refer to Admin API Overview.

In the simplest example, you can use curl to probe the stats for a particular topic:

curl http://localhost:8080/admin/v2/persistent/public/default/my-topic/stats | python -m json.tool

The output is something like this:

{
    "msgRateIn": 0.0,
    "msgThroughputIn": 0.0,
    "msgRateOut": 1.8332950480217471,
    "msgThroughputOut": 91.33142602871978,
    "bytesInCounter": 7097,
    "msgInCounter": 143,
    "bytesOutCounter": 6607,
    "msgOutCounter": 133,
    "averageMsgSize": 0.0,
    "msgChunkPublished": false,
    "storageSize": 7097,
    "backlogSize": 0,
    "offloadedStorageSize": 0,
    "publishers": [
        {
            "accessMode": "Shared",
            "msgRateIn": 0.0,
            "msgThroughputIn": 0.0,
            "averageMsgSize": 0.0,
            "chunkedMessageRate": 0.0,
            "producerId": 0,
            "metadata": {},
            "address": "/127.0.0.1:35604",
            "connectedSince": "2021-07-04T09:05:43.04788Z",
            "clientVersion": "2.8.0",
            "producerName": "standalone-2-5"
        }
    ],
    "waitingPublishers": 0,
    "subscriptions": {
        "my-sub": {
            "msgRateOut": 1.8332950480217471,
            "msgThroughputOut": 91.33142602871978,
            "bytesOutCounter": 6607,
            "msgOutCounter": 133,
            "msgRateRedeliver": 0.0,
            "chunkedMessageRate": 0,
            "msgBacklog": 0,
            "backlogSize": 0,
            "msgBacklogNoDelayed": 0,
            "blockedSubscriptionOnUnackedMsgs": false,
            "msgDelayed": 0,
            "unackedMessages": 0,
            "type": "Exclusive",
            "activeConsumerName": "3c544f1daa",
            "msgRateExpired": 0.0,
            "totalMsgExpired": 0,
            "lastExpireTimestamp": 0,
            "lastConsumedFlowTimestamp": 1625389101290,
            "lastConsumedTimestamp": 1625389546070,
            "lastAckedTimestamp": 1625389546162,
            "lastMarkDeleteAdvancedTimestamp": 1625389546163,
            "consumers": [
                {
                    "msgRateOut": 1.8332950480217471,
                    "msgThroughputOut": 91.33142602871978,
                    "bytesOutCounter": 6607,
                    "msgOutCounter": 133,
                    "msgRateRedeliver": 0.0,
                    "chunkedMessageRate": 0.0,
                    "consumerName": "3c544f1daa",
                    "availablePermits": 867,
                    "unackedMessages": 0,
                    "avgMessagesPerEntry": 6,
                    "blockedConsumerOnUnackedMsgs": false,
                    "lastAckedTimestamp": 1625389546162,
                    "lastConsumedTimestamp": 1625389546070,
                    "metadata": {},
                    "address": "/127.0.0.1:35472",
                    "connectedSince": "2021-07-04T08:58:21.287682Z",
                    "clientVersion": "2.8.0"
                }
            ],
            "isDurable": true,
            "isReplicated": false,
            "allowOutOfOrderDelivery": false,
            "consumersAfterMarkDeletePosition": {},
            "nonContiguousDeletedMessagesRanges": 0,
            "nonContiguousDeletedMessagesRangesSerializedSize": 0,
            "durable": true,
            "replicated": false
        }
    },
    "replication": {},
    "deduplicationStatus": "Disabled",
    "nonContiguousDeletedMessagesRanges": 0,
    "nonContiguousDeletedMessagesRangesSerializedSize": 0
}