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Configuration Reference

VectorScaleDB is configured entirely via environment variables. All variables use the VSDB_ prefix.

Core Settings

Authentication & Security

Enterprise Features

Encryption at Rest

GraphQL

Virtual Filesystem (VFS)

Coupling Matrix & Self-Awareness

Webhooks & Streaming

Compile-Time Feature Flags

VectorScaleDB ships as a universal binary with all software features compiled in. The flags below are only relevant if building from source. Hardware-specific flags (gpu, pn-chip) enable optional acceleration that loads at runtime via dynamic modules.

Adaptive Deployment

VectorScaleDB is a single adaptive substrate that scales across a continuum from microcontroller-class hardware up to datacenter clusters — the same binary auto-tunes compression, indexing, and resource allocation to the host it runs on. Set a target profile via VSDB_DEPLOYMENT_PROFILE to bias the auto-tuning toward a class of hardware, or leave it unset to let the substrate detect and adapt at startup.

Independently of hardware class, every deployment runs in one of three network modes: fully-federated (joins a coupling-aware cluster and exchanges behavioral templates across nodes), lightly-coupled (operates standalone but can opportunistically sync in island mode), or air-gapped (fully isolated, with attested offline bundle exchange when needed).

Cluster Settings

Running VectorScaleDB

VectorScaleDB ships as a single self-contained binary. Production deployments run the native binary directly — no container runtime, external services, or dependencies are required. Download the binary, set the environment variables above, and run it:

# Configure via environment variables, then run the binary
export VSDB_AUTH_ENABLED=true
export VSDB_AUTH_SECRET="$(cat ./auth.secret)"
export VSDB_ENCRYPTION_ENABLED=true
export VSDB_STORAGE_PATH=/data/vsdb
./vsdb

Docker Compose (Dev Convenience)

For local development and integration testing, a Docker Compose configuration with authentication and encryption enabled is available at launch. Production deployments should run the native binary above rather than a container.

version: "3.8"
services:
  vectorscaledb:
    image: vectorscaledb/vectorscaledb:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      VSDB_STORAGE_PATH: /data/vsdb
      VSDB_COMPRESSION_ENABLED: "true"
      VSDB_AUTH_ENABLED: "true"
      VSDB_AUTH_SECRET: "${VSDB_AUTH_SECRET}"
      VSDB_ENCRYPTION_ENABLED: "true"
      VSDB_ENCRYPTION_KEY_PROVIDER: env
      VSDB_ENCRYPTION_KEY_ENV: VSDB_MASTER_KEY
    volumes:
      - vsdb-data:/data/vsdb
volumes:
  vsdb-data: