Running SurrealDB yourself is quick to start and gives you full control over storage, configuration, and placement. Everything needed to start a server and to import and export data is in the command-line tool, packaged and distributed as a single executable that can be downloaded, installed, or run from within Docker.
For initial installation, see the installation guide. If you would rather not operate the infrastructure, see Instances for the managed option.
Deployment guides
| Guide | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Deployment models | Choosing between single-node, multi-node, embedded, and managed |
| Docker | Quickest path; SurrealKV with a volume mount |
| Kubernetes | Single SurrealDB pod with SurrealKV on a persistent volume |
| Managed Kubernetes | Paths on Amazon EKS, Google GKE, and Azure AKS |
| SurrealDS on Kubernetes | Multi-node cluster with the SurrealDB operator (Enterprise) |
| SurrealDS on your own machines | Multi-node cluster on servers or virtual machines without Kubernetes (Enterprise) |
Most self-hosted workloads store data on disk, with one SurrealDB process per database directory. From SurrealDB 4.0 the on-disk engine is SurrealKV (surrealkv://). RocksDB (rocksdb://) was removed in SurrealDB 4.0; see Moving a RocksDB database to SurrealKV.
Operating a self-hosted instance
Configuration - server startup options, environment variables, and storage engine selection.
Backups and recovery - export and import commands, backup strategies, and disaster recovery.
Monitoring and observability - health endpoints, metrics, and tracing integration.
Upgrades and patching - version upgrades, major-version data migration, and compatibility notes.
Once an instance is running, the Observability section covers the built-in metrics, audit logs and slow-query logs you can scrape over Prometheus or push over OTLP for production monitoring.
Enterprise Edition
Self-hosted clusters can run Enterprise Edition, which adds distributed live queries, audit logging, FIPS-validated cryptography and support tiers on top of the same server. Enterprise also includes SurrealDS, the distributed storage engine for self-hosted multi-node clusters.