Installation
SereneDB ships prebuilt for 64-bit Linux. Pick the method that fits where you are running it, then follow that page to install, start the server and connect.
Choose an install method
| Method | Best for | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Shell script | The fastest way to get a single host or your laptop running. Installs the serened binary into your home directory, no root required. | Shell script |
| Docker | Containers, CI and trying SereneDB on macOS or Windows. | Docker |
.deb package | Debian and Ubuntu servers that should run SereneDB as a systemd-managed service. | Debian / Ubuntu |
| Tarball | Air-gapped hosts, custom install paths or when you manage the service yourself. | Tarball |
System requirements
CPU
Release binaries are statically linked and built for a baseline architecture:
| Architecture | Requirement |
|---|---|
| x86-64 | Intel Haswell, AMD Excavator or newer: x86-64-v3 (AVX2, BMI1, BMI2, FMA and the rest of the level) with AES and PCLMULQDQ |
| ARM64 | ARMv8-A with the CRC32 and cryptography extensions (AWS Graviton, Ampere Altra or newer) |
On a CPU that does not report one of these extensions, serened exits at startup and names what is missing, for example serened cannot run on this CPU: it lacks AVX2 BMI1 BMI2 F16C FMA LZCNT MOVBE. A virtual machine, including the one Docker Desktop runs, can hide extensions the host CPU has. A CPU that predates them altogether can instead stop with an illegal-instruction error before the check runs. Newer CPUs run faster code paths chosen at runtime: AVX-512 on x86-64 and SVE/SVE2 on ARM64 speed up vector search, matrix math and text analysis. More cores mean faster search and analytics — SereneDB parallelizes queries across the available CPUs.
Memory
| Minimum | 2 GB |
| Recommended | 8 GB or more |
Memory use scales with your dataset size, index size and query concurrency. Full-text and analytical workloads benefit from extra RAM for caching.
Storage
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Type | SSD strongly recommended |
| Filesystem | ext4 or xfs |
Operating system
Open file limit
SereneDB keeps many data and index files open at once, so the process needs a high open-file limit. The .deb service sets this for you (LimitNOFILE=131072). For a shell-script or tarball install, raise it yourself before starting the server:
ulimit -n 131072
Networking
SereneDB speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol on port 7890 by default. A single-node deployment needs no other ports.
By default the server binds to 127.0.0.1 and only accepts connections from the same host. To accept remote connections you change the endpoint to 0.0.0.0 — see the Debian / Ubuntu guide or Configuration. The Docker image already binds 0.0.0.0 inside the container.
For all server options see Configuration.