Quickstart

Cloud Self-Managed Community (OSS)Self-Managed Enterprise

Airbyte Open Source is a reliable and extensible open source data pipeline.

If you're getting started with Airbyte Cloud, you can skip ahead to moving data by adding your first source.

This quickstart guides you through creating a locally deployed instance of Airbyte in just minutes using abctl (Airbyte Command Line Tool). You'll be able to move data with minimal setup while you're exploring what Airbyte can do!

tip

When you're ready to put an Airbyte instance into production, you'll want to review our guides on deployment.

For the best experience, we recommend Deploying Airbyte on Kubernetes via Helm.

Prerequisites

• To use abctl, you'll need to have Docker Desktop installed. See Docker's instructions for installation: Mac, Windows, Linux

1: Install abctl

Follow the instructions for your operating system:

Mac

We recommend that Mac users use Brew to install the abctl command.

brew tap airbytehq/tap
brew install abctl

With Brew, you can keep abctl up to date easily, by running:

brew upgrade abctl

Linux

1: Download the latest release of abctl here

info

Be sure to download the file that is compatible with your machine's processor architecture.

You'll see two options: linux-amd64 and linux-arm64 If you're unsure which one you need, running the following command will help:

uname -m

• If the output is x86_64, you have an x86-64 processor.
• If the output is aarch64 or something similar, you have an ARM-based processor.

2: Extract the archive

This will create a directory named abctl which contains the executable along with other needed files.

tar -xvzf {name-of-file-downloaded.linux-*.tar.gz}

3: Make the extracted executable accessible

This will allow you to run abctl as a command

chmod +x abctl/abctl

4: Add abctl to your PATH

This will allow you to run abctl from any directory in your terminal.

sudo mv abctl /usr/local/bin

5: Verify the installation

abctl --version

If this command prints the installed version of the Airbyte Command Line Tool, it confirm that you are now ready to manage a local Airbyte instance using abctl.

Windows

1: Download the latest release of abctl here

2: Extract the archive

• Right click the zip file you've downloaded and select Extract All..., then choose a destination folder.

This creates a folder called abctl containing the abctl executable and other reqired files.

3: Add the executable to your PATH

• In the "System Properties" window (you can find this by searching for "enviornment variables" in the Start menu), click the Environment Variables button
• Under System variables, find the path and click to Edit
• Click New and add the path to the folder you extracted the abctl files to in the previous step.
• Click OK to save these changes.

4: Open a new Command Prompt or PowerShell window

This is important because changes to your PATH will only take effect in a newly opened window.

5: Verify the installation

abctl version

If this command prints the installed version of the Airbyte Command Line Tool, it confirm that you are now ready to manage a local Airbyte instance using abctl.

2: Run Airbyte

Ensure that Docker Desktop is up and running. Then, with abctl installed, the following command gets Airbyte running:

abctl local install

Your browser may open automatically to the Airbyte Application. If not, access it by visiting http://localhost:8000.

When prompted for a username and password, enter the following default values:

• username: airbyte
• password: password

To set your own username and password, use command line flags or variables. For example, to set the username and password to foo and bar respectively, you can run the following command:

abctl local install --username foo --password bar

Or, if setting these values in the .env file, you'd add the following:

ABCTL_LOCAL_INSTALL_PASSWORD=foo
ABCTL_LOCAL_INSTALL_USERNAME=bar

After supplying a username and password, you'll see the Airbyte workspace. Using this interface, you can set up and manage all your connections and move data with ease!

As long as your Docker Desktop daemon is running in the background, you can use Airbyte by returning to http://localhost8000.

If you quit Docker Decktop and want to return to your local Airbyte workspace, just start Docker Desktop again. Once Docker finishes restarting, you'll be able to access Airbyte's local installation as normal.

3: Move Data

In the Building Connections section, you'll learn how to start moving data. Generally, there are three steps:

1: Set up a Source

2: Set up a Destination

3: Set up a Connection

Migrating from Docker Compose (Optional)

If you have data that you would like to migrate from an existing docker compose instance follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that you have stopped the instance running in docker compose, this may require the following command:

docker compose stop

2. Make sure that you have the latest version of abctl by running the following command:

curl -LsfS https://get.airbyte.com | bash -

3. Run abctl with the migrate flag set with the following command:

abctl local install --migrate

Troubleshooting

There are several channels for community support of local setup and deployment.

GitHub Airbyte Forum's Getting Started FAQ:
Search the questions others have asked or ask a new question of your own in the GitHub forum.

Airbyte Knowledge Base:
While support services are limited to Cloud and Enterprise customers, anyone may search the support team's Help Center.

Community Slack:
Helpful channels for troubleshooting include:

• #ask-community-for-troubleshooting: Where members of the Airbyte community can ask and answer questions.
• #ask-ai: For quick answers sourced from documentation and open support channels, you can have a chat with our virtual Airbyte assistant.

Introductory Course:
On Udemy, The Complete Hands-on Introduction to Airbyte is a convenient and hands-on introduction to Airbyte that includes setting up example source and destination configurations. You'll also go on to use it in conjunction with Apache Airflow, Snowflake, dbt, and more.

Bug Reports:
If you find an issue with the abctl command, please report it as a github issue here with the type of 🐛 [abctl] Report an issue with the abctl tool.