Install CockroachDB on Windows

Download the executable

You can download and install CockroachDB for Windows in two ways. Either:

• Recommended: Visit Releases to download CockroachDB. The archive contains the cockroach.exe binary. Extract the archive and optionally copy the cockroach.exe binary into your PATH so you can execute cockroach commands from any shell. Releases are rolled out gradually, so the latest version may not yet be downloadable.

• Instead of downloading the binary directly, you can use PowerShell to download and install CockroachDB:

  1. Visit Releases and make a note of the full version of CockroachDB to install, such as v24.3.0-alpha.1. Releases are rolled out gradually, so the latest version may not yet be downloadable.

  2. Save the following PowerShell script and replace the following:

     • { VERSION }: the full version of CockroachDB to download, such as v24.3.0-alpha.1. Replace this value in both the Invoke-WebRequest statement and the Copy-Item statement.

     • { INSTALL_DIRECTORY }: the local file path where the cockroachdb.exe executable will be installed. Replace the value in both the Destination argument and the $Env:PATH statement, which adds the destination directory to your PATH.

       $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop";
       [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12;$ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; $null = New-Item -Type Directory -Force $env:appdata/cockroach;
       Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://binaries.cockroachdb.com/cockroach-{ VERSION }.windows-6.2-amd64.zip -OutFile cockroach.zip;
       Expand-Archive -Force -Path cockroach.zip;
       Copy-Item -Force "cockroach/cockroach-{ VERSION }.windows-6.2-amd64/cockroach.exe" -Destination $env:{ INSTALL_DIRECTORY };$Env:PATH += ";$env:{ INSTALL_DIRECTORY }"
       

  3. Run the PowerShell script. To run a PowerShell script from a file, use syntax like:

     powershell.exe -Command "{path_to_script}"
     

  4. Check that the installation succeeded and that you can run cockroach commands:

     cockroach version
     

Use Kubernetes

To orchestrate CockroachDB locally using Kubernetes, either with configuration files or the Helm package manager, refer to Orchestrate a local cluster with Kubernetes.

Use Docker

This section shows how to install CockroachDB on a Windows host using Docker. On a Linux or Windows Docker host, the image creates a Linux container.

Docker images are multi-platform images that contain binaries for both Intel and ARM. Multi-platform images do not take up additional space on your Docker host.

Intel binaries can run on ARM systems, but with a significant reduction in performance.

1. Install Docker for Windows.

   Tip:

   Docker for Windows requires 64-bit Windows 10 Pro and Microsoft Hyper-V. Refer to the official documentation for more details. If your system does not satisfy the stated requirements, you can try using Docker Toolbox.

2. In PowerShell, confirm that Docker is running in the background:

   docker version
   

   If you see an error, verify your Docker for Windows installation, then try again.

3. Enable synchronized drive sharing so you can mount local directories as data volumes to persist node data after containers are stopped or deleted.

4. Visit Docker Hub and make a note of the full version of CockroachDB to pull. Releases are rolled out gradually, so the latest version may not yet be available. Using the latest tag is not recommended; to pull the latest release within a major version, use a tag like latest-v24.3. The following command always pulls the v24.3.0-alpha.1 image.

   docker pull cockroachdb/cockroach-unstable:v24.3.0-alpha.1