Lightdash is MIT licensed and open source. You can self-host Lightdash on your own infrastructure. This guide is designed for DevOps Engineers that are familiar with Docker, Kubernetes, and are comfortable configuring environment variables, SMTP credentials, and database connections. If you’re unsure whether to self-host please read our guide on Lightdash Cloud vs. Self-Hosted.

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Prerequisites for self-hosting

  • Access to a kubernetes cluster and kubectl installed
  • Helm
  • Docker

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Self-host Lightdash on Kubernetes

The following steps will create a Lightdash instance and a postgres database to store your metadata (note: this is separate to your data warehouse with your analytics data). We recommend using kubernetes + helm but you can alternatively follow these guides for a minimum deployment without kubernetes: To deploy Lightdash on your Kubernetes cluster you can use our community maintained Helm chart: https://github.com/lightdash/helm-charts. This will get you started with the simplest configuration possible. At the end of this guide you can find a list of configuration options to customise your Lightdash instance and make it production ready.

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1. Add the Lightdash Helm repository

helm repo add lightdash https://lightdash.github.io/helm-charts

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2. Create a namespace for Lightdash

kubectl create namespace lightdash

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3. Create a minimum configuration for Lightdash

At minimum you should configure:
  • secrets.LIGHTDASH_SECRET - this variable is used by Lightdash to encrypt data at rest in the database. You must keep this secret. If this is lost, you will not be able to access your data in Lightdash.
  • configMap.S3_REGION, configMap.S3_BUCKET, configMap.S3_ENDPOINT, secrets.S3_ACCESS_KEY and secrets.S3_SECRET_KEY - These variables are for configuring external object storage with S3. For detailed information, refer to the external object storage documentation.
  • service.type - by default the Lightdash UI and API is exposed on a ClusterIP service. This means that it is only accessible from within the Kubernetes cluster. If you want to access Lightdash from outside the cluster, you can change this to LoadBalancer or NodePort. See the Kubernetes documentation for more information.
  • configMap.SITE_URL - if you know the URL that Lightdash will be accessible at, you can set this variable. This will ensure that all links in Lightdash are correct. If you don’t know the URL yet, you can leave this blank and update it later.
When setting up and configuring your Lightdash instance, you’ll likely need to configure many additional environment variables. The Helm chart supports three ways to set environment variables:
  • configMap - for non-sensitive configuration values
  • secrets - for sensitive values like passwords and API keys
  • extraEnv - for additional environment variables not covered by the chart’s built-in options
For a complete list of available environment variables, see the environment variables documentation. For detailed Helm chart configuration options, refer to the Lightdash Helm charts repository. Example values.yaml file containing our configuration: 
# values.yaml
secrets:
  LIGHTDASH_SECRET: notverysecret
  S3_ACCESS_KEY: secret # not required if using IAM role
  S3_SECRET_KEY: secret # not required if using IAM role
  # LIGHTDASH_LICENSE_KEY: your-enterprise-license-key # Optional: for Enterprise Edition features

configMap:
  SITE_URL: https://lightdash.mycompany.com
  S3_REGION: us
  S3_BUCKET: lightdash
  S3_ENDPOINT: https://storage.provider.com

# Additional environment variables not covered by configMap or secrets
extraEnv:
  - name: CUSTOM_ENV_VAR
    value: "custom-value"
  - name: ANOTHER_CONFIG
    value: "another-value"

service:
  type: NodePort

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Enterprise License Key (Optional)

If you have a Lightdash Enterprise license, you can enable enterprise features by adding your license key to the configuration: 
secrets:
  LIGHTDASH_LICENSE_KEY: your-enterprise-license-key-here
To obtain an Enterprise License Key, contact our team. For more details, see our Enterprise License Keys documentation.

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4. Install Lightdash with helm

Create a new helm release called lightdash using the lightdash/lightdash helm chart. In this example we’re also using the namespace -n lightdash. Finally we apply our minimum configuration from above using -f values.yaml. 
helm install lightdash lightdash/lightdash -n lightdash -f values.yaml

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4 (alternative). Install Lightdash with kubectl

If you prefer not to manage your deployment with helm, you can generate the kubernetes manifests and apply them using kubectl. 
helm template lightdash lightdash/lightdash -n lightdash -f values.yaml > lightdash.yaml
kubectl apply -f lightdash.yaml
Visit your SITE_URL to access Lightdash!

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Configure Lightdash for production

Now you have a working Lightdash instance, you can customise it to your needs. The following docs cover the most common configuration options, including those we recommend before going to production: Required configuration Recommended for production usage Optional configuration