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Local - No Docker

This page will show you how to get your Ziti Network up and running quickly and easily, entirely locally. Since you'll be running everything locally, you'll have no issues communicating between network components. All the processes will run locally, and you'll be responsible for starting and stopping them when you want to turn the overlay network on or off.

Prerequisites​

note

Make sure you have tar, hostname, jq and curl installed before running the expressInstall one-liner.

There is not much preparation necessary to getting up-and-running locally. At this time, this guide expects that you'll be running commands within a bash shell. If you're running Windows, you will need to make sure you have Windows Subsystem for Linux installed for now. We plan to provide a Powershell script in the future, but for now the script requires you to be able to use bash. Make sure your local ports 1280, 6262, 10000 are free before running the controller. These ports are the default ports used by the controller. Also ensure ports 10080 and 3022 are open as these are the default ports the edge router will use.

Run expressInstall One-liner​

Running the latest version of Ziti locally is as simple as running this one command:

    source /dev/stdin <<< "$(wget -qO- https://get.openziti.io/quick/ziti-cli-functions.sh)"; expressInstall

This script will perform an 'express' install of Ziti which does the following:

  • download the latest version of the OpenZiti binary (ziti)
  • extract the binary into a predefined location: ~/.ziti/quickstart/$(hostname -s)
  • create a full PKI for you to explore
  • create a controller configuration using default values and the PKI created above
  • create an edge-router configuration using default values and the PKI created above
  • add helper functions and environment variables to your shell (explore the script to see all)

Start the Components​

Once the latest version of Ziti has been downloaded and added to your path, it's time to start your controller and edge-router.

Start Your Controller​

startController

Example output:

$ startController
ziti-controller started as process id: 1286. log located at: /home/vagrant/.ziti/quickstart/bullseye/bullseye.log

Verify the Controller is Running​

After running expressInstall, you will have environment variables set named ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS and ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_PORT. After the controller has started, your controller should be listening at that address:port combination. (Note, if you do not have these environment variables, you've probably closed your shell and opened it up again. You can get the environment variables by sourcing the ".env" file. See the section at the bottom of the page for details)

You can see what your value is set to by running echo ${ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS}:${ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_PORT}. This value defaults to: $(hostname -s):1280. Make sure the controller is available by trying to curl to the address, and then start the edge router. 

curl "${ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS}:${ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_PORT}"

Example output: 

{"data":{"apiVersions":{"edge":{"v1":{"apiBaseUrls":["https://your.hostname:1280/edge/client/v1"],"path":"/edge/client/v1"}},"edge-client":{"v1":{"apiBaseUrls":["https://your.hostname:1280/edge/client/v1"],"path":"/edge/client/v1"}},"edge-management":{"v1":{"apiBaseUrls":["https://your.hostname:1280/edge/management/v1"],"path":"/edge/management/v1"}}},"buildDate":"2023-06-23T15:08:25Z","revision":"65d1dda821a3","runtimeVersion":"go1.20.5","version":"v0.28.4"},"meta":{}}

Start Your Edge Router​

Now that the controller is ready, you can start the edge router created with the 'express' process. You can start this router locally by running:

startRouter

Example output:

$ startRouter
Express Edge Router started as process id: 1296. log located at: /home/vagrant/.ziti/quickstart/bullseye/bullseye-edge-router.log

You can verify the edge router is listening by finding the value of $ZITI_ROUTER_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS:$ZITI_EDGE_ROUTER_PORT. Again, this will default to using $(hostname -s) as the host name and port 3022.

Stopping the Controller and Router​

stopRouter 
stopController

Example output:

$ stopRouter 
INFO: Router stopped.

$ stopController 
INFO: Controller stopped.

Testing Your Overlay​

At this point you should have a functioning Ziti Network. The script you sourced provides another function to login to your network. Try this now by running zitiLogin. You should see something similar to this:

$ zitiLogin
Token: 40d2d280-a633-46c9-8499-ab2e005dd222
Saving identity 'default' to ${HOME}/.ziti/quickstart/My-Mac-mini/ziti-cli.json

You can now use the ziti CLI to interact with Ziti!. The ziti binary is not added to your path by default but will be available at "${ZITI_BIN_DIR-}/ziti". Add that folder to your path, alias ziti if you like. Let's try to use this command to see if the edge router is online by running: "${ZITI_BIN_DIR-}/ziti" edge list edge-routers.

$ "${ZITI_BIN_DIR-}/ziti" edge list edge-routers
id: rhx6687N.P    name: My-Mac-mini    isOnline: true    role attributes: {}
results: 1-1 of 1

Horray! Our edge router shows up and is online!

Run Your First Service​

You can try out creating and running a simple echo service through ziti by running the first-service tutorial.

$ "${ZITI_BIN_DIR-}/ziti" edge tutorial first-service

Customizing the Express Install​

You can influence and customize the express installation somewhat if you wish. This is useful if trying to run more than one instance of Ziti locally. The most common settings you might choose to customize would be the ports used or the name of the network.

Configuration File Location​

You can change the location of the configuration files output by setting the ZITI_NETWORK environment variable prior to running expressInstall. However, if you do this you will also need to set other environment variables as well. Please realize that if you change these variables each of the "hostname" variables will need to be addressable:

  • ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS
  • ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_PORT
  • ZITI_ROUTER_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS
  • ZITI_EDGE_ROUTER_PORT

Here is an example which allows you to put all the files into a folder called: ${HOME}/.ziti/quickstart/newfolder, uses a host named 'localhost', and uses ports 8800 for the edge controller and 9090 for the edge router:

ZITI_NETWORK="newfolder"; \
ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS=localhost; \
ZITI_CTRL_EDGE_ADVERTISED_PORT=8800; \
ZITI_ROUTER_ADVERTISED_ADDRESS=localhost; \
ZITI_EDGE_ROUTER_PORT=9090; \
source ziti-cli-functions.sh; expressInstall

Sourcing the Env File​

In the case you close your shell and you want to get the same environment variables back into your shell, you can just source the "env" file that is placed into the location you specified. This file is usually located at: $HOME/.ziti/quickstart/$(hostname)/$(hostname).env. You can source this file to place the environment variables back into your shell.

source $HOME/.ziti/quickstart/$(hostname)/$(hostname).env

Next Steps​