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Install the VIDAI Control Plane

The control plane is delivered as a deployment bundle: a small archive you extract on the host you'd like to run it on. Same bundle for every edition — Community, Scale or Enterprise — and your vidai.license file decides which features unlock at runtime.

How you receive the bundle and the licence depends on edition:

  • Community is self-serve. Sign in at portal.vidai.uk, download the latest release tarball, and generate a vidai.license file. Free, no expiry.
  • Scale and Enterprise are licensing-led. Your account contact arranges the bundle and the vidai.license file, delivered by email alongside any rate-card server credentials.

You'll spend most of your time in this guide inside the admin console rather than at the install layer; the install is a once-per-host activity. This page is the map of how the control plane gets onto the host in the first place.

Pick a deployment model

Four shapes are supported. The right pick is usually decided by your security and infrastructure teams before they hand the bundle to you, but here's what each one is for.

Deployment model Bundle artefact Best for Status
Docker quickstart vidai-quickstart-<version>.tar.gz Single-host installs, evaluations, small production deployments. Everything runs in Compose; bundled Postgres or BYO Postgres both work. Available
Performance / binary mode vidai-performance-<version>.tar.gz High-throughput production. The control plane runs as a native binary alongside Postgres for lower latency and overhead. On request
Airgap Self-contained bundle Isolated networks where the host can't reach the public image registry. Images travel inside the bundle. On request
Helm chart Kubernetes chart + values Multi-node Kubernetes deployments with HA, autoscaling, and full GitOps integration. On request

The Docker quickstart is the only model with a self-service bundle today. The other three are produced on request; your account contact arranges the bundle and the companion install support. The same admin console runs on top of any of them, so the rest of this guide doesn't change based on what you're running underneath.

What you receive in any model

Every bundle ships with the same envelope:

  • A docker-compose.yml wiring the five runtime services together (Postgres, the control plane, the BFF, the embedded admin guide, and the dashboard).
  • An interactive setup.sh that detects your vidai.license file, asks a few short questions (Postgres mode, port overrides), and writes a working .env. Strong random secrets are generated for you; you don't manage those by hand.
  • A ./vidai operator CLI that wraps daily operations (start, stop, status, logs), upgrades, and backup/restore in friendly commands. Raw docker compose still works for anything not covered.
  • A VERIFY.md describing how to verify the bundle and the runtime images with cosign. Optional; the product runs identically whether or not you verify.
  • A LICENSES/ directory with full third-party licence texts for every dependency in the bundle (Apache, MIT, BSD). For redistribution and audit trails.
  • A bundle-specific README.md that walks you through the run.

📌 Worth knowing. Bundles are version-pinned. The docker-compose.yml in vidai-quickstart-0.8.0-beta.4 references the exact image tags that were tested together; you won't drift onto a mismatched component set by accident.

What's not in the bundle

A handful of operational concerns are deliberately out of scope of the bundle and live on your side:

  • The host machine itself. Linux or macOS, Docker 24+, Docker Compose v2, and 4 GB of free RAM (8 GB recommended).
  • TLS / domain names. The bundle serves the dashboard on HTTP by default; a reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, your cloud's load balancer) terminates HTTPS in front of it for production deployments.
  • Off-host backup storage. ./vidai backup and the automatic pre-upgrade snapshots write to ./backups/ by default; copying them off the host (to a separate disk, NAS mount, or object store) is your responsibility. Set VIDAI_BACKUP_DIR in .env to redirect the backup location.
  • Provider API keys. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc. Configured inside the dashboard on the Providers page after install, not at install time.
  • Rate-card server credentials. The control plane prices every request as it returns, but only once you've pointed it at a rate-card server. Community admins find the free public-server credentials in the same portal page as the licence; Scale and Enterprise admins receive the URL and credentials in the licence email. Configured in the dashboard at Settings → Rate cards after install.

After the install

Once the stack is running:

  1. Open the dashboard URL printed by ./vidai start.
  2. Sign in with the default first-boot credentials (in your bundle's README); you'll be prompted to set a real password immediately.
  3. Configure the rate-card server at Settings → Rate cards so cost attribution starts populating.
  4. Continue with Getting started for the first-thirty-minutes walk-through.

Where to go next

  • Docker quickstart: the full step-by-step for the self-service deployment model.
  • Getting started: what to do inside the console once you're in.
  • For any of the other deployment models, contact [email protected] and we'll arrange a bundle plus install support.