Solr and Banana on Docker

A container is an abstraction layer to run a software application in a lightweight environment. Containerization provides a standard and a secure way to build, ship and run applications anywhere. Docker images of Solr and Banana are available for quick installation and run.

Running Solr and Banana Docker Containers

To run Solr and Banana containers, you may follow these steps:

Running Solr:

$ docker run --name solr --network="host" -d -p 8983:8983 -t solr -c

Creating a collection and indexing a dataset. We will use the shipped books dataset:

$ docker exec solr bin/solr create -c books
$ docker exec solr bin/post -c books example/exampledocs/books.csv

Running Banana:

$ docker run --name banana --network="host" -d -t aaadel/banana:1.6.25

Check running containers:

$ docker ps

The output should be something like this:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                                 COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                                         NAMES
23c18d55c980        aadel/docker-banana:1.6.25        "docker-entrypoint.s…"   47 minutes ago      Up 47 minutes                                                    banana
370e816403d3        solr                                   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   48 minutes ago      Up 48 minutes                                                    solr

Now, navigate to http://localhost:9901 in a web browser and the default Banana dashboard should be displayed. To view the indexed data, click “New” on the top-right corner and select “Non-timeseries dashboard”. On the new dashboard, open the settings window and select books collection from the Solr tab, data should appear inside the table panel.

Note: in this post, “host” network model was used which means that containers must run on the same host in order to communicate.