Running with Docker Compose

Using the development image of Chronicle is convenient for getting started quickly. For more control over the runtime environment, you can run Chronicle with MongoDB and other services such as telemetry collectors.

The following configures a docker-compose.yml with Chronicle and Microsoft Aspire.

services:
  chronicle:
    image: cratis/chronicle:latest-development
    sysctls:
      net.ipv4.ip_local_reserved_ports: "11111,30000,35000"
    environment:
      - OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://aspire-dashboard:18889
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:35000:35000
      - 127.0.0.1:27017:27017

  aspire-dashboard:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire-dashboard:latest
    environment:
      - DOTNET_DASHBOARD_UNSECURED_ALLOW_ANONYMOUS=true
      - ALLOW_UNSECURED_TRANSPORT=true
      - DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT=Development
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:18888:18888
      - 127.0.0.1:4317:18889

Every port is published on this machine only: the development image’s Workbench accepts well-known credentials, its bundled MongoDB has no authentication, and the dashboard allows anonymous access. The Orleans ports (11111, 30000) are left unpublished because a single local node does not need them. The sysctl reserves those ports and the Chronicle port from ephemeral outbound allocation inside the container. If your container runtime rejects this sysctl, remove the sysctls block and retry; Chronicle’s bounded bind retry still applies.

With this setup, Chronicle runs alongside Microsoft Aspire, which provides a dashboard for OpenTelemetry.