Get started with the Milvus integrations

Milvus is an open-source vector database system that efficiently stores, indexes, and searches large-scale vector data. It's commonly used in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science applications. The Aspire Milvus integration enables you to connect to existing Milvus servers or create new servers from Aspire with the milvusdb/milvus container image.

In this introduction, you'll see how to install and use the Aspire Milvus integrations in a simple configuration. If you already have this knowledge, see Milvus Hosting integration for full reference details.

Note

To follow this guide, you must have created an Aspire solution to work with. To learn how to do that, see Build your first Aspire app.

Set up hosting integration

To begin, install the Aspire Milvus Hosting integration in your Aspire AppHost project. This integration allows you to create and manage Milvus vector database instances from your Aspire hosting projects:

Install the NuGet package

dotnet add package Aspire.Hosting.Milvus

Next, in the AppHost project, create instances of Milvus server and database resources, then pass the database to the consuming client projects:

Tip

This is the simplest implementation of Milvus resources in the AppHost. There are many more options you can choose from to address your requirements. For full details, see Milvus Hosting integration.

Use the integration in client projects

Now that the hosting integration is ready, the next step is to install and configure the client integration in any projects that need to use it.

Set up client projects

Use injected Milvus properties

In the AppHost, when you used the WithReference method to pass a Milvus database resource to a consuming client project, Aspire injects several configuration properties that you can use in the consuming project.

Aspire exposes each property as an environment variable named [RESOURCE]_[PROPERTY]. For instance, the Uri property of a resource called milvusdb becomes MILVUSDB_URI.

Tip

The full set of properties that Aspire injects depends on the Milvus resource configuration. For more information, see Properties of the Milvus resources.

Use Milvus resources in client code

Next steps

Now that you have an Aspire app with Milvus integrations up and running, you can use the following reference documents to learn how to configure and interact with the Milvus resources:

<LinkCard Title="Understand the Milvus hosting integration"

<LinkCard Title="Understand the Milvus client integration"