openbis/openbis-app repository overview

⁠Introduction

The open source platform openBIS - Open Biology Information System offers an Electronic Laboratory Notebook and a Laboratory Information Management System (ELN-LIMS) solution suitable for the academic life science and material science laboratories. openBIS ELN-LIMS allows researchers to efficiently document their work, to describe materials and methods, and to collect raw and analyzed data and analysis scripts. The openBIS ELN-LIMS platform is developed by Scientific IT Services in ETH Zürich⁠.

⁠What's in this image?

This image is built from long-term stable (LTS)⁠ releases of the ubuntu Docker Official Image⁠. It is shipped with a working installation of openBIS with all production-ready servers included. Note that this image does not include any third-party dependencies not required for running the openBIS Java application itself, such as ingress or database solutions. For a minimal but complete setup, we recommend to follow the quickstart guideline below⁠.

⁠Tags

Tags correspond to the openBIS production releases published on our wiki⁠. We intentionally do not provide the tags "latest", "production", or "stable" to avoid breakage of production environments caused by backwards-incompatible changes which might be introduced. IT operators must therefore explicitly specify the release version in their environment. It is highly recommended to review the current openBIS changelog⁠ prior to pulling a new release image.

Images are tagged in two ways - by major and minor release having the latest bug fixes from the latest patch release included (e.g., 20.10.11, 20.10.12) - and by specific patch release (e.g., 20.10.11.1, 20.10.12.4, 20.10.12.5). Tags with appended timestamps (e.g., -20260216) are immutable.

See all tags⁠

⁠Production Ready releases

⁠20.10.13

20.10.13.0

⁠20.10.12

20.10.12.5

⁠20.10.11

20.10.11.1

⁠Early Access releases

⁠7.0

7.0.0

⁠Updates

All images except from those tagged with a timestamp are updated at least monthly to include latest releases of base image packages (e.g., openjdk, openssl, etc.). Each time a new patch is released, the corresponding minor release tag is updated to point to this new patch release.

For instance, when openBIS 20.10.12.5 was released, it's docker image was published with tags 20.10.12, 20.10.12.5 and 20.10.12.5-20260216. After the initial release, the image with minor release tag 20.10.12 is rebuilt and re-published on a monthly basis. It is always on track with the latest patch release available for this minor release (e.g., 20.10.12.5), and includes the latest releases of base image packages. The image tagged as 20.10.12.5-20260216 is immutable and does not change, making it suitable for environments following high-reproducibility standards.

⁠Using tags

For use cases requiring high reproducibility, use tags with timestamp. Images tagged this way are immutable and neither receive any security-related patches nor any updates from future developments.

  openbis/openbis-app:20.10.12.5-20260216;

In a highly available production setup, use tags including the patch release. Images tagged this way are strict to the specific patch release.

  openbis/openbis-app:20.10.12.5;

In a highly automated production setup, use tags including the major and minor release only. Images tagged this way are linked to the latest available patch release.

  openbis/openbis-app:20.10.12;

⁠Documentation

• OpenBIS Docker Architecture⁠
• OpenBIS Docker Usage⁠
• OpenBIS Docker Configuration⁠

⁠Quickstart

Follow this documentation for setting up a minimal setup of openBIS in for local development or demonstration purposes. For production, we strongly recommend to follow the complete openBIS documentation⁠.

Create virtual network. Read more here ...⁠

$ docker network create openbis-network --driver bridge;

Run database container. Read more here ...⁠

$ docker run --detach \
  --name openbis-db \
  --hostname openbis-db \
  --network openbis-network \
  -v openbis-db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword \
  -e PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata \
  postgres:15;

Run application container. Read more here ...⁠

$ docker run --detach \
  --name openbis-app \
  --hostname openbis-app \
  --network openbis-network \
  --pid host \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -p 8081:8081 \
  -p 8085:8085 \
  -v openbis-app-data:/data \
  -v openbis-app-etc:/etc/openbis \
  -v openbis-app-logs:/var/log/openbis \
  -e OPENBIS_ADMIN_PASS="123456789" \
  -e OPENBIS_DATA="/data/openbis" \
  -e OPENBIS_DB_ADMIN_PASS="mysecretpassword" \
  -e OPENBIS_DB_ADMIN_USER="postgres" \
  -e OPENBIS_DB_APP_PASS="mysecretpassword" \
  -e OPENBIS_DB_APP_USER="openbis" \
  -e OPENBIS_DB_HOST="openbis-db" \
  -e OPENBIS_ETC="/etc/openbis" \
  -e OPENBIS_HOME="/home/openbis" \
  -e OPENBIS_LOG="/var/log/openbis" \
  -e OPENBIS_FQDN="localhost.openbis.net" \
  openbis/openbis-app:20.10.12;

Run local development ingress container. Read more here ...⁠

$ docker run --detach \
  --name openbis-ingress \
  --hostname openbis-ingress \
  --network openbis-network \
  --pid host \
  -p 443:443 \
  -e OPENBIS_HOST="openbis-app" \
  openbis/openbis-local:latest;

Verify local development connectivity. Read more here ...⁠

$ sleep 30s && curl -vk https://localhost.openbis.net/openbis/webapp/eln-lims/version.txt
$ curl -vk https://127.0.0.1/openbis/webapp/eln-lims/version.txt

⁠Support

For any questions on openBIS you can contact our support desk⁠.

⁠License

Copyright 2007-2026 ETH Zurich Scientific IT Services

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0⁠

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.