LocalCloud
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Getting Started Introduction

Getting Started

Get LocalCloud up and running in less than 1 minute. By the end of this guide, you’ll have the major Google Cloud services your team reaches for first running locally.

No cloud access. No credentials. No cloud costs.

Prerequisites

  • Docker — Install Docker (20.10+)
  • Homebrew install on macOS — if you use Homebrew, Docker Desktop is available as:
brew install --cask docker-desktop
  • 4GB RAM available for the container

Quick Start

1. Pull the image

docker pull jaysen2apache/localcloud

2. Start LocalCloud

docker volume create localcloud-data

docker run -d \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 4443:4443 -p 8085-8087:8085-8087 \
  -p 9010:9010 -p 9050:9050 -p 6379:6379 \
  -m 4g --name localcloud \
  -v localcloud-data:/var/lib/localcloud \
  jaysen2apache/localcloud

3. Open the console

open http://localhost:8080

The console is built into the running container, so you can inspect service status, browse data, and confirm the runtime is healthy before you debug your app.

4. Configure your SDK

Set environment variables for all services so your GCP SDKs connect to LocalCloud:

eval "$(curl -s http://localhost:8080/_localcloud/env?format=shell)"

This sets variables for all provided services like STORAGE_EMULATOR_HOST, PUBSUB_EMULATOR_HOST, etc. To setup only specific service, refer to user guide on console.

Make Your First API Call

Here’s a quick Python example with Cloud Storage:

from google.cloud import storage

client = storage.Client()

# Create a bucket
bucket = client.create_bucket("my-first-bucket")

# Upload a file
blob = bucket.blob("hello.txt")
blob.upload_from_string("Hello, LocalCloud!")

# Read it back
print(blob.download_as_text())
# Output: Hello, LocalCloud!

Zero code changes — this same code works against real GCP. Just unset the emulator environment variables.

Verify Services Are Running

curl http://localhost:8080/_localcloud/health | jq

Or visit the web console at http://localhost:8080.

Next Steps

  • Services — Browse major Google Cloud services by category
  • Services Overview — See how LocalCloud groups major Google Cloud categories
  • Configuration — Environment variables and settings
  • Seed Data — Pre-populate services with test data
  • Web Console — Browse data and run queries from your browser
  • BigQuery locally — Compare Google’s official BigQuery development path with LocalCloud’s DuckDB-based emulator