Skip to content

Start a local Cloud

Let's dive right in and get our hands dirty with some real cloud development! All you need to get started is npm installed on your machine. We're using npm since it works great across all platforms - Windows, Mac, or Linux.

We'll be using dream (github.com/taubyte/dream) - a super handy tool that lets you spin up your own Taubyte cloud right on your local machine. Think of it as your personal playground for building and testing cloud apps, plugins, etc.

Quick Start

Install the Taubyte Dream CLI: 

npm i -g @taubyte/dream  # -g installs it globally

Start your local cloud environment: 

dream new multiverse    # Creates and starts a new cloud instance

You should see: 

[INFO] Dreamland ready
[SUCCESS] Universe blackhole started!

💡 Tip: You can verify everything is running with dream status universe

Once you see SUCCESS, it means your cloud has been fully started.

A first look

Let's check the status of our cloud environment: 

dream status universe

Example output: 

┌───────┬─────────────────────┬────────┬───────┐
│ Nodes │ elder@blackhole     │ p2p    │ 14051 │
│       ├─────────────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│       │ tns@blackhole       │ http   │ 14466 │
...

Understanding the output:

  • Node Types:
    • Protocol nodes: Run specific services (e.g., tns, substrate)
    • Role-based nodes: Handle specific functions (e.g., elder for bootstrapping)
  • Universe: @blackhole suffix indicates the cloud instance
  • Ports: Right column shows TCP ports for each service

Visual Interface

  1. Open console.taubyte.com
  2. Click the Dreamland button (requires active dreamland instance)
  3. Navigate: Sidebar → Network → blackhole

The network visualization shows:

  • All active nodes from your CLI output
  • Interactive node graph
  • Port information on hover

💡 Pro tip: The graph is interactive - drag nodes to rearrange the visualization

Network Architecture

Your local cloud runs as a peer-to-peer mesh network where each node handles a specific service. While production nodes can run multiple services, dream assigns one service per node for easier debugging.

Core Services

Request Handling:

  • gateway: L7 load balancer and entry point
  • substrate: Processes and serves requests
  • seer: DNS resolution and load balancing

CI/CD:

  • patrick: Git event handler → CI/CD pipeline
  • monkey: CI/CD job executor

Infrastructure:

  • auth: Authentication and secrets management
  • tns: Project registry and configuration store
  • hoarder: Data replication manager

The other nodes, referred to as Simples (admittedly, not the best name), include elder and client. While they are not crucial for the purpose of this article and could be excluded when starting the universe, it's helpful to understand their intended roles:

  • elder nodes are used for bootstrapping. Since dream interconnects all nodes, an elder is included for testing purposes when using dream as a library as a library.
  • client nodes are lightweight and can be used to test services or peer-to-peer services deployed on the cloud.

💡 Dev Note: In production, nodes can run multiple services by defining a "shape". The single-service-per-node setup in dream is purely for development convenience.