Install CockroachDB on Windows

Download the executable

You can download and install CockroachDB for Windows in two ways. Either:

• Recommended: Visit Releases to download CockroachDB. The archive contains the cockroach.exe binary. Extract the archive and optionally copy the cockroach.exe binary into your PATH so you can execute cockroach commands from any shell. Releases are rolled out gradually, so the latest version may not yet be downloadable.

• Instead of downloading the binary directly, you can use PowerShell to download and install CockroachDB:

  1. Visit Releases and make a note of the full version of CockroachDB to install, such as v24.3.0. Releases are rolled out gradually, so the latest version may not yet be downloadable.

  2. Save the following PowerShell script and replace the following:

     • { VERSION }: the full version of CockroachDB to download, such as v24.3.0. Replace this value in both the Invoke-WebRequest statement and the Copy-Item statement.

     • { INSTALL_DIRECTORY }: the local file path where the cockroachdb.exe executable will be installed. Replace the value in both the Destination argument and the $Env:PATH statement, which adds the destination directory to your PATH.

       $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop";
       [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12;$ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; $null = New-Item -Type Directory -Force $env:appdata/cockroach;
       Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://binaries.cockroachdb.com/cockroach-{ VERSION }.windows-6.2-amd64.zip -OutFile cockroach.zip;
       Expand-Archive -Force -Path cockroach.zip;
       Copy-Item -Force "cockroach/cockroach-{ VERSION }.windows-6.2-amd64/cockroach.exe" -Destination $env:{ INSTALL_DIRECTORY };$Env:PATH += ";$env:{ INSTALL_DIRECTORY }"
       

  3. Run the PowerShell script. To run a PowerShell script from a file, use syntax like:

     powershell.exe -Command "{path_to_script}"
     

  4. Check that the installation succeeded and that you can run cockroach commands:

     cockroach version
     

Use Kubernetes

To orchestrate CockroachDB locally using Kubernetes, either with configuration files or the Helm package manager, refer to Orchestrate a local cluster with Kubernetes.