Get InterSystems IRIS Community with Docker

Docker can be downloaded from the Docker website.

The process of downloading and running the InterSystems IRIS Community Edition can be performed by a single command:

docker run --name my-iris --publish 52773:52773 --publish 1972:1972 -d intersystems/iris-community:latest-em

To break this down:

• run is the docker command to run an image. It will search for the container locally, before then searching online with the  docker pull command. Therefore, the pull command does not need to be run separately.
  
• intersystem/iris-community:latest-em is the main parameter of the run command. This is the location of the InterSystems IRIS Community Edition within the docker hub, which is the market place for container images.
  
  • latest-em is a tag for the version being downloaded,  em stands for extended maintenance. You can also specify a version number, e.g.  2025.1 or  latest-cd for the latest version in continuous development.
    
• --name my-iris gives your container the name my-iris, you can change this to anything you want, but it's useful to make it something memorable.
  
• publish maps your local ports to the container ports (local:container). InterSystems IRIS sends binary data on Port 1972 and uses Port 52773 for web-server data. If you have something running locally on ports 52773 or 1972, you can map the container ports to different ports.
  
• -d flag detaches your terminal so you can continue to use it.
  

You can start using InterSystems IRIS through the management portal at http://localhost:52773/csp/sys/%25CSP.Portal.Home.zen

The default username is _SYSTEM and password is SYS; you will be prompted to change this password after logging in.

You can then start an IRIS terminal with:

docker exec -it my-iris iris session iris

or a bash terminal with:

docker exec -it my-iris bash

To download the health-care specific version of our core product, InterSystems IRIS for Health Community edition, the above command changes to:

docker run --name my-iris --publish 52773:52773 --publish 1972:1972 -d intersystems/irishealth-community:latest-em

The usage is identical to what is covered above, but this edition contains healthcare specific libraries, including the ability to set up a FHIR server.

And there you have it, a fully functional local version of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition to start exploring. To set-up your development environment see Setting Up Your Development Environment.