immudb

Don't forget to ⭐ this repo if you like immudb!

Detailed documentation can be found at https://docs.immudb.io/

immudb is a database with built-in cryptographic proof and verification. It tracks changes in sensitive data and the integrity of the history will be protected by the clients, without the need to trust the database. It can operate as a key-value store, as a document model database, and/or as relational database (SQL).

Traditional database transactions and logs are mutable, and therefore there is no way to know for sure if your data has been compromised. immudb is immutable. You can add new versions of existing records, but never change or delete records. This lets you store critical data without fear of it being tampered.

Data stored in immudb is cryptographically coherent and verifiable. Unlike blockchains, immudb can handle millions of transactions per second, and can be used both as a lightweight service or embedded in your application as a library. immudb runs everywhere, on an IoT device, your notebook, a server, on-premise or in the cloud.

When used as a relational data database, it supports both transactions and blobs, so there are no limits to the use cases. Developers and organizations use immudb to secure and tamper-evident log data, sensor data, sensitive data, transactions, software build recipes, rule-base data, artifacts and even video streams. Examples of organizations using immudb today.

immudb

Quickstart

Getting immudb running: executable

You may download the immudb binary from the latest releases on Github. Once you have downloaded immudb, rename it to immudb, make sure to mark it as executable, then run it. The following example shows how to obtain v1.9.5 for linux amd64:

wget https://github.com/codenotary/immudb/releases/download/v1.9.5/immudb-v1.9.5-linux-amd64
mv immudb-v1.9.5-linux-amd64 immudb
chmod +x immudb

# run immudb in the foreground to see all output
./immudb

# or run immudb in the background
./immudb -d

Getting immudb running: Docker

Use Docker to run immudb in a ready-to-use container:

docker run -d --net host -it --rm --name immudb codenotary/immudb:latest

If you are running the Docker image without host networking, make sure to expose ports 3322 and 9497.

Getting immudb running: Kubernetes

In kubernetes, use helm for an easy deployment: just add our repository and install immudb with these simple commands:

helm repo add immudb https://packages.codenotary.org/helm
helm repo update
helm install immudb/immudb --generate-name

Using subfolders

Immudb helm chart creates a persistent volume for storing immudb database. Those database are now by default placed in a subdirectory.

That's for compatibility with ext4 volumes that have a /lost+found directory that can confuse immudb. Some volume providers, like EBS or DigitalOcean, are using this kind of volumes. If we placed database directory on the root of the volume, that /lost+found would be treated as a database. So we now create a subpath (usually immudb) subpath for storing that.

This is different from what we did on older (<=1.3.1) helm charts, so if you have already some volumes with data you can set value volumeSubPath to false (i.e.: --set volumeSubPath.enabled=false) when upgrading so that the old way is used.

You can alternatively migrate the data in a /immudb directory. You can use this pod as a reference for the job:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: migrator
spec:
  volumes:
    - name: "vol0"
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: <your-claim-name-here>
  containers:
    - name: migrator
      image: busybox
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: "/data"
          name: "vol0"
      command:
        - sh
        - -c
        - |
          mkdir -p /data/immudb
          ls /data | grep -v -E 'immudb|lost\+found'|while read i; do mv /data/$i /data/immudb/$i; done

As said before, you can totally disable the use of subPath by setting volumeSubPath.enabled=false. You can also tune the subfolder path using volumeSubPath.path value, if you prefer your data on a different directory than the default immudb.

Enabling Amazon S3 storage

immudb can store its data in the Amazon S3 service (or a compatible alternative). The following example shows how to run immudb with the S3 storage enabled:

export IMMUDB_S3_STORAGE=true
export IMMUDB_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<S3 ACCESS KEY ID>
export IMMUDB_S3_SECRET_KEY=<SECRET KEY>
export IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME=<BUCKET NAME>
export IMMUDB_S3_LOCATION=<AWS S3 REGION>
export IMMUDB_S3_PATH_PREFIX=testing-001
export IMMUDB_S3_ENDPOINT="https://${IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME}.s3.${IMMUDB_S3_LOCATION}.amazonaws.com"

./immudb

When working with the external storage, you can enable the option for the remote storage to be the primary source of identifier. This way, if immudb is run using ephemeral disks, such as with AWS ECS Fargate, the identifier can be taken from S3. To enable that, use:

export IMMUDB_S3_EXTERNAL_IDENTIFIER=true

You can also use the role-based credentials for more flexible and secure configuration. This allows the service to be used with instance role configuration without a user entity. The following example shows how to run immudb with the S3 storage enabled using AWS Roles:

export IMMUDB_S3_STORAGE=true
export IMMUDB_S3_ROLE_ENABLED=true
export IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME=<BUCKET NAME>
export IMMUDB_S3_LOCATION=<AWS S3 REGION>
export IMMUDB_S3_PATH_PREFIX=testing-001
export IMMUDB_S3_ENDPOINT="https://${IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME}.s3.${IMMUDB_S3_LOCATION}.amazonaws.com"

./immudb

Optionally, you can specify the exact role immudb should be using with:

export IMMUDB_S3_ROLE=<AWS S3 ACCESS ROLE NAME>

Remember, the IMMUDB_S3_ROLE_ENABLED parameter still should be on.

You can also easily use immudb with compatible s3 alternatives such as the minio server:

export IMMUDB_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID=minioadmin
export IMMUDB_S3_SECRET_KEY=minioadmin
export IMMUDB_S3_STORAGE=true
export IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME=immudb-bucket
export IMMUDB_S3_PATH_PREFIX=testing-001
export IMMUDB_S3_ENDPOINT="http://localhost:9000"

# Note: This spawns a temporary minio server without data persistence
docker run -d -p 9000:9000 minio/minio server /data

# Create the bucket - this can also be done through web console at http://localhost:9000
docker run --net=host -it --entrypoint /bin/sh minio/mc -c "
  mc alias set local http://localhost:9000 minioadmin minioadmin &&
  mc mb local/${IMMUDB_S3_BUCKET_NAME}
"

# Run immudb instance
./immudb

Connecting with immuclient

You may download the immuclient binary from the latest releases on Github. Once you have downloaded immuclient, rename it to immuclient, make sure to mark it as executable, then run it. The following example shows how to obtain v1.5.0 for linux amd64:

wget https://github.com/codenotary/immudb/releases/download/v1.5.0/immuclient-v1.5.0-linux-amd64
mv immuclient-v1.5.0-linux-amd64 immuclient
chmod +x immuclient

# start the interactive shell
./immuclient

# or use commands directly
./immuclient help

Or just use Docker to run immuclient in a ready-to-use container. Nice and simple.

docker run -it --rm --net host --name immuclient codenotary/immuclient:latest

Using immudb

Lot of useful documentation and step by step guides can be found at https://docs.immudb.io/

Real world examples

We already learned about the following use cases from users:

use immudb to immutably store every update to sensitive database fields (credit card or bank account data) of an existing application database
store CI/CD recipes in immudb to protect build and deployment pipelines
store public certificates in immudb
use immudb as an additional hash storage for digital objects checksums
store log streams (i. e. audit logs) tamperproof
store the last known positions of submarines
record the location where fish was found aboard fishing trawlers

How to integrate immudb in your application

We have SDKs available for the following programming languages:

Java immudb4j
Golang (golang sdk, Gorm adapter)
.net immudb4net
Python immudb-py
Node.js immudb-node

To get started with development, there is a quickstart in our documentation: or pick a basic running sample from immudb-client-examples.

Our immudb Playground provides a guided environment to learn the Python SDK.

We've developed a "language-agnostic SDK" which exposes a REST API for easy consumption by any application. immugw may be a convenient tool when SDKs are not available for the programming language you're using, for experimentation, or just because you prefer your app only uses REST endpoints.

Online demo environment

Click here to try out the immudb web console access in an online demo environment (username: immudb; password: immudb)

Tech specs

Topic	Description
DB Model	Key-Value with 3D access, Document Model, SQL
Data scheme	schema-free
Implementation design	Cryptographic commit log with parallel Merkle Tree,
	(sync/async) indexing with extended B-tree
Implementation language	Go
Server OS(s)	BSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris, Windows, IBM z/OS
Embeddable	Yes, optionally
Server APIs	gRPC
Partition methods	Sharding
Consistency concepts	Immediate Consistency
Transaction concepts	ACID with Snapshot Isolation (SSI)
Durability	Yes
Snapshots	Yes
High Read throughput	Yes
High Write throughput	Yes
Optimized for SSD	Yes

Performance figures

immudb can handle millions of writes per second. The following table shows performance of the embedded store inserting 1M entries on a machine with 4-core E3-1275v6 CPU and SSD disk:

Entries	Workers	Batch	Batches	time (s)	Entries/s
1M	20	1000	50	1.061	1.2M /s
1M	50	1000	20	0.543	1.8M /s
1M	100	1000	10	0.615	1.6M /s

You can generate your own benchmarks using the stress_tool under embedded/tools.

Roadmap

The following topics are important to us and are planned or already being worked on:

Data pruning
Compression
compatibility with other database storage files
Easier API for developers
API compatibility with other, well-known embedded databases

Projects using immudb

Below is a list of known projects that use immudb:

alma-sbom - AlmaLinux OS SBOM data management utility.
immudb-log-audit - A service and cli tool to store json formatted log input and audit it later in immudb Vault.
immudb-operator - Unagex Kubernetes Operator for immudb.
immufluent - Send fluentbit collected logs to immudb.
immuvoting - Publicly cryptographically verifiable electronic voting system powered by immudb.

Are you using immudb in your project? Open a pull request to add it to the list.

Contributing

We welcome contributors. Feel free to join the team!

Learn how to build immudb components in both binary and Docker image form.

To report bugs or get help, use GitHub's issues.

immudb is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1.

immudb re-distributes other open-source tools and libraries - Acknowledgements.

codenotary/immudb