Embedded in ClickHouse

Using ClickStack embedded in ClickHouse Server - The ClickHouse Observability Stack

ClickStack is bundled directly into the ClickHouse server binary. This means you can access the ClickStack UI (HyperDX) from your ClickHouse instance without deploying any additional components. This deployment is similar to the public demo at play-clickstack.clickhouse.com, but running against your own ClickHouse instance and data.

Suitable for

• Trying ClickStack with minimal setup
• Exploring your own ClickHouse data with an observability UI
• Demos and evaluations

Limitations

This embedded version is not designed for production use. The following features are not available compared to the production-ready OSS deployments:

• Alerting
• Dashboard and search persistence — dashboards and saved searches are not retained across sessions
• Customizable query settings
• Event patterns

Deployment steps

Docker

1. Start ClickHouse

   Pull and run the ClickHouse server image with a password set:

   docker run --rm -it -p 8123:8123 -e CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD=password clickhouse/clickhouse-server:head-alpine
   

   Running without a password

   If you prefer to run without a password, you must explicitly enable default access management:

   docker run --rm -it -p 8123:8123 -e CLICKHOUSE_DEFAULT_ACCESS_MANAGEMENT=1 clickhouse/clickhouse-server:head-alpine
   
2. Open the ClickStack UI

   Open http://localhost:8123 in your browser and click ClickStack.

   Enter the username default and the password password to connect to the local instance.

3. Create a source

   If you have existing OpenTelemetry tables, ClickStack will detect them and create sources automatically.

   On a fresh installation, you will be prompted to create a source. Complete the Table field with the appropriate table name (e.g. otel_logs) and click Save New Source.

   If you don’t have data yet, see Ingesting data for available options.

Binary

1. Start ClickHouse

   Download and start ClickHouse:

   curl https://clickhouse.com/ | sh
   

   Optional: Enable system log tables

   To explore ClickHouse’s own internal logs and metrics, create a configuration snippet in your working directory before starting the server:

   mkdir -p config.d && cat > config.d/query_logs.xml << 'EOF'
   <clickhouse>
       <query_log>
           <database>system</database>
           <table>query_log</table>
       </query_log>
       <query_thread_log>
           <database>system</database>
           <table>query_thread_log</table>
       </query_thread_log>
       <query_views_log>
           <database>system</database>
           <table>query_views_log</table>
       </query_views_log>
       <metric_log>
           <database>system</database>
           <table>metric_log</table>
       </metric_log>
       <asynchronous_metric_log>
           <database>system</database>
           <table>asynchronous_metric_log</table>
       </asynchronous_metric_log>
   </clickhouse>
   EOF
   

   With this enabled, you can create a Log Source pointing to system.query_log after opening ClickStack:

   Setting	Value
   Name	Query Logs
   Database	system
   Table	query_log
   Timestamp Column	event_time
   Default Select	event_time, query_kind, query, databases, tables, initial_user, projections, memory_usage, written_rows, read_rows, query_duration_ms

   Start the server:

   ./clickhouse server
   
2. Open the ClickStack UI

   Open http://localhost:8123 in your browser and click ClickStack. A connection to the local instance is created automatically.

3. Create a source

   If you have existing OpenTelemetry tables, ClickStack will detect them and create sources automatically.

   If you don’t have data yet, see Ingesting data for available options.

Next steps

If you’re ready to move beyond evaluation, consider a production-ready deployment:

• All-in-One — single container with all components, including persistence and authentication
• Docker Compose — individual components for more control
• Helm — recommended for production Kubernetes deployments
• Managed ClickStack — fully managed on ClickHouse Cloud