ThingsBoard Edge cluster setup with Docker Compose

ThingsBoard Edge clustering connects multiple Edge nodes to a shared database and syncs aggregated data to ThingsBoard Server or Cloud. It is designed for large-scale deployments — factories, smart cities, or any site with thousands of devices in one region.

Edge cluster architecture: three Edge nodes sharing a database and syncing to ThingsBoard Cloud

Key properties of an Edge cluster:

All Edge nodes connect to the same database.
Devices connect to any node based on load balancing.
Edge nodes share workload and maintain local failover.
The cluster syncs aggregated data to ThingsBoard Server or Cloud.

For details about microservices architecture, see the microservices architecture page.

Prerequisites

ThingsBoard Edge microservices run in a Dockerized environment. Install Docker CE and Docker Compose before continuing.

You also need an active ThingsBoard Community Edition account with an Edge instance created on the server.

You can use a self-hosted ThingsBoard CE server.

Hardware requirements

Workload	RAM per node	Description
Light	2 GB	Fewer than 1,000 devices per node
Heavy	4 GB+	1,000+ devices or high data ingestion rates

Step 1. Pull the ThingsBoard Edge image

docker pull thingsboard/tb-edge:4.3.1.1

Step 2. Clone the Docker Compose scripts

git clone -b release-4.3 https://github.com/thingsboard/thingsboard-edge.git --depth 1
cd thingsboard-edge/docker-edge

Step 3. Configure database and queue

Open the .env file:

nano .env

Set at minimum the following variables:

Variable	Description
`DATABASE`	postgres — PostgreSQL only. hybrid — PostgreSQL for entities, Cassandra for time-series data.
`TB_QUEUE_TYPE`	Use `kafka`. The In Memory queue does not support cluster deployments.
`CLOUD_ROUTING_KEY`	Your Edge key
`CLOUD_ROUTING_SECRET`	Your Edge secret
`CLOUD_RPC_HOST`	Hostname or IP address of the ThingsBoard CE server.
`CACHE`	redis — Redis standalone (one node, one master). redis-cluster — Redis cluster (six nodes, three masters, three replicas). redis-sentinel — Redis Sentinel (three nodes, one master, one replica, one sentinel).
`MONITORING_ENABLED`	Set to `true` to deploy Prometheus and Grafana alongside the cluster containers.
`JAVA_OPTS`	JVM memory settings. Adjust `-Xmx` and `-Xms` based on available RAM.

Full .env file reference:

# Cache type: redis | redis-cluster | redis-sentinel
CACHE=redis

DOCKER_REPO=thingsboard
TB_EDGE_NODE_DOCKER_NAME=tb-edge-node
TB_EDGE_VERSION=latest

# Database: postgres (PostgreSQL) or hybrid (PostgreSQL + Cassandra for time-series)
DATABASE=postgres
TB_QUEUE_TYPE=kafka

CLOUD_ROUTING_KEY=PUT_YOUR_EDGE_KEY_HERE
CLOUD_ROUTING_SECRET=PUT_YOUR_EDGE_SECRET_HERE
CLOUD_RPC_HOST=PUT_YOUR_THINGSBOARD_SERVER_DOMAIN_OR_IP_HERE
CLOUD_RPC_PORT=7070

LOAD_BALANCER_NAME=haproxy-certbot

# Set to true to deploy Prometheus and Grafana containers
MONITORING_ENABLED=false

# JVM memory limits
JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx2048M -Xms2048M -Xss384k -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch"

Step 4. Create host volumes

Create the log folders and set correct ownership:

./docker-create-log-folders.sh

Verify that all required volume folders exist with correct ownership:

./docker-check-log-folders.sh

If you use Docker Desktop on macOS with Synchronized file sharing (enabled by default for /Users subdirectories), pass the --skipChown flag — ownership is managed automatically by the virtualization engine:

./docker-create-log-folders.sh --skipChown
./docker-check-log-folders.sh --skipChown

Step 5. Install and start ThingsBoard Edge

Run the installation script:

./docker-install-tb.sh

Start all services:

./docker-start-services.sh

To view Edge node logs:

docker compose logs -f tb-edge1 tb-edge2 tb-edge3

To check the status of all containers:

docker compose ps

To view logs for all running services:

docker compose logs -f

Stop and remove containers

To stop all services:

./docker-stop-services.sh

To stop and remove all deployed containers:

./docker-remove-services.sh

Upgrading

To update one or more services (pulls a newer Docker image and rebuilds the container):

./docker-update-service.sh [SERVICE...]

Omit [SERVICE...] to update all services.

To upgrade the database:

./docker-stop-services.sh
./docker-upgrade-tb.sh
./docker-start-services.sh

HTTPS with a valid certificate

ThingsBoard Edge uses HAproxy for traffic proxying, with ports 80 and 443 for the web UI. To obtain a valid TLS certificate via Certbot:

docker exec haproxy-certbot certbot-certonly --domain your_domain --email your_email
docker exec haproxy-certbot haproxy-refresh

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