Meilisearch: Local vs Cloud

Geomilli is designed to run seamlessly against a self-hosted local Meilisearch container or a fully managed Meilisearch Cloud cluster with zero application code changes.

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Architecture Comparison

Feature	Local Docker Meilisearch	Meilisearch Cloud
Hosting Model	Container on host machine (getmeili/meilisearch:v1.13)	Managed multi-tenant or dedicated cluster
Default Host	http://127.0.0.1:7700 or http://meilisearch:7700	https://ms-xxxx.region.meilisearch.io
API Key	Configurable (masterKey123 in .env.example)	Cloud Dashboard API Key
Storage	Local Docker volume (meili_data)	Cloud SSD / High-IOPS managed storage
High Availability	Single node	Auto-failover & regional replicas
SSL / TLS	Self-managed reverse proxy (e.g. Caddy/Nginx)	Automatic HTTPS & TLS 1.3

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1. Local Meilisearch (Default)

In standard local mode, Docker Compose boots Meilisearch alongside geomilli-api, geomilli-harvester, and geomilli-studio:

docker compose up -d

Environment Settings (.env):

MEILI_HOST=http://meilisearch:7700
MEILI_API_KEY=masterKey123

Within the Docker network, services communicate over http://meilisearch:7700. From your host workstation, Meilisearch is reachable at http://localhost:7700.

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2. Meilisearch Cloud Deployment

When deploying to production with Meilisearch Cloud:

1. Create a project at cloud.meilisearch.com.
2. Note your URL (e.g., https://ms-981273abc.sfo.meilisearch.io) and Default Admin API Key.
3. Update your .env file:

   MEILI_HOST=https://ms-981273abc.sfo.meilisearch.io
   MEILI_API_KEY=meili_cloud_admin_key_xxxxxxxxxxxxx

4. Start the stack using the cloud compose override:

   docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.cloud.yml up -d

What docker-compose.cloud.yml Does:

• Disables the local meilisearch container: Frees up local CPU, RAM, and port 7700.
• Reconfigures geomilli-api and geomilli-harvester: Connects directly to the external Meilisearch Cloud endpoint over secure HTTPS.
• Adjusts health dependencies: Allows the API and harvester to boot immediately without waiting for a local container health check.

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3. Quota & Indexing Considerations for Cloud

When indexing large regions into Meilisearch Cloud:

• Ensure your cloud plan has sufficient document quota (Belgium produces ~180k places; Europe produces ~30M places; Planet produces ~120M places).
• The shadow index atomic swap (swapIndexes) operates identically on Cloud and Local, ensuring zero-downtime upgrades.