Overview
Chroma running on the AMI
Chroma 1.5 running as a systemd service behind nginx: heartbeat open, data API gated by a per-instance password (HTTP Basic Auth), secure by default.
This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.
Overview
Chroma is the popular open source vector database for AI applications. It stores embeddings with their metadata and runs fast similarity search, making it a simple, developer-friendly backend for retrieval augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, and recommendation systems. This AMI delivers the Chroma server fully installed and configured as a system service, so a production-ready vector database is running within minutes of launch. The current release available is Chroma 1.5.
Why This AMI Over DIY or Unsupported Images
Deploying Chroma manually on EC2 means configuring Python environments, setting up reverse proxies, hardening authentication, separating storage volumes, and writing systemd units - work that can take hours and introduces security risk if done incorrectly. Many community images ship with shared default credentials or no authentication at all. This AMI eliminates that effort and risk: you get a hardened, production-grade deployment with unique-per-instance credentials, a dedicated data volume, and automatic service recovery - all backed by 24/7 expert support from cloudimg.
Application Stack
Chroma is installed into a dedicated Python virtual environment under /opt/chroma and run by an unprivileged service account on Python 3.12. It listens on the loopback address and an nginx reverse proxy fronts it on port 80. A systemd service starts the server on boot and restarts it on failure.
Secure By Default
Access is gated by HTTP Basic Authentication at the nginx reverse proxy. This image generates a fresh password, unique to your instance, on its first boot and writes it to a root-only file. The public heartbeat endpoint stays open for load balancers; everything else requires the password. The Chroma client authenticates with its built-in basic auth provider. No shared or default credentials ship in the image.
Ready To Use
Connect with the Chroma client, create a collection, and add documents with your own embeddings. Your data lives on a dedicated, independently resizable storage volume kept separate from the operating system disk. The image ships no embedding model and is CPU only.
AWS Integrations
- Amazon S3 - Back up your Chroma data volume to S3 for durable, cost-effective storage and disaster recovery.
- Amazon CloudWatch - Monitor instance health, nginx access logs, and Chroma service status using CloudWatch agent and alarms.
- Amazon Bedrock - Generate embeddings with Bedrock foundation models (e.g., Titan Embeddings) and store them directly in Chroma for RAG workflows.
- LangChain and LlamaIndex - Use Chroma as the vector store in popular orchestration frameworks to build end-to-end RAG pipelines.
Use Cases
- E-commerce product discovery - Ingest millions of product description embeddings and serve real-time semantic search to surface relevant items beyond keyword matching.
- IT support knowledge base - Ingest support tickets and documentation nightly, then query at request time to surface the most relevant knowledge-base articles for agents or chatbots.
- Healthcare research - Store embeddings of clinical literature and retrieve contextually similar papers for retrieval augmented generation, keeping sensitive data within your own VPC for compliance.
- RAG pipelines - Prototyping and production retrieval augmented generation backends for any LLM-powered application.
- Data residency - A self-hosted, in-your-own-VPC vector database for teams with compliance or data residency requirements.
cloudimg Support
24/7 technical support by email and live chat. Our engineers help with Chroma deployment, collection design, embedding functions, backups, TLS termination, scaling, and AWS integration configuration.
All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
Highlights
- Unlike unsupported community images or manual EC2 installs that require hours of configuration and may ship with shared default credentials, this AMI delivers Chroma 1.5 as a production-ready systemd service behind an nginx reverse proxy on port 80 - fully configured and running within minutes of launch with no manual setup required. Your data resides on a dedicated, independently resizable storage volume separate from the OS disk.
- Secure by default with no shared or default credentials: every instance generates a unique HTTP Basic Authentication password on first boot, stored in a root-only file. The Chroma client authenticates using its built-in basic auth provider. The heartbeat endpoint remains open for load balancer health checks while all other endpoints require authentication - eliminating the security gaps common in unmanaged deployments.
- 24/7 technical support from cloudimg engineers by email and live chat, with one-hour average response for critical issues. Expert help covers Chroma collection design, embedding functions, backup strategies, TLS termination, scaling, and integration with AWS services like S3, CloudWatch, and Amazon Bedrock - support you cannot get from free community images.
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Dimension | Description | Cost/hour |
|---|---|---|
m5.large Recommended | m5.large | $0.08 |
t2.micro | t2.micro instance type | $0.04 |
t3.micro | t3.micro instance type | $0.04 |
m8id.96xlarge | m8id.96xlarge instance type | $0.24 |
m7i.4xlarge | m7i.4xlarge instance type | $0.24 |
trn1.2xlarge | trn1.2xlarge instance type | $0.24 |
r8a.8xlarge | r8a.8xlarge instance type | $0.24 |
i7i.large | i7i.large instance type | $0.08 |
r7i.metal-48xl | r7i.metal-48xl instance type | $0.24 |
g5.16xlarge | g5.16xlarge instance type | $0.24 |
Vendor refund policy
Refunds available on request.
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Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Version release notes
Initial release of the Chroma 1.5 open source vector database.
Additional details
Usage instructions
Connect via SSH on port 22 as the default login user for your operating system variant (the user guide lists it per variant; on Ubuntu it is 'ubuntu'). Chroma is served by nginx on port 80. Retrieve the generated password with: sudo cat /root/chroma-credentials.txt. The heartbeat is open at http://<instance-public-ip>/api/v2/heartbeat; everything else is gated by HTTP Basic Authentication (user 'admin' + the password). Point the Chroma client at http://<instance-public-ip>/ port 80 using its built in basic auth provider (chroma_client_auth_provider chromadb.auth.basic_authn.BasicAuthClientProvider, credentials admin:<password>). The server runs on loopback port 8000 and is managed with systemctl (chroma.service, nginx.service). Data is stored under /var/lib/chroma. The user guide covers creating collections, adding embeddings, backups and enabling HTTPS.
Resources
Vendor resources
Support
Vendor support
cloudimg provides 24/7 technical support for this product by email and live chat. Our engineers help with deployment, configuration, updates, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and AWS integration guidance. Critical issues receive a one-hour average response time.
Support Scope Includes:
- Chroma server deployment and configuration
- Collection design and embedding function guidance
- Backup and restore procedures
- TLS termination setup
- Scaling and performance optimization
- Security hardening and credential management
- Integration with AWS services (S3, CloudWatch, Bedrock)
Getting Started After Launch:
- Launch the AMI on your chosen EC2 instance with port 80 open in your security group.
- SSH into the instance and retrieve your unique authentication password from the root-only file at /opt/chroma.
- Configure your Chroma client with the instance public IP, port 80, and the basic auth credentials.
- Verify the service is running by hitting the heartbeat endpoint.
- Create your first collection and begin adding embeddings.
The Chroma service starts automatically on boot via systemd and restarts on failure. Your data is stored on a dedicated EBS volume separate from the OS disk.
For support requests, troubleshooting, or refund inquiries, contact support@cloudimg.co.uk .
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.