Installation & First Boot

This page takes you from “I have a Zenvara service” to “I’ve confirmed it’s healthy.” The full operations guide for production targets lives under Deployment.

Before you start

Many teams receive Zenvara pre-installed by an administrator as a Windows service or a Linux daemon. If that is you, the binary is already running on its host — usually localhost:5000 on the same machine, or a server name behind your VPN — and you can jump straight to First boot.

If you need to install Zenvara yourself, the supported targets are Windows Service, Linux + systemd, IIS, Docker, Kubernetes, and a from-source build for development. The platform is a single self-contained binary plus a data/ directory — roughly 200 MB on disk plus whatever data/ grows into, no JVM, no Python interpreter, no cluster required.

Install Zenvara

You can install Zenvara on your machine using the following methods, depending on the operating system you use and how you plan to run it day-to-day.

Method 1: GitHub Releases

Download the latest version of the Zenvara executable from Zenvara’s official GitHub Release Page. Every asset ships a .sha256 file — verify it before installing.

Linux — download zenvara-linux-x64.tar.gz (or -arm64):

mkdir -p ~/zenvara
tar xzf zenvara-linux-x64.tar.gz -C ~/zenvara
~/zenvara/Zenvara.App

Windows — download zenvara-win-x64.zip:

Expand-Archive zenvara-win-x64.zip -DestinationPath C:\Zenvara
C:\Zenvara\Zenvara.App.exe

macOS — download zenvara-osx-arm64.tar.gz (Apple Silicon) or zenvara-osx-x64.tar.gz (Intel):

mkdir -p ~/zenvara
tar xzf zenvara-osx-arm64.tar.gz -C ~/zenvara
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/zenvara   # clear Gatekeeper quarantine
~/zenvara/Zenvara.App

This runs the binary directly, unmanaged. For a Windows Service, Linux daemon, or IIS site instead, see Deployment Targets.

Method 2: Docker

docker run -d --name zenvara -p 5000:5000 -v zenvara-data:/data zenvara/server:latest

The container persists /data (storage, cache, logs, backups) on a named volume and exposes a HEALTHCHECK against /health. For a from-source image build or a Kubernetes StatefulSet, see Deployment Targets.

Method 3: Using Zen CLI

The zen CLI manages the full lifecycle of a Zenvara install — fetching the binary, registering it as a service, and upgrading or rolling it back later. Install zen itself first, then use it to fetch the server.

Linux

Quick install (recommended) — detects arch, verifies checksum, installs to ~/.local/bin:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zenvara-platform/cli/main/install.sh | sh

Pin a version with ZEN_VERSION=1.2.0 or change the install target with ZEN_INSTALL_DIR.

apt (Debian / Ubuntu):

curl -fsSL https://zenvara-platform.github.io/apt/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/zenvara.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/zenvara.gpg] https://zenvara-platform.github.io/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zenvara.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install zen

Homebrew:

brew install zenvara-platform/tap/zen

Manual — download zen-linux-x64.tar.gz (or -arm64) and its .sha256:

sha256sum -c zen-linux-x64.tar.gz.sha256
tar xzf zen-linux-x64.tar.gz
chmod +x zen
./zen path install            # add zen to your PATH (~/.local/bin)

Windows

Scoop (recommended) — shims zen onto your PATH, no separate zen path install needed:

scoop bucket add zenvara https://github.com/zenvara-platform/cli
scoop install zen

Manual — download zen-win-x64.zip, then verify against the .sha256:

Get-FileHash zen-win-x64.zip -Algorithm SHA256
Expand-Archive zen-win-x64.zip -DestinationPath C:\zen
C:\zen\zen.exe path install   # copies zen and adds it to your user Path

macOS

Homebrew (recommended):

brew install zenvara-platform/tap/zen

Quick install — detects Apple Silicon vs Intel, verifies checksum, clears Gatekeeper quarantine:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zenvara-platform/cli/main/install.sh | sh

Manual — download zen-osx-arm64.tar.gz (Apple Silicon) or zen-osx-x64.tar.gz (Intel):

tar xzf zen-osx-arm64.tar.gz
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine zen   # clear Gatekeeper quarantine
chmod +x zen
./zen path install

Confirm with zen --version. Use zen path status to check the install location and zen cli update to keep it current.

Once zen is installed, fetch the server binary:

zen app fetch --dir /opt/zenvara

With no --url, zen app fetch derives the GitHub-Release download URL for your platform (latest by default; pin one with --version 3.0.0) and verifies it against the release’s signed SHA256SUMS.jws before installing. --url still works for a corporate mirror or an air-gapped network:

zen app fetch --url https://mirror.example.com/zenvara-linux-x64.tar.gz --dir /opt/zenvara

zen app fetch only unpacks the binary — pair it with zen service install (or zen iis install) to register it as a managed service. See Deployment Targets and the CLI reference for the full command surface.

Run from source (development)

Zenvara is a proprietary product — most installations run from a delivered binary artifact (see Deployment Targets). If your team has been granted source access, you can run it directly for development and short-lived demos. From the root of the source tree:

dotnet run --project Zenvara/Zenvara.fsproj

This starts the Web API on http://localhost:5000 with Swagger at /swagger. Build prerequisites bootstrap automatically on first build. This is not a production target; for production see Deployment Targets.

First boot — verifying the install

Whichever path you took, point a browser or curl at these two endpoints:

• http://localhost:5000/swagger — interactive REST surface, useful for poking at endpoints during development.
• http://localhost:5000/api/v1/platform/diagnostics — machine-readable readiness probe. A healthy install returns 200 with a JSON body listing the environment count, connector count, and version banner.
• http://localhost:5000/health — liveness probe (used by Docker HEALTHCHECK and Kubernetes liveness).

curl -s http://localhost:5000/api/v1/platform/diagnostics | head

If diagnostics returns 503 or the connection refuses, see Troubleshooting.

Studio UI

Zenvara ships a web-based IDE — Studio — served by the backend at /studio/. It gives you flow editing, a data viewer, run logs, and the entity browser without leaving the browser. A desktop wrapper (Electron) and the ZenvaraStudio.exe / scripts/zenvara-start.{cmd,sh} launchers provide a one-click “start the backend and open the IDE” experience for non-developers.

Next step

You have a healthy install. Write and run your first flow →