VBase CLI Guide

The dodil vbase command group manages VBase from the terminal. It mirrors the two planes of VBase:

Control-plane tier — dodil vbase db … allocates a serverless database, lists databases, switches your active context, and tears down. These talk to the VBase control-plane API through the Dodil gateway.
Milvus-direct tier — dodil vbase collection|data|index|status operate on Milvus through your allocated database, by connecting directly to the endpoint that db use resolved. These are thin wrappers over the standard Milvus operations described in Connecting with the Milvus SDK.

The bridge between the two tiers is dodil vbase db use: it fetches your database’s access details and writes the endpoint, port, and database name into your CLI config, so the Milvus-direct commands know where to connect.

Install and authenticate

Install the dodil CLI — see https://docs.dodil.io/cli . Authenticate with dodil login so that a bearer token and your organization are written to your CLI config; every vbase command reuses that.

VBase-specific notes:

The VBase commands read and write the shared CLI config at ~/.config/unified-cli/config.yaml — token and org under the global scope, and VBase connection context under the vbase scope.
The control-plane gateway defaults to https://api.dev.dodil.io (staging) if not otherwise configured.

Command map

Command	Tier	What it does
`dodil vbase db create <name>`	Control plane	Allocate a serverless database.
`dodil vbase db list`	Control plane	List your databases.
`dodil vbase db use <service_id>`	Control plane	Resolve access and write endpoint + db to config.
`dodil vbase db drop <service_id>`	Control plane	Delete a database.
`dodil vbase db test-grpc`	Control plane	Diagnostic: dial the gateway over gRPC and list databases.
`dodil vbase collection …`	Milvus-direct	Create / list / drop / load / release / show collections.
`dodil vbase index …`	Milvus-direct	Create / drop an index on a field.
`dodil vbase data …`	Milvus-direct	Insert and search vectors.
`dodil vbase status`	Milvus-direct	Health-check the active database (Milvus).
`dodil vbase version`	Milvus-direct	Print CLI version and the remote Milvus version.

Typical session


# 1. Allocate (async — the database starts in CREATING)
dodil vbase db create product-search
 
# 2. Find its service_id and confirm it's RUNNING
dodil vbase db list
 
# 3. Point the CLI at it (writes endpoint + db_name to config)
dodil vbase db use svc-7f3a9c2e
 
# 4. Now Milvus-direct commands work against that database
dodil vbase collection create products --dim 768 --id-type varchar
dodil vbase index create products vector --type HNSW --metric COSINE
dodil vbase data insert products --id doc-1 --vector "0.1,0.2,..."
dodil vbase data search products --vector "0.1,0.2,..." --topk 5

For richer data-plane work (batch insert, filtered search, hybrid search), use the Milvus SDK directly against the same endpoint — the CLI’s collection/data/index commands cover the common cases, not the full Milvus surface.

Output format

Every command takes -o table (default) or -o json. Use -o json for scripting.


dodil vbase db list -o json

Sections

Databases — the db control-plane commands and the use-writes-config model.
Collections, Data & Index — the Milvus-direct commands, including index types and metrics.
Gaps & Troubleshooting — what the CLI does not cover, and how to fix common errors.