Use the Milvus connection to store and confirm the accuracy of your credentials and connection details to access a Milvus vector store.
Milvus is a vector database that is built for scalable similarity search. You can use the Milvus connection to connect to the Milvus service inside IBM watsonx.data. Alternatively, you can connect to a stand-alone Milvus instance that you provision yourself.
Supported versions for stand-alone Milvus
If you provision your own instance of Milvus, the supported versions are v2.0.0-PreGA and later.
Prerequisite to connect to a Milvus instance in watsonx.data
Use the watsonx.data console to provision a Milvus instance in watsonx.data:
- watsonx.data on IBM Cloud: Adding Milvus service.
- watsonx.data on Cloud Pak for Data (on-prem). Follow the same steps as for watsonx.data stand-alone: Adding a Milvus service.
- watsonx.data stand-alone: Adding a Milvus service.
Prerequisite to connect to a stand-alone Milvus instance
Install and set up Milvus:
- Installation for stand-alone Milvus or Milvus cluster
- Milvus Quickstart
Create a connection to Milvus
To create the connection asset, you need these connection details:
- Hostname: Hostname of the Milvus service
- Port: Port number of the Milvus service
- Database (optional): Database name
- Username and Password: The username and associated password to access the for Milvus service. If you are connecting to the Milvus service in watsonx.data, use the username and password that you use to access the watsonx.data instance.
- SSL certificate: The SSL certificate of the host to be trusted. The certificate is needed only when the host certificate is not signed by a known certificate authority.
Choose the method for creating a connection based on where you are in the platform
- In a project
- Click Assets > New asset > Connect to a data source. See Adding a connection to a project.
- In a deployment space
- Click Import assets > Data access > Connection. See Adding data assets to a deployment space.
- In the Platform assets catalog
- Click New connection. See Adding platform connections.
Catalogs
- Platform assets catalog
Test the connection
After you enter the connection details, credentials, and optional SSL certificate, click Test connection to confirm that you can connect to the Milvus instance.
Where you can use this connection
You can use Milvus connections in the following tools:
Prompt Lab
Connect to a Milvus data store from the IBM watsonx.ai Prompt Lab to access information from documents that you want to include in foundation model prompts. Adding accurate contextual information in the foundation model input helps the model to generate factual output. For information, see Adding grounding documents for generative AI models.
Restriction
The Milvus connection is a testing mechanism to store and confirm the accuracy of your credentials and connection details to access the Milvus instance. Because Milvus is a vector store, you cannot browse data from the connection or read data from it.
Learn more
Related connection: IBM watsonx.data Presto connection
Parent topic: Supported connections