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The recommended path for moving existing vector search workloads to LambdaDB is the LambdaDB Migration CLI. The CLI inventories the source system, generates an editable LambdaDB mapping, creates the target collection when needed, streams records into LambdaDB, saves local checkpoints, and can validate migrated documents before cutover.

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Supported sources

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Migration workflow

  1. Install the CLI.
  2. Generate an inventory and editable mapping from the source.
  3. Review the generated LambdaDB collection and field mapping.
  4. Run a dry run.
  5. Run the migration with validation enabled.
  6. Review the validation report and representative search results.
  7. Switch production traffic after result quality, latency, and application query rewrites are verified.

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Install the CLI

Install the latest release:
Install a specific version:
Make sure the install directory is on your PATH, then check the CLI:

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Common CLI behavior

LambdaDB Cloud uses region-specific API base URLs. Use the base URL, project name, and project API key shown for your project in the LambdaDB Cloud console. Do not assume a global default URL or a fixed project name.
Set these values before running migration commands:
Generated mappings set target.createCollection: true by default. With that setting, the migration creates the LambdaDB collection if it does not already exist, then waits until the collection is ready before writing documents. Use --migration.create-collection=false when the LambdaDB collection already exists and the migration should fail instead of creating it. The CLI stores local checkpoints under .lambdadb-migration/checkpoints by default. If a migration is interrupted, rerun the same command to resume from the last saved checkpoint. Use --migration.restart to start from the beginning.

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Validation

Use --migration.validate for post-migration checks. Validation compares the accepted record count against the source inventory, fetches a sample of migrated documents from LambdaDB with strongly consistent reads, and compares sampled fields. Use --migration.validation-report to write a JSON report:
For Qdrant and Pinecone vector migrations, --migration.query-overlap compares source and LambdaDB nearest-neighbor results for validation samples. By default, it reports overlap without failing the migration. Set --migration.query-overlap-min-ratio above 0 to require a minimum average overlap. Query-overlap validation is not implemented for Elasticsearch yet.

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Next steps

Migrate from Qdrant

Move Qdrant collections, points, vectors, sparse vectors, and payload indexes to LambdaDB.

Migrate from Pinecone

Move Pinecone Serverless indexes, namespaces, vectors, and metadata to LambdaDB.

Migrate from Elasticsearch

Move Elasticsearch index mappings, documents, and dense vectors to LambdaDB.

Create a collection

Learn how LambdaDB collection index configurations map to migrated data.

Bulk upsert data

Understand LambdaDB bulk loading behavior for unmanaged-vector collections.

Hybrid query

Rewrite dense, sparse, and lexical hybrid search after migration.