Vector Database Operations

Run production vector databases for AI-powered search, RAG, and recommendation systems.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Setting up a vector database for a RAG or semantic search application
• Choosing between Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector, or Pinecone
• Managing collections, indexes, and data migrations
• Optimizing query performance and indexing for production loads
• Implementing multi-tenant vector search with namespace isolation

Vector Database Comparison

Database	Best For	Hosting	Filtering	Scale
Qdrant	High-performance, rich filtering, self-hosted	Self / Cloud	Excellent	Very High
Weaviate	Schema-first, hybrid search, multi-modal	Self / Cloud	Good	High
pgvector	Already on Postgres, simple use cases	Self	Good	Medium
Pinecone	Zero-ops managed, serverless	Managed only	Good	Very High
Chroma	Local dev, prototyping	Self only	Basic	Low-Medium

Qdrant — Production Deployment

# Docker (single node)
docker run -d \
  --name qdrant \
  -p 6333:6333 \
  -p 6334:6334 \
  -v $(pwd)/qdrant-data:/qdrant/storage \
  qdrant/qdrant:latest

# With custom config
docker run -d \
  --name qdrant \
  -p 6333:6333 \
  -v $(pwd)/qdrant-data:/qdrant/storage \
  -v $(pwd)/qdrant-config.yaml:/qdrant/config/production.yaml \
  qdrant/qdrant:latest

# qdrant-config.yaml
storage:
  storage_path: /qdrant/storage
  on_disk_payload: true          # store payload on disk (saves RAM)

service:
  max_request_size_mb: 32

hnsw_index:
  m: 16                          # graph connections per node
  ef_construct: 100              # accuracy vs build time trade-off
  full_scan_threshold: 10000     # switch to brute force below this

quantization:
  scalar:
    type: int8
    quantile: 0.99
    always_ram: true             # keep quantized index in RAM

telemetry_disabled: true

Qdrant Collection Management

from qdrant_client import QdrantClient
from qdrant_client.models import (
    Distance, VectorParams, HnswConfigDiff,
    ScalarQuantizationConfig, ScalarType, QuantizationConfig
)

client = QdrantClient("http://localhost:6333")

# Create optimized collection
client.create_collection(
    collection_name="documents",
    vectors_config=VectorParams(
        size=1536,                         # OpenAI ada-002 / text-embedding-3-small
        distance=Distance.COSINE,
        on_disk=True,                      # save RAM — vectors stored on disk
    ),
    hnsw_config=HnswConfigDiff(
        m=32,                              # higher = better recall, more RAM
        ef_construct=200,
        on_disk=False,                     # keep HNSW graph in RAM for speed
    ),
    quantization_config=QuantizationConfig(
        scalar=ScalarQuantizationConfig(
            type=ScalarType.INT8,
            quantile=0.99,
            always_ram=True,
        )
    ),
)

# Create payload index for fast filtering
client.create_payload_index(
    collection_name="documents",
    field_name="tenant_id",
    field_schema="keyword",
)
client.create_payload_index(
    collection_name="documents",
    field_name="created_at",
    field_schema="datetime",
)

# Collection info
info = client.get_collection("documents")
print(f"Vectors: {info.vectors_count}, Status: {info.status}")

Qdrant Filtered Search

from qdrant_client.models import Filter, FieldCondition, MatchValue, Range

# Tenant-isolated search (multi-tenant RAG)
results = client.query_points(
    collection_name="documents",
    query=query_embedding,
    query_filter=Filter(
        must=[
            FieldCondition(key="tenant_id", match=MatchValue(value="acme-corp")),
            FieldCondition(key="doc_type", match=MatchValue(value="contract")),
        ],
        should=[
            FieldCondition(key="created_at", range=Range(gte="2024-01-01")),
        ],
    ),
    limit=10,
    with_payload=True,
)

pgvector — PostgreSQL Extension

-- Enable extension
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;

-- Create table with vector column
CREATE TABLE documents (
    id          UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
    content     TEXT NOT NULL,
    embedding   VECTOR(1536),
    metadata    JSONB DEFAULT '{}',
    tenant_id   TEXT NOT NULL,
    created_at  TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT NOW()
);

-- Create HNSW index (faster queries, more memory)
CREATE INDEX ON documents
USING hnsw (embedding vector_cosine_ops)
WITH (m = 16, ef_construction = 64);

-- Create IVFFlat index (less memory, slower build)
-- CREATE INDEX ON documents
-- USING ivfflat (embedding vector_cosine_ops)
-- WITH (lists = 100);

-- Semantic search with metadata filtering
SELECT id, content, metadata,
       1 - (embedding <=> $1::vector) AS similarity
FROM documents
WHERE tenant_id = 'acme-corp'
  AND metadata->>'doc_type' = 'contract'
ORDER BY embedding <=> $1::vector
LIMIT 10;

# Deploy pgvector via Docker
docker run -d \
  --name pgvector \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=vectordb \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -v pgvector-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  pgvector/pgvector:pg16

Weaviate Deployment

# docker-compose for Weaviate
services:
  weaviate:
    image: semitechnologies/weaviate:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "50051:50051"
    environment:
      QUERY_DEFAULTS_LIMIT: 25
      AUTHENTICATION_ANONYMOUS_ACCESS_ENABLED: "false"
      AUTHENTICATION_APIKEY_ENABLED: "true"
      AUTHENTICATION_APIKEY_ALLOWED_KEYS: "${WEAVIATE_API_KEY}"
      AUTHENTICATION_APIKEY_USERS: "admin"
      PERSISTENCE_DATA_PATH: /var/lib/weaviate
      ENABLE_MODULES: text2vec-openai,generative-openai
      OPENAI_APIKEY: "${OPENAI_API_KEY}"
      CLUSTER_HOSTNAME: node1
    volumes:
      - weaviate-data:/var/lib/weaviate
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  weaviate-data:

Backup and Restore

# Qdrant — snapshot backup
curl -X POST "http://localhost:6333/collections/documents/snapshots"
# Download snapshot
curl -O "http://localhost:6333/collections/documents/snapshots/documents-snapshot.snapshot"
# Restore
curl -X POST "http://localhost:6333/collections/documents/snapshots/recover" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"location": "/qdrant/snapshots/documents-snapshot.snapshot"}'

# pgvector — standard pg_dump
pg_dump -h localhost -U postgres -d vectordb \
  --table=documents --format=custom > documents-backup.dump

# Restore
pg_restore -h localhost -U postgres -d vectordb documents-backup.dump

Performance Tuning

# Qdrant — optimize collection after bulk load
client.update_collection(
    collection_name="documents",
    optimizer_config={"indexing_threshold": 0},  # force indexing now
)

# Wait for optimization to complete
import time
while True:
    info = client.get_collection("documents")
    if info.status.value == "green":
        break
    time.sleep(5)
    print(f"Optimizing... segments: {info.segments_count}")

Common Issues

Issue	Cause	Fix
Slow queries	No HNSW index built yet	Wait for indexing; check status == green
High RAM usage	Vectors in memory	Enable on_disk=True for vectors
Poor recall	Low ef search param	Increase ef in search request (at query time)
pgvector slow	Using IVFFlat without vacuum	Run VACUUM ANALYZE documents
Weaviate OOM	Too many objects	Enable async indexing; increase heap

Best Practices

• Use cosine distance for normalized embeddings; dot product for unnormalized.
• Always create payload indexes on filter fields (tenant_id, doc_type).
• For datasets >10M vectors, use on_disk vectors + always_ram quantization.
• Benchmark with your actual query patterns before choosing IVFFlat vs HNSW.
• Snapshot before any bulk delete or migration operation.

Related Skills

• rag-infrastructure - Full RAG pipeline
• databases - General database management
• postgresql - pgvector host database ops