Setting up Sitecore XM Cloud locally with Docker

Sample post — replace this with your own article. Keep the front-matter format at the top of the file.

Introduction

Running XM Cloud locally gives you a fast feedback loop for building components before you push to a cloud environment. In this post I’ll walk through the setup I use on Windows.

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11 with Docker Desktop (Windows containers)
• Node.js LTS and .NET SDK
• A valid Sitecore license file
• The XM Cloud starter repository cloned locally

1. Initialise the environment

From the repo root, in an elevated PowerShell:

.\init.ps1 -InitEnv -LicenseXmlPath "C:\license\license.xml" -AdminPassword "b"

This generates certificates, writes the .env file and adds host entries.

2. Start the containers

.\up.ps1

The first run pulls several large images, so grab a coffee.

3. Common errors

Conclusion

Once it’s running, you can serialize items with the Sitecore CLI and start building Next.js components against your local CM.