GraphAcademy
Course

Neo4j Administration Workshop

Learn Neo4j administration in this hands-on workshop. Install Neo4j in Docker, configure memory and networking, monitor logs, and fix issues.

4 hours22 lessons across 4 modules
About this workshop

In this 4-hour workshop, you will learn

The Neo4j Administration Workshop is a hands-on Neo4j workshop in which you install, configure, monitor, and troubleshoot a self-managed Neo4j server. Over roughly four hours you stand up your own Neo4j instance in Docker, tune its configuration, set up monitoring for its logs and metrics, and then diagnose the operational problems that administrators meet most often: servers that will not start, applications that cannot connect, and queries that run slowly.

The workshop is designed for instructor-led delivery, and this course is the companion you follow during the session. Every command, configuration file, and exercise is included, so you can also complete the workshop at your own pace if you did not attend live. Where most GraphAcademy courses focus on the data inside the graph, this workshop focuses on the database around it: what Neo4j needs from its host, how to express that in configuration, and how to read the signals it gives you when something is wrong.

  • Set Up Neo4j in Docker

    Install and run a Neo4j instance inside a Docker container, configuring volumes and environment variables to get a working database up and running quickly.

  • Configure Neo4j Settings

    Apply key Neo4j configuration options — including memory allocation, networking, and security settings — to tune your instance for reliable performance.

  • Monitor Logs and Database Health

    Use Neo4j log files to track database activity, identify warning signals, and verify that your instance is operating correctly under normal conditions.

  • Investigate and Resolve Issues

    Diagnose common Neo4j operational problems by reading error output, checking configuration, and applying targeted fixes to restore a healthy database state.

Before you start

What you need to take part.

  • A GraphAcademy account

    The workshop is delivered here on GraphAcademy, so you need to be signed in to work through the lessons and keep your progress. Creating an account is free.

    Sign in or create an account

  • A GitHub account, or Git on your own machine

    You write code against the workshop-administration repository. The quickest route is a GitHub Codespace, an online editor that clones the code and installs everything for you — that needs a GitHub account.

    If you would rather work locally, clone the repository with Git and run it in your own editor instead. No GitHub account is needed for that.

Course content

4 modules, 4 hours.

  1. 6 lessons
    1. Options5 min
    2. Install Neo4j in Docker5 min
    3. neo4j-admin5 min
    4. Import Data5 min
    5. Browser5 min
    6. KubernetesOptional5 min
  2. 8 lessons
    1. How to Configure Neo4j5 min
    2. File Locations and Storage5 min
    3. Memory5 min
    4. Networking5 min
    5. Plugins5 min
    6. Backup5 min
    7. Create Your Own InstanceOptional5 min
    8. More Information5 min
  3. 4 lessons
    1. Log Files5 min
    2. Explore5 min
    3. Log Configuration5 min
    4. Monitoring Tool Overview5 min
  4. 6 lessons
    1. Approach5 min
    2. Server Doesn't Start5 min
    3. Connection Issues5 min
    4. Application Running Slow5 min
    5. Investigate5 min
    6. Next Steps5 min

  • Who this workshop is for

    This workshop is for the people responsible for keeping Neo4j running: database administrators, DevOps and platform engineers, site reliability engineers, and developers who operate their own Neo4j servers, on-premises or in containers, rather than using a managed service. It is a practical, terminal-heavy session in which you edit configuration files, run neo4j-admin commands, inspect log files, and work inside Docker containers. You should have completed Neo4j Fundamentals and Cypher Fundamentals (or equivalent), and be able to run and stop a Docker container — the workshop guides you through the rest.

  • What you'll do

    You begin by getting Neo4j running: after comparing the deployment options, you install Neo4j in a Docker container, use the neo4j-admin tool to manage it, import a dataset, and query it to confirm everything works. You also see how the same approach extends to Kubernetes. You then take control of the server's behaviour through configuration — where Neo4j keeps its files, how it uses heap and page cache memory and how to size them, how to configure networking so clients can connect, and how to add plugins and take backups — before a challenge asks you to create a correctly configured instance of your own.

    With a configured server in place, you turn to observability, exploring Neo4j's log files and setting up a monitoring tool that watches logs and metrics in one place. The final part is deliberately about things going wrong: you learn a structured approach to diagnosing issues, work through the classic failure modes one by one, and finish with an investigation challenge that hands you a broken setup to fix yourself.

  • Where to go next

    If you manage Neo4j at scale, Running Neo4j in Docker builds directly on this workshop, taking you from a single container to a cluster. Neo4j Aura Administration covers the equivalent operational skills for Go to glossary for Aura (opens in a new tab)Neo4j's fully managed cloud service., and Cypher Indexes and Constraints sharpens the query analysis from the slow-application lesson. Details of upcoming instructor-led sessions are on the workshops page.