open-vault/website/source/intro/getting-started/install.html.md

---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Install Vault"
sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-install"
description: |-
  The first step to using Vault is to get it installed.
---

# Install Vault

Vault must first be installed on your machine. Vault is distributed as
a [binary package](/downloads.html) for all supported platforms and
architectures. This page will not cover how to compile Vault from source,
but compiling from source is covered in the [documentation](/docs/install/index.html)
for those who want to be sure they're compiling source they trust into
the final binary.

## Installing Vault

To install Vault, find the [appropriate package](/downloads.html) for
your system and download it. Vault is packaged as a zip archive.

After downloading Vault, unzip the package. Vault runs as a single binary
named `vault`. Any other files in the package can be safely removed and
Vault will still function.

The final step is to make sure that `vault` is available on the PATH.
See [this page](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14637979/how-to-permanently-set-path-on-linux)
for instructions on setting the PATH on Linux and Mac.
[This page](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1618280/where-can-i-set-path-to-make-exe-on-windows)
contains instructions for setting the PATH on Windows.

## Verifying the Installation

After installing Vault, verify the installation worked by opening a new
terminal session and checking that `vault` is available. By executing
`vault`, you should see help output similar to the following:

```
$ vault
usage: vault [-version] [-help] <command> [args]

Common commands:
    delete           Delete operation on secrets in Vault
    path-help        Look up the help for a path
    read             Read data or secrets from Vault
    renew            Renew the lease of a secret
    revoke           Revoke a secret.
    server           Start a Vault server
    status           Outputs status of whether Vault is sealed and if HA mode is enabled
    write            Write secrets or configuration into Vault

All other commands:
    audit-disable    Disable an audit backend
    audit-enable     Enable an audit backend
    audit-list       Lists enabled audit backends in Vault
    auth             Prints information about how to authenticate with Vault
    auth-disable     Disable an auth provider
    auth-enable      Enable a new auth provider
    init             Initialize a new Vault server
    key-status       Provides information about the active encryption key
    mount            Mount a logical backend
    mount-tune       Tune mount configuration parameters
    mounts           Lists mounted backends in Vault
    policies         List the policies on the server
    policy-delete    Delete a policy from the server
    policy-write     Write a policy to the server
    rekey            Rekeys Vault to generate new unseal keys
    remount          Remount a secret backend to a new path
    rotate           Rotates the backend encryption key used to persist data
    seal             Seals the vault server
    ssh              Initiate a SSH session
    token-create     Create a new auth token
    token-renew      Renew an auth token if there is an associated lease
    token-revoke     Revoke one or more auth tokens
    unmount          Unmount a secret backend
    unseal           Unseals the vault server
    version          Prints the Vault version
```

If you get an error that Vault could not be found, then your PATH environment
variable was not setup properly. Please go back and ensure that your PATH
variable contains the directory where Vault was installed.

Otherwise, Vault is installed and ready to go!

Now Vault is installed we can start our first Vault server! [Let's do
that now](/intro/getting-started/dev-server.html).