---
title: "Polarity Server v5 Administrator's Overview & Setup Guide"
slug: "polarity-administrators-overview"
description: "Learn how to deploy, configure, and manage Polarity Server v5. This administrator guide covers platform setup, Docker/Podman deployment, user management, channels, integrations, and system monitoring for enterprise annotation teams."
updated: 2025-12-09T21:37:09Z
published: 2025-12-09T21:37:09Z
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://knowledge.threatconnect.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Polarity Server v5 - Administrator's Overview

## Server Requirements

We recommend the following server specs for a deployment of up to approximately 50 users:

- 4 Cores
- 32 GB of RAM
- 250 GB storage
  - *ensure whichever volume contains*`/var`*has enough storage for containers*

## Deployment Methods

1. Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
  1. Amazon Linux 2023
2. Single server container deployment
  1. Supported Operating Systems:
    1. Debian-Based Distros, such as:
      1. Debian 11 / 12
      2. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS / 24.04 LTS
    2. Enterprise Linux-Based Distros, such as:
      1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 / 9
      2. Rocky Linux 8 / 9
      3. Oracle Linux 8 / 9
      4. Amazon Linux 2023
3. Single server container deployment - separating out Redis and Postgres to different servers
  1. Typically, this will be done in AWS using Elasticache and RDS

## Polarity Architecture

The diagram below shows the Polarity Server v5 architecture. Note that the “Polarity Platform” block in this diagram contains five services: Polarity Platform, Polarity Web, PostgreSQL, and two Redis caches.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/dfc206c8-1c9f-4725-b74d-a66f83432320/Images/Documentation/image-1764797185716.png)

### Polarity Data Flow

The diagram below is a rough overview of the data flow in a Polarity ecosystem.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/dfc206c8-1c9f-4725-b74d-a66f83432320/Images/Documentation/Data_Flow.png)

## Installation Options for Polarity Server v5

1. [Fresh Install](/v1/docs/fresh-install) *(preferred)*
2. [Upgrade from Polarity Server v4](/v1/docs/upgrade-to-polarity-server-v5-from-v4)