May 6, 2025 3 min read xm-cloud

Sitecore XM Cloud - Running local XM Cloud in Docker

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work on a Proof of Concept with XM Cloud.

Since it was a while that I've set everything up - I wanted to document my progress here. In case someone runs into the same issues as I did.

Prep

Make sure IIS is stopped completely

iisreset /stop

Setup

Have your repository ready!
Make sure you have a Sitecore license file locally.
Use Powershell terminal as administrator or use the terminal in Visual Studio Code. Make sure you run VSC as Administrator.

Go to root path of repository
Init

#adjust with your config
.\local-containers\scripts\init.ps1 -InitEnv -LicenseXmlPath "C:\license\license.xml" -AdminPassword "Password1234!"

Import module

Import-Module SitecoreDockerTools

Download containers (will take a while) & spin up

./local-containers/scripts/up.ps1

Errors

NodeJs cannot be built

I got this error:

ERROR: Service 'nodejs' failed to build : Build failed

I changed:

Docker config with “buildkit”:false

https://sitecore.stackexchange.com/questions/33871/nodejs-container-build-in-xmcloud-foundation-head

Node cannot be downloaded

Next error - still on nodejs, but looks different now.

Issue is that the build cannot access outside networks. An option is to use google DNS setting: 8.8.8.8
But that didn’t solve my issues.

Other options tried: https://sitecoreblog.marklowe.ch/2023/11/could-not-resolve-host-nodejs-org-when-setting-up-xm-cloud-locally/

Also tried to flush DNS: ipconfig /flushdns

https://sitecorewithraman.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/setup-local-xm-cloud-development-environment-using-docker-containers/

Furthermore GlobalProtectVPN may also be blocking these connections. As mentioned here:https://vincent-lui.medium.com/running-sitecore-in-docker-containers-an-enterprise-environment-b4c1d469b423

In the end, the only option was to download the nodejs version manually and edit the nodejs DockerFile to pick up the downloaded files. See this blog post as well: https://sitecorewithraman.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/setup-local-xm-cloud-development-environment-using-docker-containers/

mkdir node
cd node
curl.exe -sS -L -o node.zip https://nodejs.org/dist/v22.11.0/node-v22.11.0-win-x64.zip
tar.exe -xf node.zip -C C:\node

Then update the nodejs Dockerfile

Third error: icalcs permission issue

Permissions cannot be set with icacls

I tried different things, in the end I commented out the RUN icacls.exe from the Dockerfile.

And ran it manually on the already manually managed C:\node folder.

icacls.exe C:\node\ /grant "Authenticated Users":(F) /t

Fourth error: cannot create solr

Error response from daemon: failed to create endpoint xmcloud-starter-js-solr-1 on network xmcloud-starter-js_default: failed during hnsCallRawResponse: hnsCall failed in Win32: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

Solution: make sure solr services are stopped. I'm switching between Sitecore installations quite a lot. And have solr running locally for some solutions.
So makes sure solr is stopped. Check the Services.

nssm stop solr-8.4.1

Check if the port 8984 is in use:

netstat -aon | findstr 8984