Initial setup

Once the Portainer Server has been deployed, and you have navigated to the instance's URL, you are ready for the initial setup.

Creating the first user

Your first user will be an administrator. The username defaults to admin but you can change it if you prefer. The password must be at least 12 characters long and meet the listed password requirements.

Your setup token can be found in your Portainer server logs - look for the setup_token= line. For help retrieving your token, or for details on starting Portainer without a setup token or with a custom one, refer to this FAQ.

Your Portainer server logs can be accessed with:

docker logs <container> , podman logs <container> , or kubectl logs <pod_name>

Add your license key

You will now be asked to provide your license key. You will have been provided this when signing up for Business Edition or the free trial. If you don't have a license key, you can either click the Don't have a license? link or get in touch with our team.

Paste the license key you were provided into the box and click Submit.

Set up Edge Compute

Next, enable and configure Edge Compute functionality. Configure the settings as described below, then select Enable and continue. Alternatively, select Skip to leave Edge Compute features off.

Enable Edge Compute features	Toggle this on to enable Edge Compute functionality including Edge Device features.
Portainer API server URL	Enter the default URL and port of your Portainer Server instance as it will be seen from your Edge environment. If using a FQDN, ensure that DNS is properly configured to provide this. This value can be overridden when manually deploying an Edge Agent.
Portainer tunnel server address	Enter the default address and port of your Portainer Server instance's tunnel server as it will be seen from your Edge environment. If using a FQDN, ensure that DNS is properly configured to provide this. In most cases, this will be the same address as the Portainer API server URL, but without the protocol and on port 8000. This value can be overridden when manually deploying an Edge Agent.
Enable Edge Environment Waiting Room	The Edge Devices Waiting room lists any Edge Devices that have connected using the pre-deploy script and are pending association with the Portainer instance. Toggle this setting on to ensure new edge agents wait for manual approval in the waiting room. If left off, agents will be automatically trusted on first connect.

Connecting Portainer to your environments

Once the admin user has been created, the Environment Wizard will automatically launch. The wizard will help get you started with Portainer.

The installation process automatically detects your local environment and sets it up for you. If you want to add additional environments to manage with this Portainer instance, click Add Environments. Otherwise, click Get Started to start using Portainer!