Skip to main content
Applies to: Embedded ❌, Enterprise ✅ If your LanceDB Embedded database already lives in object storage — Embedded reads and writes tables on S3, GCS or Azure as well as local disk — you can move to Enterprise by attaching that same location, rather than copying any data. A database on local disk has no such path: ATTACH DATABASE only accepts an object-storage URI or a path relative to Enterprise’s own storage root, never a local filesystem path. Move it to object storage first if it is not there already.

​
Prerequisites

A storage integration covering the database’s location must already exist. ATTACH DATABASE never names an integration explicitly — Enterprise automatically binds the most specific integration whose STORAGE_PREFIX covers the location you attach.

​
Attach the database

See Database for the full ATTACH DATABASE syntax, including GCS and Azure locations (Azure requires an account-qualified URI), IF NOT EXISTS, and quoted names.

​
What changes, and what doesn’t

Attaching makes the location a database LanceDB Enterprise manages the same way as one it created itself: Enterprise writes its own tracking metadata into that location to bring it under management, enabling capabilities Embedded never had there — every table becomes reachable through Enterprise’s SQL and SDK surface immediately, with Enterprise’s authorization, Secrets, Functions, and background maintenance now available to it. Attaching does not rewrite, move, or re-encode any table’s own data. DROP DATABASE on an attached database unregisters it and releases the storage-integration reference, without deleting the underlying data — the location can be reattached at any time.

​
What to read next

Storage Integration

Configure the credential an attach depends on, for S3, GCS, or Azure.

Database

Full ATTACH, CREATE, DESCRIBE and DROP DATABASE syntax.