Apache Tika Server - Managed Support

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Text and Metadata Extraction as a Service

Apache Tika is the Apache Software Foundation's content detection and extraction toolkit. It detects and extracts text and metadata from thousands of file types - PDF, Microsoft Office and OpenDocument, HTML, RTF, EPUB, images, email and archive formats - through one consistent REST API. This image runs Tika Server 3.3.1 on OpenJDK 17 as a hardened, stateless service, so you can turn a document into clean text or structured metadata within minutes of launch rather than assembling a parser stack yourself.

## Who This Is For

Search and data teams building a document ingestion pipeline who need reliable text extraction as the first stage. AI and RAG builders who need to turn PDFs, spreadsheets and slide decks into plain text before chunking and embedding. Application developers who need a standards-based extraction endpoint to call from their own services instead of bundling dozens of parser libraries.

## What Is Installed

• Apache Tika Server 3.3.1 (tika-server-standard), the official build pulled from Maven Central and SHA-512 verified
• OpenJDK 17 (headless) as the runtime
• nginx as a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of the Tika listener
• A dedicated unprivileged tika service account and a hardened systemd unit that starts the service on boot
• Sample DOCX and PDF fixtures so a real extraction round trip can be verified out of the box

## Secure By Default

Tika Server has no built-in authentication and a real history of parser CVEs, so this image does not expose it directly:

• The Tika listener is bound to the loopback interface only and is never reachable from the network
• nginx fronts the whole REST surface, terminating TLS on port 443 with a certificate generated uniquely on each instance
• A one-shot first-boot service generates a unique HTTP Basic Auth password on every instance and writes it to a root-only file
• The dangerous URL-fetching and unpack features are left disabled, closing the classic server-side request forgery path to the instance metadata service, and IMDSv2 is enforced as a second line of defence
• Resource limits contain a malicious oversized or zip-bomb upload: the JVM heap is hard capped, the service has a systemd memory ceiling and is auto-restarted, and nginx caps the upload size

## Network Model

The shipped security group opens only port 22. The HTTPS listener on port 443 is not exposed by default. Add a port 443 ingress rule scoped to your own network when you are ready, or reach the service over an SSH tunnel. The user guide covers both, along with pointing an upstream load balancer or your own certificate at the service.

## Getting Started

1. Launch the image on an m5.large instance or larger, with port 22 open to your management network

2. Connect over SSH as the default login user for your variant (the user guide lists it)

3. Retrieve the generated API password with sudo cat /root/tika-server-credentials.txt

4. Extract text from a document: curl -u admin:PASSWORD -k -T report.pdf -H 'Accept: text/plain' https://INSTANCE/tika

5. Extract metadata as JSON from the /meta endpoint, or recursive text and metadata from /rmeta

6. Add a port 443 rule scoped to your network, or front the service with your own load balancer and certificate

## 24/7 cloudimg Support

Every deployment is backed by cloudimg engineers available around the clock by email and live chat. Support covers deployment and sizing guidance, tuning the JVM heap and Tika configuration for your document mix, enabling OCR or additional parsers, wiring Tika into a search or retrieval-augmented-generation pipeline, TLS certificate and reverse proxy configuration, credential management, and Tika upgrades and troubleshooting. Critical issues receive a one-hour average response time.

## Evaluation

This image uses standard AWS pay-as-you-go infrastructure billing. Launch an instance to evaluate extraction against your own documents, and terminate at any time.

Apache, Apache Tika and Tika are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.