---
title: "Configuration"
description: "Configuration reference guides covering collections, data types, distances, and optimization settings."
url: https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs
---

# Configuration

Use the following reference guides to understand Weaviate's core concepts and configurations. These guides cover collection definitions, data types, distance metrics, environment variables, and more to help you optimize your Weaviate deployment.



[Collection definition](https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs/collections): An overview of all top-level collection parameters and concepts.

[Vector Index](https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs/indexing/vector-index): Tune HNSW, Flat, or Dynamic indexes to balance search speed and recall.

[Inverted Index](https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs/indexing/inverted-index): Optimize filtering and keyword search with BM25, stopwords, and other settings.

[Data Types](https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs/datatypes): Reference for supported data types and their handling in Weaviate.

[Distance Metrics](https://docs.weaviate.io/weaviate/config-refs/distances): Learn about the distance metrics used for similarity calculations.

[Environment Variables](https://docs.weaviate.io/deploy/configuration/env-vars): Learn about the environment variables used for configuration.



> [!NOTE]
>
> **Deployment documentation**
>
> For deployment related topics like security, backups, replication, cluster information and advanced configuration options, visit the [deployment documentation](https://docs.weaviate.io/deploy/configuration).