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In prefect 2.0, whats the alternative command of
```$ prefect backend server```

`prefect orion start` will allow you to achieve orchestration locally and give you access to a UI without needing Prefect cloud.

<@U03AT2QB6LF> Can you confirm that you must have a server running (even locally) to run flows? The documentation implies that you don’t and I just wanted to check. Thx!

<@U01GY92R2EN> I can confirm it for you, since I just did it. You don't. :slightly_smiling_face:

<@U03RA4JQ9C3> - Weird, without Orion Server running I get this error locally:
```RuntimeError: Cannot create flow run. Failed to reach API at <http://127.0.0.1:4200/api/>.```

The Orion server needs to be running for flows to be orchestrated. You can “run flows” locally sans orion by running the python file, though this is not a true flow run.

<@U03AT2QB6LF> Even just running the python script - e.g. “python flow.py” I still get the same error.

Here is my “flow”:
```import requests
from prefect import flow

@flow(name="test")
def call_api(url:str):
    return requests.get(url).json()

api_result = call_api("<http://time.jsontest.com/>")
print(api_result)```

In case anybody else stumbles on this I had to set an env var to NULL to enable the ephemeral API.
```PREFECT_API_URL=```

Sorry <@U01GY92R2EN>, what was the error again?

<@U03AT2QB6LF> the script says there is an error communicating with the API server.  And if you run `prefect version` you can see the server type is `hosted`, not `ephemeral`.

I had to use the workaround of explicitly clearing the `PREFECT_API_URL=` variable before calling the `prefect` program in order to switch back to the ephemeral API.