Install Vertica in a single node. 

This article is mainly related to:

1.  Setup of Vertica in a single node.
2. Vertica Console Management
3. Tableau
4. DBeaver

During my free time, I want to try to install Vertica and want to know what it is all about. what are the things we should know while installing Vertica and what will be the issues, difficulties, requirements and process do we need to follow in order to setup Vertica and play around it.

The HP Vertica Analytic Database is based on a massively parallel processing (MPP), shared-nothing architecture, in which the query processing workload is divided among all nodes of the Vertica database.

If you want to try Vertica and play around along with this columnar database then you should follow below steps.

Step 1:

Firstly you should have any Linux OS installed in a machine. For Vertica, the minimum requirement is to have 3 nodes that mean’s three Linux OS running in different nodes. But, in my case I want to try to install in only one node and try it out. I have windows 7 OS install and where I have install Red hat Linux in my virtual machine. So, make sure you have at least one Linux OS installed machine.

You may find the below link to find out the minimum requirements and server configuration:http://my.vertica.com/docs/5.1.6/HTML/index.htm#18671.htm

General Platform Recommendations

• ext4 is recommended over ext3 for performance reasons.
• Use 2GB of swap space regardless of the amount of installed RAM.
• Place the database /catalog directory on the same drive as the OS.

Step 2:

Download all the required software related to Vertica from the site https://my.vertica.com/downloads/

In order to download you can sign up in a community edition. All the stuffs you can know from below video:

http://www.vertica.com/files/myVerticaVideo/myVertica_Audio_Video_Combined_121009J.html

Here, I have downloaded the below versions:

Step 3:

After that move the setup files into Red Hat Linux virtual machine directory. I have put the setup files into directory as /data/software and then open the terminal in VM,

Run the below command as root user:

rpm -Uvh /data/Software/vertica-7.0.2-1.x86_64.RHEL5.rpm

Then after that it will ask to run the /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica to complete the installation.

Step 4:

Run the script in master node

# /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica -s host_list -r rpm_package -u dba_username

Here I used only one node so below is my script.

 /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica -s localhost -r /data/Software/vertica-7.0.2-1.x86_64.RHEL5.rpm -u dbadmin

Here, you need to note that if you want to install Vertica in multiple nodes then you can include different nodes or host list.

Where options are:

-s host_list comma-separated list of hostnames or IP addresses to include in the cluster; do not include space characters in the list.

— If you omit the -u parameter, the default database administrator account name is dbadmin who will only use the admintools.

You can find more about installing vertica in 3nodes or complete cluster Installation in below link:

http://www.aodba.com/main_articles_single.php?art=83&page=vertica

Step5:

After that you will get some issues or errors as below which I have got

>> Validating node and cluster prerequisites…

Failures during local (OS) configuration for verify-127.0.0.1.xml:

HINT (S0305): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0305

TZ is unset for dbadmin. Consider updating .profile or .bashrc

HINT (S0041): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0041

Could not find the following tools normally provided by the mcelog

package: mcelog

HINT (S0040): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0040

Could not find the following tools normally provided by the pstack or

gstack package: pstack/gstack

WARN (N0010): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=N0010

Linux iptables (firewall) has some non-trivial rules in tables: filter

FAIL (S0150): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0150

These disks do not have ‘deadline’ or ‘noop’ IO scheduling: ‘/dev/sda1’

(‘sda’) = ‘cfq’, ‘/dev/sda3’ (‘sda’) = ‘cfq’

FAIL (S0020): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0020

Readahead size of sda (/dev/sda1,/dev/sda3) is too low for typical

systems: 256 < 2048

FAIL (S0030): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0030

ntpd process is not running: [‘ntpd’, ‘ntp’]

FAIL (S0081): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0081

SELinux appears to be enabled and not in permissive mode.

FAIL (S0310): https://my.vertica.com/docs/7.0.x/HTML/index.htm#cshid=S0310

Transparent hugepages is set to ‘always’. Must be ‘never’ or ‘madvise’.

Then go through each error in the link below

https://community.vertica.com/vertica/topics/

This is all about some cluster prerequisites. Here go through each FAIL(XXXX) in the community forum where you will get the solution for each error.

Step 6:

After that, run the admintools from the dbadmin user then you can see as

After that create the database:

Then choose the host name where database will reside:

Then, define the Catalog location and data path

Since I have installed Vertica in a single node so there will not be the concept of K-Safe method. If we are installing at least 3nodes then we can have k-safe.

After that,

Then create Vertica database as Vertica_DB in a single node.

After that the database will created.

 

Just click OK and you will see the Database configuration:

Then finally you can exit from the admintools:

Step 7:

Vertica management console:

After successful installation of Vertica Database now you can install the Vertica management console:

The new HP Vertica Management Console is an enterprise database management tool that provides a unified view of your HP Vertica database and lets you monitor multiple clusters from a single point of access.

You can find more on below link:

https://my.vertica.com/docs/5.1.6/HTML/index.htm#16773.htm

Run the command as a root user:

rpm –Uvh vertica-console-7.0.2-1.x86_64.RHEL5.rpm

After successful installation it will show URL as https://localhost.localdomain:5450/webui during the installation. Just go through the URL and accept the license

What you can do with Management Console

• Create a database cluster on hosts that do not have HP Vertica installed
• Create, import, and monitor multiple HP Vertica databases on one or more clusters from a single point of control
• Create MC users and grant them access to MC and MC-managed databases
• Manage user information and monitor their activity on MC
• Configure database parameters and user settings dynamically
• Access a single message box of alerts for all managed databases
• Export all database messages or log/query details to a file
• View license usage and conformance
• Diagnose and resolve MC-related issues through a browser
• Access a quick link to recent databases and clusters
• View dynamic metrics about your database cluster

The features is so much helpful for the DBA’s and the developer from where they can easily monitor multiple HP Vertica databases on one or more clusters from a single point of control.

Detail setp to install and login setup process is shown in my slideshare , you can see the link below :

https://www.slideshare.net/anil_maharjan/how-to-setup-vertica-in-a-single-node

Tableau:

Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.

To know the story behind your data which is stored in Vertica DB, you need to have a reporting tool which can make a quick decision and helps you to get the value of your data.

This is where Tableau can be used. Which is one of the best Reporting Tool I must say.

One can go to Tableau portal and download the software and play around any database, Worksheets, excel files and so many other data files.

I have downloaded both desktop and public version of Tableau, and where as desktop version works for 15 days trail.

Now in order to connect Vertica DB through Tableau you need to install the Vertica client in your PC i.e. my windows 7 machine, where you need to download the vertica-client-7.0.2-1.64 from https://my.vertica.com/

Also, you can install the test db along with Vertica as VMART schema but in my case I am getting error so I have posted into Vertica community .One can join this community and can share ideas and issues.

https://community.vertica.com/vertica/topics/cannot-create-vmart-example-db

After that you can open tableau desktop and connect to Vertica DB in order to play around with and to find the story behind your data.

Also, you can have public tableau install in your PC and do some analysis using different worksheets, I have also done some analysis related to ‘Average Percentage of Internet Users across the World ‘ and published into public server which is free that Tableau providing for normal users.

https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/AveragePercentageofInternetUsersaccrostheWorld/AverageofIndividualsUsingtheInternet?:showVizHome=no#1

DBeaver:

DBeaver is free and open source (GPL) universal database tool for developers and database administrators.

• Usability is the main goal of this project, program UI is carefully designed and implemented.
• It is freeware.
• It is multiplatform.
• It is based on opensource framework and allows writing of various extensions (plugins).
• It supports any database having a JDBC driver.
• It may handle any external datasource which may or may not have a JDBC driver.
• There is a set of plugins for certain databases (MySQL and Oracle in version 1.x) and different database management utilities (e.g. ERD

You can find more from the link :

http://dbeaver.jkiss.org/about/

I just found this tool so easy to connect with Vertica DB and do some queries analysis

Summary:

Through this article, I am sure you are now able to understand how you can install Vertica Analytic Database in a single node and how you can use Vertica Management Console to monitor multiple clusters from a single point of access. How you can easily get the story behind your data in Vertica DB by using the Tableau Reporting tool.

Also, how you can use quires to do more detail analysis by using the DBeaver tool in Vertica Database.

More detail step by step full artice can be download from the link below :

https://www.slideshare.net/anil_maharjan/how-to-setup-vertica-in-a-single-node

Thanks,

Anil Maharjan

BI Engineer

http://np.linkedin.com/in/maharjananil