Installing a Single-Node HPE Vertica 8 Cluster on Ubuntu 14.04

HPE Vertica 8 was released back in August. This post will cover basic installation of single-node Vertica 8.0.0 cluster on Ubuntu Server.

My assumptions

• this is minimal install, which is not intended for production use
• I am not worried about redundancy, so I can do a single-node cluster
• I am not planning to do benchmarking or stress testing
• I am not planning to add more nodes in the future so I can use 127.0.0.1 as install IP
• I am not planning to use EXPORT/IMPORT commands so I can use 127.0.0.1 as install IP

My environment

• VM has 1 CPU, 4Gb of RAM and 32Gb of hard drive space
• Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (used ubuntu-14.04.4-server-amd64.iso)
• Vertica 8.0.0 (used vertica_8.0.0-0_amd64.deb)

Installing The Vertica Server Package

Vertica has a Community Edition, which is free. You can create a free account on my.vertica.com, go to Downloads and download the server package from there. Once the package is downloaded, copy it to your Ubuntu server.

Verify the default shell on your Ubuntu server. It should be bash.

If you have something else then you have to change it to bash. The Vertica Documentation page “Platform Requirements and Recommendations” has instructions on how to do it.

Before installing the Vertica package itself we need to install the package dependencies. Per installation documentation Vertica package dependencies are:

• openssh-server
• which
• dialog

I verified that my standard Ubuntu install already has  which, but does not have openssh-server and dialog

All I have to do now is install openssh-server and dialog. Run the following commands to do that:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install openssh-server
root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install dialog

When all the dependencies are in place install the vertica package by running the following command:

root@ubuntu:~# dpkg -i vertica_8.0.0-0_amd64.deb

Vertica Installation Script

When the Vertica server package was installed on Ubuntu it placed a script with the name install_vertica to /opt/vertica/sbin/ folder. You install the Vertica software and configure the Vertica cluster by running that script. When install_vertica is executed it does multiple things for you. The major things it does are:

• [In case of multi node installation] sets up passwordless ssh for the administrator user across all nodes
• [In case of multi node installation] copies the Vertica package to all other nodes
• [In case of multi node installation] installs the Vertica package to all other nodes
• tests each node to verify that the hosts meet the performance requirements
• tests each node to verify that the hosts meet the system requirements
• modifies some operating system configuration settings if those do not meet the requirements
• errors out and reports operating system configuration settings if they cannot be modified by the install script and must be manually reconfigured

Here is a screenshot from an unsuccessful install_vertica script execution with the script complaining about failed requirements.

In the image above you can see the severity in the red color. Severity HINT is showing you informational ignorable messages. Severity FAIL will prevent installation and should be addressed manually. Each message has a unique code associated with the reported issue (eg. S0030, S0310), and a URL to the page in the Vertica documentation related to the reported issue and a brief description of the issue.

Behavior of the install_vertica script is controlled by specifying installation parameters. It has more than 2 dozens of those. Our install will be very basic so the default values will work just fine for the majority of them. One thing I would like to change from the default is the folder where the Vertica database will be placed. By default, database data and catalog files will be placed into /home/dbadmin

Installing Vertica Software

Install the Vertica suggested troubleshooting tools by running the following command root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install pstack mcelog sysstat

Install the network time protocol (NTP) daemon and make sure it is running root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install ntp root@ubuntu:~# service ntp status

For Ubuntu OS Vertica 8.0 needs Transparent Hugepages to be disabled. The following command will show you the state of the transparent hugepages. root@ubuntu:~# cat /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled You should see the square brackets around the keyword [never], but in my install they are enabled. To disable them I will add the following to my /etc/rc.local file and reboot the system. if test -f /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled; then echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled fi After the reboot I will verify again to make sure that the change has taken effect and will persist after reboots.

Create a location for the database data and catalog files by running the following command root@ubuntu:~# mkdir -p /db/vertica

At this point we should have configured everything required to install the Vertica software. Run the following command to start installation root@ubuntu:~# /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica –hosts 127.0.0.1 –deb /root/vertica_8.0.0-0_amd64.deb –data-dir /db/vertica/ Messages at the bottom of a successful installation should look like this:

Creating the Vertica Database

su to dbadmin user and start admintools

You will be prompted to provide a license file. Since we are going to use free Community Edition we can just hit OK without providing the license file.

Review EULA and make a decision if you are willing to Accept it

If you Accepted EULA you will get to “Main Menu”. At this stage we have configured the Vertica cluster, but we have no database yet. If you run “View Database Cluster State” you will see this screen, which is not listing any databases.

To create a database navigate to “Configuration Menu” and run “Create Database” wizard. On the first step you will be prompted for a database name

After that you will need to provide a password for dbadmin user and confirm it again

Select hosts for the new database

Provide locations for the database data and catalog files. We will stay at the default values. Notice that it defaults now to value /db/vertica/, which we specified in –data-dir parameter of install_vertica script.

Admintools will notify us that the database on a single-node cluster is not redundant. We will be fine with that since we have no intentions to use this in production.

Admintools will confirm that we are happy with our input

On this stage Admintools will create the database. While the database is created we will see informational messages about the stages of database creation. At the end you should see this success screen.

If you navigate to “Main Menu” and run “View Database Cluster State” you will see this screen, which is showing the created database and its state is UP.

Conclusion

At this point we have a fully functional single-node Vertica cluster running on the Ubuntu Server.