Vertica Documentation – Getting started with MC

Mc: Connecting to MC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

To connect to Management Console:

Open a supported web browser.
Enter the IP address or host name of the host on which you installed MC (or any cluster node if you installed Vertica first), followed by the MC port you assigned when you configured MC. For example:

Enter the IP address and port:
```
https://10.20.30.40:5450/
```
Enter the host name and port:
```
https://hostname:5450/
```
When the MC logon dialog appears, enter your MC username and password and click Log in.

Note
When MC users log in to the MC interface, MC checks their privileges on Vertica Data collector (DC) tables on MC-monitored databases. Based on DC table privileges, along with the role assigned the MC user, each user's access to the MC's Overview, Activity and Node details pages could be limited. See Users, roles, and privileges for more information.

If you do not have an MC username/password, contact your MC administrator.

Managing client connections

Each client session to MC uses a connection from MaxClientSessions, a database configuration parameter. This parameter determines the maximum number of sessions that can run on a single database cluster node. Sometimes multiple MC users, mapped to the same database account, are concurrently monitoring the Overview and Activity pages.

Tip

You can increase the value for MaxClientSessions on an MC-monitored database to account for extra sessions. See Managing sessions for details.

Mc: Management Console home page

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After you connect to MC and sign in, the Home page displays. This page is the entry point to all Vertica database clusters and users managed by MC. Information on this page, as well as throughout the MC interface, will appear or be hidden, based on the permissions (access levels) of the user who is logged in. The following image is what an MC super administrator sees.

Operations you can perform in Management Console are grouped into the following areas:

Provision. Create new Vertica databases, or import existing ones to manage and monitor with MC. You can also import a Vertica cluster that resides in a Hadoop environment. See Managing database clusters.
Manage. View all the clusters and databases monitored by MC, stop and remove databases, and view details about databases and clusters. See Viewing cluster infrastructure.

MC tools

MC Settings. Configure MC and user settings, as well as use the MC interface to install Vertica on a cluster of hosts. See Management Console settings.
Message Center. View, sort, and search database messages and optionally export messages to a file. See Monitoring Database Messages in MC.
MC Diagnostics. View and resolve MC-related issues, as well as browse Vertica agent and audit logs. See Troubleshooting with MC diagnostics.

Recent databases

The Recent Databases section displays all databases that you created on or imported into MC. An empty space under Recent Databases means that you have not yet created or imported a database into the MC interface, or do not have permission to view any databases managed by MC.

Recent Databases lists each database name, its number of nodes, and two actions: Fast Tasks and Go to Database.

Fast tasks

Fast Tasks are key tasks you can perform on that database using MC. The Fast Tasks page provides the following options:

Manage and View Your Vertica Database. See the monitoring dashboard for your database. Explore the tabs below your dashboard, which provide more ways to manage the database.
Connect to your Vertica Database Using SQL. Use Management Console to run SQL queries on your database from within your browser.
Load Your Data into Vertica Database. The Data Load Activity page allows you to monitor and perform data loading jobs. To load data from an S3 bucket into pre-existing tables in your database, select the Instance tab and click New S3 Data Load.

If you installed Management Console with Provisioning through the AWS Marketplace, you had the option to install a database pre-loaded with example clickstream analytic data. If you did so, the Fast Tasks page lists two additional links:

Play with Example Data in Your Vertica Database (PDF). This PDF guide provides instructions and example SQL queries you can use in Vertica to analyze the example data.
Vertica Workbook for Tableau (PDF). This PDF guide provides instructions on how to analyze the example data pre-loaded into Vertica, using a Tableau dashboard.

Go to database

View the Overview page, which displays a dynamic dashboard of your database's health and activity. Explore the tabs below your dashboard, which provide more ways to manage the database.

You can install and manage multiple databases with MC, but you can have only one database running on a single cluster at a time. UP databases appear in green and DOWN databases are red.

Mc: Creating a cluster using MC

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Enterprise Mode only

After you install and configure MC, you can use Management Console to install a Vertica cluster on hosts where Vertica software has not been installed. The Cluster Installation assistant lets you specify the hosts you want to include in your Vertica cluster, loads the Vertica software onto the hosts, validates the hosts, and assembles the nodes into a cluster.

Complete the following tasks:

Prepare the hosts - Prepare each host that will become a node in the cluster.
Create a private key file - MC needs password-less SSH to connect to hosts and install Vertica software. Create a private key to enable MC access to the hosts.
Use the MC cluster installation wizard - Use the wizard to install a Vertica cluster on hosts that do not have Vertica software already installed on them.
Validate hosts and create the cluster - Host validation is the process where the MC runs tests against each host in a proposed cluster. You must validate hosts before the MC can install Vertica on each host.

After you successfully create a cluster using MC, see Create a database on a cluster.

Mc: Monitoring existing infrastructure using MC

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Use Management Console to monitor the health of your Vertica databases and clusters. Click the Infrastructure button on the Home page to see the Databases and Clusters page. Then click the cluster of interest to view the health of the nodes in that cluster and the key information associated with the cluster such as:

Vertica version
Number of hosts
CPU type
Last updated date
Node list.

You can also zoom in and out for better view of this page.

On the Databases and Clusters page or the Home page, click the database which you want to monitor, to go to its Overview page:

You can perform the following tasks from the Overview page:

View Quick Stats to get instant alerts and information about your cluster's status.
View Status Summary that provides a general overview of the status of your cluster (as shown in preceding figure).
Analyze System Health using a comprehensive summary of your system resource usage and node information, with configurable statistics that allow you to specify acceptable ranges of resource usage.
Use Query Synopsis to monitor system query activity and resource pool usage.

For Eon mode databases, the Status Summary and Query Synopsis pages allow you to display information for the entire database. If subclusters are defined, you can also display information for a specific subcluster or node, or the nodes not assigned to a subcluster.

Additionally, you can perform the following tasks from the Overview page:

Monitoring system resources

On the main window, you can click the database, and navigate to the MC Activity tab to monitor system resources such as:

Monitoring node and MC user activity

You can use the MC Manage page to monitor node activity. When you click the node you want to investigate, the Node Detail page opens and provides:

Summary information for the node
Resources consumed by the node for last three hours

You can also browse and export log-level data from AgentTools and Vertica log files. MC retains a maximum of 2000 log records. See Monitoring node activity for further details.

Use MC Diagnostics tab and navigate to Audit Log page to manage MC User activity. See Monitoring MC user activity using audit log.

Monitoring messages in databases managed by MC

You can view critical database related messages from MC Message Center. The MC Message Center reports on several critical database-related conditions using a color code to indicate the message severity. For further details, see Monitoring database messages and alerts in MC.

You can also search and sort database messages, mark messages read or unread and delete them. You can filter messages by message type, and export messages. For additional information, refer to Message center and Exporting MC-managed database messages and logs.

Monitoring and configuring resource pools

Use the MC Activity page to monitor resource pools. Select the resource pool you want to monitor. MC displays the following charts for the selected pool:

Resource Usages in Pool
Memory Usage in Node and Subclusters
Average Query Execution and Query Time in Pool
Resource Rejections in Pool

If you are a database administrator, you can click the database you want on the main window. You can then use the MC Settings tab to view and edit the resource pool parameters. Only the database administrator can monitor and configure the resource pools in Management Console.

See Monitoring resource pools for further information.

Vertica Documentation – Getting started with MC

Mc: Connecting to MC

Note

Managing client connections

Tip

Mc: Management Console home page

MC tools

Recent databases

Fast tasks

Go to database

Mc: Creating a cluster using MC

Mc: Monitoring existing infrastructure using MC

Monitoring system resources

Monitoring node and MC user activity

Monitoring messages in databases managed by MC

Monitoring and configuring resource pools