Create a cluster

On AWS, use the install_vertica script to combine instances and create a cluster.

On AWS, use the install_vertica script to combine instances and create a cluster. Check your My Instances page on AWS for a list of current instances and their associated IP addresses. You need these IP addresses when you run install_vertica.

Create a cluster as follows:

While connected to your primary instance, enter the following command to combine your instances into a cluster. Substitute the IP addresses for your instances and include your root *.pem file name.

$ sudo /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica --hosts 10.0.11.164,10.0.11.165,10.0.11.166 \
  --dba-user-password-disabled --point-to-point --data-dir /vertica/data \
  --ssh-identity ~/name-of-pem.pem --license license.file

Note

*  If you are using Vertica Community Edition, which limits you to three instances, you can specify `-L CE` with no license file. 

* When you issue install_vertica or update_vertica on a Vertica AMI script, --point-to-point is the default. This parameter configures <a class="glosslink" href="/en/glossary/spread/" title="An open source toolkit used in Vertica to provide a high performance messaging service that is resilient to network faults.">Spread</a> to use direct point-to-point communication between all Vertica nodes, which is a requirement for clusters on AWS.

* If you are using IPv6 network addresses to identify the hosts in your cluster, use the --ipv6 flag in your `install_vertica` command. You must also use IP addresses instead of host names, as the AWS DNS server cannot resolve host names to IPv6 addresses.

After combining your instances, Vertica recommends deleting your *.pem key from your cluster to reduce security risks. The example below uses the shred command to delete the file:
```
$ shred name-of-pem.pem
```
After creating one or more clusters, create your database.

For complete information on the install_vertica script and its parameters, see Installing Vertica with the installation script.

Important

Stopping or rebooting an instance or cluster without first shutting down the database down, may result in disk or database corruption. To safely shut down and restart your cluster, see Operating the database.

Check open ports manually using the netcat utility

Once your cluster is up and running, you can check ports manually through the command line using the netcat (nc) utility. What follows is an example using the utility to check ports.

Before performing the procedure, choose the private IP addresses of two nodes in your cluster.

The examples given below use nodes with the private IPs:

10.0.11.60 10.0.11.61

Install the nc utility on your nodes. Once installed, you can issue commands to check the ports on one node from another node.

To check a TCP port:
1. Put one node in listen mode and specify the port. The following sample shows how to put IP 10.0.11.60 into listen mode for port 4804.
```
[root@ip-10-0-11-60 ~]# nc -l 4804
```
2. From the other node, run nc specifying the IP address of the node you just put in listen mode, and the same port number.
```
[root@ip-10-0-11-61 ~]# nc 10.0.11.60 4804
```
3. Enter sample text from either node and it should show up on the other node. To cancel after you have checked a port, enter Ctrl+C.
Note
Note: To check a UDP port, use the same nc commands with the –u option.
```
[root@ip-10-0-11-60 ~]# nc -u -l 4804
[root@ip-10-0-11-61 ~]# nc -u 10.0.11.60 4804
```