Create an Eon Mode database on-premises with MinIO

To use MinIO as a communal storage location for an Eon Mode database, you must have:.

Step 1: create a bucket and credentials on MinIO

To use MinIO as a communal storage location for an Eon Mode database, you must have:

  • The IP address and port number of the MinIO cluster. MinIO's default port number is 9000. A Vertica database running in Eon Mode defaults to using port 80 for unencrypted connections and port 443 for TLS encrypted connection. All of the nodes in your Vertica cluster must be able to access the MinIO cluster's IP address. Make sure any firewalls between the MinIO cluster and the nodes are configured to allow access.

  • The name of the bucket on the MinIO cluster to use for communal storage.

  • An access key and secret key for a user account that has read and write access to the bucket.

See the MinIO documentation for instructions on how to create the bucket and the access keys needed for a communal storage location.

Step 2: install Vertica on your cluster

To install Vertica:

  1. Ensure your nodes are configured properly by reviewing all of the content in the Before you install Vertica section.

  2. Use the install_vertica script to verify that your nodes are correctly configured and to install the Vertica binaries on all of your nodes. Follow the steps under Install Vertica using the command line to install Vertica.

Step 3: create an authorization file

Before you create your Eon Mode on-premises database, you must create an authorization file that admintools will use to authenticate with the MinIO storage cluster.

  1. On the Vertica node where you will run admintools to create your database, use a text editor to create a file. You can name this file anything you wish. In these steps, it is named auth_params.conf. The location of this file isn't important, as long as it is readable by the Linux user you use to create the database (usually, dbadmin).

  2. Add the following lines to the file:

    awsauth = MinIO_Access_Key:MinIO_Secret_Key
awsendpoint = MinIOIp:MinIOPort

  3. If you are not using TLS encryption for the connection between Vertica and MinIO, add the following line to the file:

    awsenablehttps = 0

  4. Save the file and exit the editor.

This example auth_params.conf file is for an unencrypted connection between the Vertica cluster and a MinIO cluster at IP address 10.20.30.40 using port 9000 (which is the default for MinIO).

awsauth = PIWHSNDGSHVRPIQ:339068001+e904816E02E5fe9103f8MQOEAEHFFVPKBAAL
awsendpoint = 10.20.30.40:9000
awsenablehttps = 0

Step 4: choose a depot path on all nodes

Choose or create a directory on each node for the depot storage path. The directory you supply for the depot storage path parameter must:

  • Have the same path on all nodes in the cluster (i.e. /home/dbadmin/depot).

  • Be readable and writable by the dbadmin user.

  • Have sufficient storage. By default, Vertica uses 60% of the filesystem space containing the directory for depot storage. You can limit the size of the depot by using the --depot-size argument in the create_db command. See Configuring your Vertica cluster for Eon Mode for guidelines on choosing a size for your depot.

The admintools create_db tool will attempt to create the depot path for you if it doesn't exist.

Step 5: create the Eon on-premises database

Use the admintools create_db tool to create the database. You must pass this tool the following arguments:

Argument Description
-x The path to the auth_params.conf file.
--communal-storage-location The S3 URL for the bucket on the MinIO cluster (usually, this is s3://bucketname).
--depot-path The absolute path to store the depot on the nodes in the cluster.
--shard-count The number of shards for the database. This is an integer number that is usually either a multiple of the number of nodes in your cluster, or an even divider. See Planning for Scaling Your Cluster for more information.
-s A comma-separated list of the nodes in your database.
-d The name for your database.

Some common optional arguments include:

Argument Description
-l The absolute path to the Vertica license file to apply to the new database.
-p The password for the new database.
--depot-size

The maximum size for the depot. Defaults to 60% of the filesystem containing the depot path.

You can specify the size in two ways:

  • integer%: Percentage of filesystem's disk space to allocate.

  • integer{K|M|G|T}: Amount of disk space to allocate for the depot in kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or terabytes.

However you specify this value, the depot size cannot be more than 80 percent of disk space of the file system where the depot is stored.

To view all arguments for the create_db tool, run the command:

admintools -t create_db --help

The following example demonstrates creating a three-node database named verticadb, specifying the depot will be stored in the home directory of the dbadmin user.

$ admintools -t create_db -x auth_params.conf \
  --communal-storage-location=s3://verticadbbucket \
  --depot-path=/home/dbadmin/depot  --shard-count=6 \
  -s vnode01,vnode02,vnode03 -d verticadb -p 'YourPasswordHere'

Step 6: disable streaming limitations

After creating the database, disable the AWSStreamingConnectionPercentage configuration parameter. This setting is unnecessary for an Eon Mode on-premises install with communal storage on FlashBlade or MinIO. This configuration parameter controls the number of connections to the object store that Vertica uses for streaming reads. In a cloud environment, this setting helps avoid having streaming data from the object store use up all of the available file handles. It leaves some file handles available for other object store operations. Due to the low latency of on-premises object stores, this option is unnecessary. Set it to 0 to disable it.

The following example shows how to disable this parameter using ALTER DATABASE...SET PARAMETER:

=> ALTER DATABASE DEFAULT SET PARAMETER AWSStreamingConnectionPercentage = 0;
ALTER DATABASE