Configure storage

Vertica recommends that you store information — especially your data and catalog directories — on dedicated Amazon EBS volumes formatted with a supported file system.

Vertica recommends that you store information — especially your data and catalog directories — on dedicated Amazon EBS volumes formatted with a supported file system. The /opt/vertica/sbin/configure_software_raid.sh script automates the storage configuration process.

Caution

Do not store information on the root volume because it might result in data loss.

Vertica performance tests Eon Mode with a per-node EBS volume of up to 2TB. For best performance, combine multiple EBS volumes into a RAID 0 array.

For more information about RAID 0 arrays and EBS volumes, see RAID configuration on Linux.

Determining volume names

Because the storage configuration script requires the volume names that you want to configure, you must identify the volumes on your machine. The following command lists the contents of the /dev directory. Search for the volumes that begin with xvd:

$ ls /dev

Important

Ignore the root volume. Do not include any of your root volumes in the RAID creation process.

Combining volumes for storage

The configure_software_raid.sh shell script combines your EBS volumes into a RAID 0 array.

Caution

Run configure_software_raid.sh in the default setting only if you have a fresh configuration with no existing RAID settings.

If you have existing RAID settings, open the script in a text editor and manually edit the raid_dev value to reflect your current RAID settings. If you have existing RAID settings and you do not edit the script, the script deletes important operating system device files.

Alternately, use the Management Console (MC) console to add storage nodes without unwanted changes to operating system device files. For more information, see Managing database clusters.

The following steps combine your EBS volumes into RAID 0 with the configure_software_raid.sh script:

Edit the /opt/vertica/sbin/configure_software_raid.sh shell file as follows:
1. Comment out the safety exit command at the beginning .
2. Change the sample volume names to your own volume names, which you noted previously. Add more volumes, if necessary.
Run the /opt/vertica/sbin/configure_software_raid.sh shell file. Running this file creates a RAID 0 volume and mounts it to /vertica/data.
Change the owner of the newly created volume to dbadmin with chown.
Repeat steps 1-3 for each node on your cluster.