Installing Vertica 7

In this post we are going to install Vertica 7.0.x from the command line for the first node, then look at how to install Vertica by using the Management Console (MC) in a future post, which is much easier and can be done for all subsequent nodes. The method outlined below is also the EXACT same process you follow when performing an upgrade. The only difference is prudence dictates that you would backup your existing databases PRIOR to upgrading.

Installing from the commandline

There is no apt-get for Vertica unfortunately.

1. From your laptop (remember, Ubuntu server has no GUI) log in to the myVertica portal (accts are free) and download the HP Vertica package for the correct OS and processor architecture that you need.  
2. I assume you are connecting to your Ubuntu box using PuTTY with SSH. If so you can use pscp to copy your downloaded .deb file to your server. You can google to download pscp if you are running stand-alone PuTTY.
3. Open a DOS prompt (elevated) and cd to the location of pscp
4. pscp <location of .deb file> <user>@<ip>:<path on ubuntu>
5. You should see a progress indicator.  After the copy is complete you are ready to install the .deb package
6. sudo dpkg -i <pathname>  .  this only takes a few secs. 
7. You now have the Vertica package installed. Now you have to install Vertica.  This is a bit confusing, just remember that installing Vertica is a two-step process.  
8. You now have to run the install script. This can be run for a single node or it can be simulataneously installed to many cluster nodes using --hosts. In other words, you only need to install the Vertica package once, on your first node. We will install on a single node and look at the other options for our subsequent dev nodes.
9. sudo /opt/vertica/sbin/install_vertica --hosts 192.168.0.x --deb <path to deb> -L CE --accept-eula .  The ip_address can be an actual hostname as well. Don't use localhost or 127.0.0.1 else you can't add additional nodes to your cluster. This would be considered a "standalone, single node Vertica installation".  And there is no known way to fix it later.  The -L CE instructs the installer that you are using the Community Edition
10. It's highly likely that you may see errors. Simply research and fix them one-by-one, re-running install_vertica as many times as it takes to resolve all issues.  Remember that you are running on Ubuntu and not Windows so expect some customizations.  I have some examples of errors at the right.  Eventually you'll get so far and need to ignore certain system requirement checks in install_vertica. For instance, ext3 and ext4 filesystems or LVM presence. If you have ext2 filesystems or LVM present (see first error above) then install_vertica will constantly fail.  It's OK to run a test Vertica instance on these filesystem configurations.  When you are comfortable that any remaining FAIL messages can be ignored, just add --failure-threshold NONE to the install_vertica command.  Never do that on a prod system, but it works for testing and playing with Vertica.
11. At this point install_vertica should complete after a few minutes.  
12. Logout
13. login to Linux using the dbadmin acct that install_vertica created.  
14. You can now play around. Try the following (or wait until my next blog post where we will do some additional Vertica fun):   /opt/vertica/bin/admintools

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