Using the MC to Provision and Create an Eon Mode Database in GCP

After you deploy an MC instance to GCP, use it to deploy an Eon Mode database.

Currently, the admintools menu-based interface does not support creating an Eon Mode database on GCP.

To use the MC to provision and deploy a new Eon Mode database on GCP:

  1. From the MC home screen, click Create new database to launch the Create a Vertica Cluster on Google Cloud wizard.

  2. On the first page of the wizard enter the following information:

    • Google Cloud Storage HMAC Access Key and HMAC Secret Key: Copy and paste the HMAC access key and secret you created earlier. You find these values on the Interoperability tab of the of the Storage Settings page. See Eon Mode on GCP Prerequisites for details.
    • Zone: This value defaults to the zone containing your MC instance. Make this value the same as the zone containing the Google Cloud Storage bucket that your database will use for communal storage.

    • You will see significant performance issues if you choose different zones for cluster instances, storage, or the MC.

    • CIDR Range: The IP address range for clients to whom you want to grant access to your database. Make this range as restrictive as possible to limit access to your database.

  3. Click Next, and supply the following information:

    • Vertica Database Name: the name for your new database. See Creating a Database Name and Password for database name requirements.

    • Vertica Version: select the desired Vertica database version. You can select from the latest hotfix of recent Vertica releases. For each database version, you can also select the operating system.

    • Vertica Database User Name: the name of the database superuser. This name defaults to dbadmin, but you can enter another user name here.
    • Password and Confirm Password: Enter a password for the database superuser account.

    • Database Size: The number of nodes in your initial database. If you specify more than three nodes here, you must supply a valid Vertica license file in the Vertica License field (below).

    • Vertica License: Click Browse to locate and upload your Vertica license key file. If you do not supply a license key file here, the wizard deploys your database with a Vertica Community Edition license. This license has a three node limit, so the value in the Database Size filed cannot be larger than 3 if you do not supply a license. If you use a Community Edition license for your deployment, you can upgrade the license later to expand your cluster load more than 1TB of data. See Managing Licenses form more information.

      This field does not appear if you created your MC instance using a by-the-hour (BTH) launcher. The BTH license is automatically applied to all clusters you create using a BTH MC instance. For a by-the-hour license, cloud vendors charge the customer for licensed Vertica usage along with their cloud infrastructure charges.

    • Load example data: Check this box if you want your deployed database to load some example clickstream data. This option is useful if you are testing features and just want some preloaded data in the database to query.

  4. Click Next and supply the following information:

    • Instance Type: the specifications of the virtual machine instances the MC will use to deploy your database nodes. See the Google Cloud documentation's Machine types page for details of each instance type. Also see GCP Eon Mode Instance Recommendations.
    • Database Depot Path and Disk Type: the local mount point for the depot, and the type and number of local disks dedicated to the depot for each node. You cannot change the mount path for the depot. The disks you select in the Disk Type field are only used to store the depot. On the next page of the wizard, you will configure disks for the catalog and temporary disk space. You will see the best performance when using SSD disks, although at a higher cost. You can choose to use faster local storage for your depot. However, local storage is ephemeral—GCP wipes the disk clean whenever you stop the instance. This means each time you start a node, it will have to warm its depot from scratch, rather than taking advantage of any still-current data in its depot. See the Google Cloud documentation's Storage options page for more information about the local disk options.
    • Volume Size: the amount of disk space available on each disk attached to each node in your cluster. This field shows you the total disk space available per node in your cluster. For the best practices on choosing the amount of disk space for your nodes, see Configuring Your Vertica Cluster for Eon Mode.
    • Data Segmentation Shards: sets the number of shards in your database. After you set this value, you cannot change it later. See Configuring Your Vertica Cluster for Eon Mode for recommendations. The default value is based on the number of nodes you entered in the Database size you specified earlier. It is usually sufficient, unless you anticipate greatly expanding your cluster beyond your initial node count.
    • Communal Location: a Google Cloud Storage URL that specifies where to store your database's communal data. See Eon Mode on GCP Prerequisites for requirements.
    • Instance IP settings: specify whether the nodes in your database will have static or ephemeral network addresses that are accessible from the internet, or addresses that are only accessible from within the internal virtual network.

  5. Click Next. The wizard validates your communal storage location URL. If there is an problem with the URL you entered, it displays an error message and prompts you to fix the URL.

    After your communal storage URL passes validation, fill in the following information:

    • Database Catalog Path, Disk Type, and Size (GB) per Available Node: the mount point disk type, and disk size for the local copy of the database catalog on each node. You cannot edit the mount point. You choose the type of local disk to use for the catalog, and its size. You can only choose persistent disk storage for the catalog. SSD drives are faster, but more expensive than standard disks. The default setting for the disk size is adequate for most medium size databases. Increase the size if you anticipate maintaining a large database.
    • Database Temp Path, Disk Type, and Size (GB) per Available Node: the mount point disk type, and disk size for the temporary storage space on each node. You cannot edit the mount point. You choose the type of local disk to use, and its size. You can only choose persistent disk storage for the temporary disk space. SSD drives are faster, but more expensive than standard disks. The default setting is adequate for most databases. Consider increasing the temporary space if you perform many complex merges that spill to disk.
    • Label Instances: check this box to enable adding labels to your node's instances. Many organizations use labels to organize, track responsibility, and assign costs for instances. See the Google Cloud documentation's Labeling resources page for more information. If you choose to add labels, enter the label name and value, and click Add.
  6. Click Next. Review the summary of all your database settings. If you need to make a correction, use the Back button to step back to previous pages of the wizard.
  7. When you are satisfied with the database settings, check Accept terms and conditions and click Create.

The process of provisioning and creating the database takes several minutes. After it completes successfully, the MC displays a Get Started button. This button leads to a page of useful links for getting started with your new database.

See Also