Manually Creating an Eon Mode Database on Azure

Once you have met the cluster and storage requirements for using an Eon Mode database on Azure, you are ready to create an Eon Mode database. Use the admintools create_db tool to create your Eon Mode database.

Creating an Authentication File

If your database will use a managed identity to authenticate with the Azure storage container, you do not need to supply any additional configuration information to the create_db tool.

If your database will not use a managed identity, you must supply create_db with authentication information in a configuration file. It must contain at least the AzureStorageCredentials parameter that defines one or more account names and keys Vertica will use to access blob storage. It can also contain an AzureStorageEnpointConfig parameter that defines an alternate endpoint to use instead of the the default Azure host name. This option is useful if you are creating a test environment using an Azure storage emulator such as Azurite.

Vertica does not officially support Azure storage emulators as a communal storage location.

The following table defines the values that can be set in these two parameters.

Parameter Description
AzureStorageCredentials

Collection of JSON objects, each of which specifies connection credentials for one endpoint. This parameter takes precedence over Azure managed identities.

The collection must contain at least one object and may contain more. Each object must specify at least one of accountName or blobEndpoint, and at least one of accountKey or sharedAccessSignature.

  • accountName: If not specified, uses the label of blobEndpoint.

  • blobEndpoint: Host name with optional port (host:port). If not specified, uses account.blob.core.windows.net.

  • accountKey: Access key for the account or endpoint.

  • sharedAccessSignature: Access token for finer-grained access control, if being used by the Azure endpoint.
AzureStorageEndpointConfig

Collection of JSON objects, each of which specifies configuration elements for one endpoint. Each object must specify at least one of accountName or blobEndpoint.

  • accountName: If not specified, uses the label of blobEndpoint.

  • blobEndpoint: Host name with optional port (host:port). If not specified, uses account.blob.core.windows.net.

  • protocol: HTTPS (default) or HTTP.

  • isMultiAccountEndpoint: true if the endpoint supports multiple accounts, false otherwise (default is false). To use multiple-account access, you must include the account name in the URI. If a URI path contains an account, this value is assumed to be true unless explicitly set to false.

The authentication configuration file is a text file containing the configuration parameter names and their values. The values are in a JSON format. The name of this file is not important. The following examples use the file name auth_params.conf.

The following example is a configuration file for a storage account hosted on Azure. The storage account name is mystore, and the key value is a placeholder. In your own configuration file, you must provide the storage account's access key. You can find this value by right-clicking the storage account in the Azure Storage Explorer and selecting Copy Primary Key.

AzureStorageCredentials=[{"accountName": "mystore", "accountKey": "access-key"}]

The following example shows a configuration file that defines an account for a storage container hosted on the local system using the Azurite storage system. The user account and key are the "well-known" account provided by Azurite by default. Because this configuration uses an alternate storage endpoint, it also defines the AzureStorageEndpointConfig parameter. In addition to reiterating the account name and endpoint definition, this example sets the protocol to the non-encrypted HTTP.

This example wraps the contents of the JSON values for clarity. In an actual configuration file, you cannot wrap these values. They must be on a single line.

AzureStorageCredentials=[{"accountName": "devstoreaccount1", "blobEndpoint": "127.0.0.1:10000 ", 
                          "accountKey": 
"Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw=="
                        }] 

AzureStorageEndpointConfig=[{"accountName": "devstoreaccount1", 
                             "blobEndpoint": "127.0.0.1:10000", "protocol": "http"}]

Creating the Eon Mode Database

Use the admintools create_db tool to create your Eon Mode database. The required arguments you pass to this tool are:

Argument Description
--communal-storage-location The URI for the storage container Vertica will use for communal storage. This URI must use the azb:// schema. See Azure Blob Storage Object Store for the format of this URI.
-x The path to the file containing the authentication parameters Vertica needs to access the communal storage location. This argument is only required if your database will use a storage account name and key to authenticate with the storage container. If it is using a managed identity, you do not need to specify this argument.
--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 divisor. See How Shard Count Affects Scaling Your Cluster for more information.
-s A comma-separated list of the nodes in your database.
-d The name for your database.

Some other common optional arguments for create_db are:

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 an Eon Mode database with the following settings:

  • Vertica will use a storage account named mystore.
  • The communal data will be stored in a directory named verticadb located in a storage container named db_blobs.
  • The authentication information Vertica needs to access the storage container is in the file named auth_params.conf in the current directory. The contents of this file are shown in the first example under Creating an Authentication File.
  • The hostnames of the nodes in the cluster are node01 through node03.
$ admintools -t create_db \
             --communal-storage-location=azb://mystore/db_blobs/verticadb \
             -x auth_params.conf -s node01,node02,node03  \
             -d verticadb --depot-path /vertica/depot --shard-count 3 \ 
             -p 'mypassword'