Downloading and Starting the Vertica Community Edition VM

For a hands-on introduction to Vertica, you can use the Vertica Community Edition Virtual Machine (Vertica CE VM), which is available for download on my.vertica.com.

The Vertica CE VM is a pre-configured Linux environment that includes the Vertica Analytic Database and client tools. After you download and startup the VM, you no longer need internet access. Everything you need is available locally within the VM environment. The VM includes a user guide that steps you through a set of typical tasks involved in administering your Vertica database and querying data.

Requirements

The Vertica CE VM is packaged as an Open Virtualization Architecture (OVA) file that can be imported into a virtualization application that supports the OVA format. If you do not already have a virtualization product, you can download and install one of the free VM players, such as:

The Vertica CE VM requires between 20 and 50 GB of available disk space on the host computer. The OVA file alone is about 8 GB on download. When you import the OVA file into the VM player, it is uncompressed to about 16 GB. The VM can use up to a maximum of 50 GB, depending on the operations you perform.

Download the Vertica CE VM

  1. Sign in or create an account on my.vertica.com. You must be logged in to download the VM.
  2. On the Downloads page, locate the Vertica CE VM OVA file, the Vertica CE VM User Guide and the short introductory video.
    1. Watch the video for a quick overview.
    2. Download the user guide if you would like to save it outside the VM. Otherwise, you can use the copy of the user guide that is included in the VM itself.
    3. Download the OVA file.

Note: Because of its size, the OVA file takes some time to download.

Start Up the Vertica CE VM

  1. Start your VM player.
  2. In the VM player, select Open (VMware) or Import (VirtualBox) and select the Vertica CE VM OVA file. This initial load process may take some time.
  3. Start the Vertica CE VM.
  4. Log in to the Vertica CE VM:

    User name: Vertica DBA

    Password: password

What's In the VM?

In the Vertica CE VM, you will find these components up and running and ready for use:

Note: VMart is fully loaded, except for the online_sales fact table and its two unique dimensions. Instructions for loading the missing data are provided as an exercise in the Vertica CE VM User Guide.

The Vertica CE VM Environment

The Vertica CE VM is a CentOS 7.3 Virtual Machine. The VM is configured with the following settings:

The Vertica Community Edition database that is running in the VM has a single node.

Note: The Vertica VM is not supported for production use.