Community Edition

The Community Edition is the easiest way to get Exasol up and running in a short time. It is a free-to-use, one-node image of the Exasol database that can be installed on common virtualization software. The Community Edition supports all the features available in Exasol and lets you manage up to 200GB of data.

This quick start guide provides you with information on how to get started with the Exasol Community edition.

Exasol Community Edition comes with community support. If you need additional assistance, you would need to purchase it. For more information, refer to our Customer Support page.

Quick Start Video

Prerequisites

  • A machine with a minimum of 4 GB RAM and any 64-bit Operating System
  • A virtual machine player

    Exasol is tested on Virtual Box and VMWare player.

  • The virtual machine image (click here to download)
  • ODBC or JDBC drivers for connecting your preferred SQL client

Step 1: Download and Install Virtualization Software

If you do not already use a virtual environment (such as a Virtual Box, VMWare player, KVM, etc.), you need to set one up. If you plan to load data from your local machine, you do not have to change the standard network settings. In other cases, you might want to set it to either NAT or Bridge. Refer to the documentation of your chosen virtualization software for information on how to do this.

Step 2: Download Exasol Community Edition

To download the Exasol Community Edition, you need to first register with us. The download links are emailed to your registered email address. You are provided with an option to download the Community Edition as a virtual machine image (.ova) or a disk image (.iso).

Step 3: Import Virtual Machine Image

Import the Community Edition image using your virtualization software. Based on the Community Edition virtual image (.ova) or (.iso), the following options are available to import the virtual image.

 

Change Considerations

To improve the performance of your Exasol installation, you can consider changing the following default values in the virtual machine's properties:

- VM RAM: The default RAM for the Community Edition virtual machine is 4 GB. You can increase this to improve performance, but always ensure that there is enough RAM remaining for the host OS.

- Number of virtual cores: Depending on the capacity of your host system, you can increase the number of virtual cores for the virtual machine.

Do not change any other settings of the imported virtual machine.

Step 4: Start the Community Edition

Start the virtual machine to boot the Exasol Community Edition. If everything ran smoothly, the configuration screen is displayed as shown below: 

The Configuration screen displays

  • The DB Connection String and user details for connecting to the database instance.
  • The EXAoperation URL and user details for connecting to EXAoperation.

Step 5: Connect to Exasol

You can connect to Exasol using SQL Clients, Drivers, Business Intelligence tools, and so on. For more information, refer to the Connect to Exasol section.

If you want to enable the Internet access for the database using NAT, see Enable internet access for Exasol Community Edition.

Step 6: Load Data

After you successfully connect to Exasol, you can load data into Exasol from file or from other databases. For more information, refer to the Loading Data section.

Step 7: Connect to EXAoperation

EXAoperation is Exasol's administration console that provides a complete interface for configuring, managing, and monitoring Exasol. Additionally, EXAoperation provides you with an overview of the system such as database instances, available space, and so on. You can also update Exasol license and drivers through EXAoperation.

To access EXAoperation, open a browser on your local machine and enter the EXAoperation URL from Step 4. A login page is displayed, and you can log in using the default user name / password (admin/admin).