Exasol on AWS

Amazon Web Service (AWS) provides a suite of infrastructure services that enable you to deploy Exasol in a highly available, scalable, and affordable way. This section provides you with step-by-step instructions for deploying Exasol on AWS Cloud.

Before You Begin

Read the following sections before you start setting up Exasol on AWS.

Exasol on AWS is available through the AWS Marketplace in two variants, depending on how you want to license it.

  • Exasol Analytic Database (Single Node / Cluster, Bring-Your-Own-License): Bring your own license (BYOL) license model lets you choose a static license for Exasol software and a dynamic billing for the cloud resources. In this model, you need to purchase a license from Exasol and add it to your cloud instance. This way, you pay only for the cloud resources through the cloud platform's billing cycle and there is no billing for the software. You can always change your setup later to scale up or down your system and the billing changes accordingly. However, there is a limit for the maximum scaling based on your license type (DB RAM or raw data size).
    To get an idea about the pricing for this offering, see Pricing.

    You can check the limits from EXAoperation. To view the license limit, select Configuration > Software and then License tab.

  • Exasol Analytic Database (Single Node / Cluster, Pay-As-You-Go): Pay as you go (PAYG) license model is a flexible and scalable license model for Exasol's deployment on a cloud platform. In this mode, you pay for your cloud resources and Exasol software through the cloud platform's billing cycle. You can always change your setup later to scale up or down your system and the billing changes accordingly.
    To get an idea about the pricing for this offering, see Pricing.

    The PAYG option is the default option in the deployment templates. If you are not sure which version to choose from, then it is recommended to go with the PAYG option.

Exasol recommends the following cloud-specific configurations:

  • Instance families: Exasol recommends m5, r5, and c5 instances.
  • Storage: Instance-integrated hard drives (ephemeral storage) and EBS volumes are supported for data storage. In production environments, use EBS drives, as these provide maximum reliability and durability. For EBS type we recommend using at least General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes. For data backup and restore as well as data import and export, S3 storage is recommended.
  • Memory: Minimum main memory size recommended is 16GiB

We recommend setting up Exasol as a cluster. This offers the following advantages:

  • Scalability: easily scale out a cluster by adding additional nodes to process more data and to serve more concurrent users.
  • High availability: When a node fails the system automatically tries to repair this node or includes a standby node into the system (if a standby node was configured).

However, for small data sizes or evaluation purposes, a single-node system would be sufficient and more appropriate. Setting up a cluster using our CloudFormation templates is as easy as setting up a single node system.

Before you begin with deploying Exasol on AWS, we recommend you to familiarize yourself with the AWS services listed in this table.

AWS Services More Information
AWS Account

Ensure you have an AWS account. If you do not have one, you can sign up for an AWS Account.
IAM User

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources. You use IAM to control who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources. See Create an IAM User for more information.

IAM Policy

The Exasol Cloud Tool defines an IAM policy which is required for Exasol to run on AWS.

For information about AWS IAM policy, see AWS Identity and Access Management.
Key Pair

AWS uses public-key cryptography to secure the log-in information for your instance.

Unlike in symmetric cryptography, you need one key to encrypt data and another key to decrypt it. This allows you to openly publish one of the keys while you keep the other one secret. Together those two keys form a key pair.

See Create a Key Pair for more details.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Connection Considerations

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows you to control your networking environment, including selecting your own IP address range, creating subnets, and more. For the purposes of installing Exasol, you need to set up a VPC with a single public subnet. You can do this using the AWS Console. See Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for more information.

Instance Type

The EC2 instance types have different hardware and architecture configurations, and also influence the pricing for running Exasol on AWS. For a list of available EC2 Instance Types you can use, see Exasol's AWS Marketplace page.

Recommended instance families for Exasol are: 

  • General purpose, including M4, M5
  • Compute optimized, C5
  • Memory optimized, including R4, R5
Security Group

A security group is set of white-list rules for a stateful IP-level firewall. It is associated with network interfaces of an instance and can control inbound and outbound traffic through these interfaces. For more information, see Security Groups for Your VPC.
Storage Consideration

Before launching Exasol on an AWS instance, you must consider the storage type for data storage, import, export, and backups.

  • EBS volumes: Externally attached volumes that are persistent across instance shutdowns and can be migrated to other instances. However, they can be attached to only one instance at a time.
  • Emphemeral: Instance local disk where data is lost on instance shutdown.
  • Global object storage: S3 provides instance-independent global storage that can be shared between instances and managed services

See Storage for more information.

Exasol recommends using EBS volumes as storage configuration for Exasol on AWS.

Amazon EC2 Service Limits

Based on your region, there could be some limits (Amazon EC2 Service Limits) on the resources that you can use. You should check these limitations to manage your resources better.

For more information about how to take care of the resource limitations, see. AWS Service Limits.

Step 1: Subscribe to Exasol

To start with Exasol on AWS, you have to subscribe one of the offering on the Amazon Marketplace. Do the following to subscribe to Exasol on the AWS Marketplace:

  1. Log in to AWS Marketplace with your credentials. If you do not have an AWS account, you can create one from the Amazon Console.
  2. Search for Exasol in the AWS marketplace. You will get the following two options:
  3. Select the offering that suits your requirements. A product overview page is displayed that provides you with pricing and other information.
  4. Click Continue to Subscribe. On successful subscription, the next page shows you details about your subscription.

You must subscribe to Exasol from the AWS Marketplace. However, Exasol does not recommend you to continue with the configurations or launch Exasol from the AWS Marketplace. You can configure and deploy Exasol using the Exasol Cloud Deployment Wizard or using CloudFormation templates.

Step 2: Installation and Template Configuration

You can deploy Exasol on AWS using either of the following methods.

1. Using Cloud Deployment Wizard

Exasol recommends configuring and deploying an Exasol cluster or single node system using Exasol Cloud Deployment Wizard. The wizard guides you through the sizing, configuration, and deployment process. Internally it uses and parameterizes the standard CloudFormation templates.

To get a quick overview on how to deploy using the cloud deployment wizard, watch the below video: 

After configuring your cluster, you can either launch your AWS stack or you can download the pre-configured CloudFormation template. When you select the Launch Stack option, it opens with the AWS CloudFormation UI to proceed with the deployment process. In the CloudFormation UI, you can review and customize the stack settings.

For detailed step by step information on how to install Exasol on AWS using the wizard, see Installation Using Exasol Cloud Deployment Wizard.

2. Using CloudFormation Templates

If you don't want to use the configuration recommendations of the wizard, you can use the CloudFormation templates to install Exasol. For detailed instructions, refer to Exasol Installation Using CloudFormation Templates section.

Step 3: Connect Tools and Install Drivers

After installing Exasol on AWS, you can do the following:

Step 4: Load Data

After you have connected your choice of tool to Exasol, you can load your data into Exasol and process further. To know more about loading data into Exasol, see Loading Data.

Step 5: Administration

Once you have all the configurations in place and started using Exasol, you may have to perform some administration tasks, for example, adding new node, changing the instance type, increasing storage, and so on. To know more about the administrative activities that you can perform on your Exasol instance, see Administration on AWS.

Support, Troubleshooting & Software Updates

Exasol Analytic Database (Single Node and Cluster, Enterprise Support) is the pay-as-you-go version of Exasol that comes with Support Level Gold. You need to register to enable the support for your account. After you register, you can get the following benefits:

Click the following button to register for support.

Register for Support

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