Quick start with Exasol Personal

Prerequisites

A cloud account on one of the supported platforms with permission to provision compute instances.

For more details see:

• Set up an AWS account for Exasol Personal

• Set up an Azure account for Exasol Personal

• Set up an Exoscale account for Exasol Personal

Quick start (macOS / Linux)

# 1. Download the launcher
curl https://downloads.exasol.com/exasol-personal/installer.sh | sh

# 2. Create a deployment directory
mkdir deployment && cd deployment

# 3. Install on your cloud of choice
exasol install aws        # Amazon Web Services
exasol install azure      # Microsoft Azure
exasol install exoscale   # Exoscale

Deploy Exasol Personal (full procedure)

1. Download Exasol Launcher for your local platform.

   On Linux and macOS, run the following command:

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   curl https://downloads.exasol.com/exasol-personal/installer.sh | sh

   This installs the exasol binary to ~/.local/bin. On most Linux distributions this directory is already in your PATH. On macOS, or if the installer reports that ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH, follow the instructions in the installer.

   On Windows: download Exasol Launcher from the Exasol Download Portal. and copy the exasol binary to a directory in your PATH.

2. Create a new directory deployment and change into the directory:

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   mkdir deployment
   cd deployment

3. Configure authentication for your cloud provider. See the relevant account setup guide in Prerequisites for the environment variables and credentials required.

4. To install Exasol Personal, run the exasol install command with the preset for your cloud provider:

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   exasol install aws                         # Amazon Web Services
   exasol install azure --location <region>   # Microsoft Azure
   exasol install exoscale [--zone <zone>]    # Exoscale

   The exasol install command does the following:

   • Generates OpenTofu files in the deployment directory

   • Provisions the necessary cloud infrastructure

   • Starts up the infrastructure

   • Downloads and installs Exasol Personal on that infrastructure

   The installation process normally takes about 10 to 20 minutes to complete.

Region and zone options for Azure and Exoscale

For deployments on Azure and Exoscale you can pass additional options with the exasol install <preset> command to explicitly choose a deployment region/zone.

For Azure the --location option is always required because the target region is not inferred automatically.

Examples:

exasol install azure --location westeurope

exasol install exoscale                     # deploy to ch-gva-2 (default)
exasol install exoscale --zone de-fra-1     # deploy to Frankfurt
exasol install exoscale --zone at-vie-1     # deploy to Vienna

Available zones for Exoscale are: ch-gva-2 (default), de-fra-1, de-muc-1, at-vie-1, at-vie-2, bg-sof-1.

When the deployment process has finished, the terminal output will show the connection details for the new database. You can also find this information at any time by using exasol info in the terminal.

Choosing cluster size and compute instance types

exasol install <preset> --cluster-size <number> --instance-type <string>

If the deployment process is interrupted, cloud resources that were already created will not be automatically removed and may continue to accrue cost. In that case, use exasol destroy to clean up the deployment, or remove the resources manually in your cloud provider’s console.

Connect to your Exasol database

Once the deployment process is complete, use exasol info for information about how to connect to your Exasol database. The credentials for connecting to the database from a client are stored in the file secrets.json in the deployment directory.

You can also use the built-in SQL client in Exasol Launcher to connect directly to the database from the command line:

exasol connect

# Connect to the compute instance your database is running on:
exasol shell host

# Connect to the COS container your node is running on:
exasol shell container

Load sample data

To get started quickly, Exasol provides two sample datasets hosted on S3 that you can import directly using SQL. You can load these datasets directly by executing the following command in the deployment directory:

exasol connect < sample.sql

Alternatively, connect with a SQL client of your choice and paste the following statements:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE PRODUCTS (
    PRODUCT_ID        DECIMAL(18,0),
    PRODUCT_CATEGORY  VARCHAR(100),
    PRODUCT_NAME      VARCHAR(2000000),
    PRICE_USD         DOUBLE,
    INVENTORY_COUNT   DECIMAL(10,0),
    MARGIN            DOUBLE,
    DISTRIBUTE BY PRODUCT_ID
);

IMPORT INTO PRODUCTS
  FROM PARQUET AT 'https://exasol-easy-data-access.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/sample-data/'
  FILE 'online_products.parquet';

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE PRODUCT_REVIEWS (
    REVIEW_ID          DECIMAL(18,0),
    PRODUCT_ID         DECIMAL(18,0),
    PRODUCT_NAME       VARCHAR(2000000),
    PRODUCT_CATEGORY   VARCHAR(100),
    RATING             DECIMAL(2,0),
    REVIEW_TEXT        VARCHAR(100000),
    REVIEWER_NAME      VARCHAR(200),
    REVIEWER_PERSONA   VARCHAR(100),
    REVIEWER_AGE       DECIMAL(3,0),
    REVIEWER_LOCATION  VARCHAR(200),
    REVIEW_DATE       VARCHAR(200),
    DISTRIBUTE BY PRODUCT_ID
);

IMPORT INTO PRODUCT_REVIEWS
  FROM PARQUET AT 'https://exasol-easy-data-access.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/sample-data/'
  FILE 'product_reviews.parquet';

Both tables are distributed by PRODUCT_ID, enabling efficient joins between them.

Stop and start Exasol Personal

To save costs, you can temporarily stop Exasol Personal by using the following command (in the deployment directory):

exasol stop

This stops the compute instance(s) that Exasol Personal is running on.

Networking and data volumes that the database data is stored on will continue to incur costs when compute instances are stopped.

To start Exasol Personal again, use the following command:

exasol start

The IP addresses of the nodes will change when you stop and start Exasol Personal. Check the output of the start command to know how to connect to the deployment after a restart.

Remove Exasol Personal

To completely remove an Exasol Personal deployment, use exasol destroy. This command will terminate and delete the compute instances and all associated resources on your cloud platform.

To learn more about this command, use exasol destroy --help.

Presets

Exasol Personal uses presets — self-contained directories of templates and config files — to provision infrastructure and install Exasol. Each deployment combines two presets:

Infrastructure preset

• Provisions cloud resources (compute, network, and storage).

• Built-in presets: aws, azure, exoscale

Installation preset

• Installs and configures Exasol on the provisioned nodes.

• Built-in presets: ubuntu (used by default).

exasol install <infra-preset> [install-preset]

exasol install aws            # built-in preset by name
exasol install ./my-preset    # local preset by path (starts with . / ~ or contains /)
exasol install ./my-infra ./my-install   # both presets from local paths

To list all available built-in presets:

exasol presets

Local presets

You can store your own preset directories anywhere on your filesystem and pass the path directly to exasol install. This lets you target additional cloud platforms or customize provisioning without modifying the launcher.

Building your own presets

For the full preset contract: manifest schema, required output artifacts, variable channels, and the reference implementations in assets/infrastructure, see Preset development (infrastructure + installation) on GitHub.