Install Exasol - step by step

This article explains how to install Exasol as an application on Linux hosts.

The following procedure describes how to install Exasol with a user having root privileges on the database hosts. To install Exasol for a non-root user, additional configuration steps are required. For more information, see Rootless Installation.

# this system is not using a volume manager:
lsblk -p
NAME     MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
/dev/sda   8:0    0 388.5M  1 disk
/dev/sdb   8:16   0     4G  0 disk [SWAP]
/dev/sdc   8:32   0   256G  0 disk /mnt/wslg/distro

# this system is using a logical volume manager:
lsblk -p
NAME              MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
/dev/loop1          7:1    0 91.9M  1 loop
/dev/nvme0n1      259:0    0  100G  0 disk
|-/dev/nvme0n1p1  259:4    0 99.9G  0 part /etc/ssh
|-/dev/nvme0n1p14 259:5    0    4M  0 part
`-/dev/nvme0n1p15 259:6    0  106M  0 part
/dev/nvme3n1      259:1    0   50G  0 disk

If you install Exasol for a non-root user, the data disks must be writeable for that user and additional configuration of the storage devices may be required. For more information, see Rootless Installation.

Installation

Step 5: Download and install c4

Exasol Deployment Tool (c4) is a command-line application that is used to install Exasol on a single host or multiple hosts in a network. The c4 application can run either on a separate system (jump host) or on one of the database hosts.

Database and c4 version dependency

The version of c4 used for installation must be compatible with the Exasol database version that you install. The latest version of the database is always compatible with the latest version of c4.

If you want to install an earlier version of Exasol, refer to the following table to find out which version of c4 to use (click on the title to expand):

Exasol database and c4 versions

Exasol database version	Required c4 version
8.31.0	4.20.0
8.29.2	4.19.0
8.29.1	4.19.0
8.29.0	4.19.0
8.28.4	4.17.5
8.28.2	4.17.4
8.27.0	4.16.0
8.26.1	4.15.0
8.26.0	4.15.0
8.25.0	4.14.1
8.24.0	4.13.0
8.23.4	0.4.12
8.22.0	0.4.11
8.21.0	0.4.11
8.20.0	0.4.10
8.18.1	0.4.10
8.18.0	0.4.10

Alternative 1: Installation host has internet access

• On the installation host, download c4 from the Exasol Download Portal. You can also use the following command in a Linux terminal:

  wget https://x-up.s3.amazonaws.com/releases/c4/linux/x86_64/<version>/c4 -O c4 && chmod +x c4

  Replace <version> with the desired c4 version, for example, 4.20.0.

  For information about the latest release of Exasol Deployment Tool (c4), see c4 Release Notes.

  For more information about how to install and use c4, see Exasol Deployment Tool (c4).

• The Exasol 8 installation package will be downloaded by c4 during the installation process.

Alternative 2: Installation host does not have internet access

If the host used to run the installation is not connected to the internet, download the resources using another machine and then copy them to the installation host.

1. On a machine with internet access, download c4 from the Exasol Download Portal or using the command line. For more information, see Install c4.

2. Download the latest version of Exasol from the Exasol Download Portal.

3. Copy c4 and the Exasol installation package to the same directory on the host that will run the installation.

You must make the c4 binary executable for all users on the host by using chmod +x c4. Otherwise the application will not be able to run the installation. For more information, see Install c4.

Step 6: Create a configuration file

nano ./config

CCC_HOST_ADDRS="10.0.0.11 10.0.0.12 10.0.0.13 10.0.0.14"
CCC_HOST_EXTERNAL_ADDRS="203.0.113.11 203.0.113.12 203.0.113.13 203.0.113.14"
CCC_HOST_DATADISK=/dev/mapper/exasol_disk_1,/dev/mapper/exasol_disk_2
CCC_HOST_IMAGE_USER=exasol
CCC_HOST_IMAGE_PASSWORD=exasol123
CCC_HOST_KEY_PAIR_FILE=id_rsa
CCC_PLAY_WORKING_COPY=@exasol-8.32.0
CCC_PLAY_DB_PASSWORD=exasol456
CCC_PLAY_RESERVE_NODES=1

Run diagnostic tool (optional)

Before you start the installation you can run a diagnostic tool on your configuration. By using this tool you can detect issues before starting the installation. The diagnostic tool will check things like ssh accessibility to the hosts, sudo password correctness (if the CCC_HOST_IMAGE_PASSWORD parameter is set), missing required parameters, etc.

To run the diagnostic tool, use c4 host diag -i <path to configuration>. For example:

./c4 host diag -i /path_to_config_file/myconfig
OK check_disks
OK check_external_dependencies
OK check_internal_dependencies
OK check_required_params
OK check_sudo

If an error occurs during the installation process, the process is automatically interrupted and the installation is rolled back. The last INFO message on the screen provides information about the error. For example:

INFO[2023-09-02 09:22:44]: Extracting packages...
cp: cannot create regular file '/var/lib/ccc/bin/': No such file or directory

In this example, an error happened during the packages extraction step. When you have located and resolved the error, run the installation script again.

If you need help with the installation process, create a support case.

Create a local archive volume

1. On one of the nodes in the deployment, use c4 connect -t <DEPLOYMENT>[.<NODE]/cos to connect to EXAClusterOS (COS). For example:
   

   ./c4 connect -t 1/cos

   In most cases it does not matter which node you connect to. If you do not specify a node, c4 will connect to the first active node in the deployment. The command prompt in COS indicates which node you are connected to. For example, if you are connected as root to node 11:

   [root@n11 ~]#

   For more information about how to use c4 connect, see How to use c4.

2. To create a local archive volume, use the ConfD job st_volume_create with the parameters described in the following table.

   Some parameters values for the new archive volume must match the corresponding values for the data volume. To find out the values used by the data volume, use the ConfD jobs db_info and st_node_list.

   Click to show example output from db_info

   confd_client db_info db_name: Exasol
   config:
   ...
     nodes:
     - 11
     - 12
     - 13
     - 14
     num_active_nodes: 3
   ...
     owner:
     - 500
     - 500
   ...
   nodes:
     active:
     - n11
     - n12
     - n13
     reserve:
     - n14
    ...

   Click to show example output from st_node_list

   confd_client st_node_list
   '0':
     hdd_free_space:
       disk1: 93.5566 GiB
     hdds:
       name: /dev/nvme2n1
       type: disk1
       ...
       name: /dev/nvme3n1
       type: disk1
       ...
     name: n11
      ...
   '1':
     hdd_free_space:
       disk1: 93.5566 GiB
     hdds:
       name: /dev/nvme2n1
       type: disk1
       ...
       name: /dev/nvme3n1
       type: disk1
       ...
     name: n12
       ...
   '2':
     hdd_free_space:
       disk1: 93.5566 GiB
     hdds:
       name: /dev/nvme2n1
       type: disk1
       ...
       name: /dev/nvme3n1
       type: disk1
       ...
     name: n13
       ...
    '3':
     hdd_free_space:
       disk1: 93.5566 GiB
     hdds:
       name: /dev/nvme2n1
       type: disk1
       ...
       name: /dev/nvme3n1
       type: disk1
       ...
     name: n14
       ...

   Required parameters

   Parameter name	Data type	Value
   disk	string	The disk name in Exasol for the storage disk where the data volume resides.
   owner	tuple, list	Owner tuple (or list of tuples) for the data volume.
   nodes	list	List of node IDs in the data volume.
   num_master_nodes	integer	The number of master nodes (active nodes) in the data volume.
   name	string	A name for the new archive volume.
   redundancy	integer	The redundancy level of the archive volume.
   size	string	Volume size for the archive volume as a string, with unit (MiB, GiB, or TiB). The size value depends on the database size and the backup schedule.
   partition_size	string, integer	4294967296 for volumes <250 GiB 34359738368 for volumes ≥ 250 GiB and <1TiB 274877906944 for volumes ≥ 1 TiB
   shared	boolean	true
   type	string	archive
   block_size	string	512 KiB
   stripe_size	string	512 KiB

   Master nodes

   The parameter num_master_nodes defines the number of master nodes that the volume will use. The number of master nodes must match the number of active nodes in the cluster. For example: in a cluster with 3 active nodes and 1 reserve node (3+1), the number of master nodes is 3.

   In the following example, we create a 1 TiB data volume with the name LocalArchiveVolume1 on the storage disk disk1 with 3 master nodes and redundancy 2. The command returns the volume ID for the new volume (vid: 3).

   confd_client st_volume_create name: LocalArchiveVolume1 disk: disk1 type: archive size: "1 TiB" num_master_nodes: 3 nodes: [11, 12, 13] redundancy: 2 partition_size: 274877906944 shared: true, owner: [500,500]
   # ConfD returns the volume ID of the new archive volume:
   vid: 3

   The ConfD job st_volume_create does not necessarily use the specified size, but does internal rounding. To check the actual size of the archive volume after creation to see if it is acceptable, use the ConfD job st_volume_info. If the rounding takes up too much space, contact Support.

3. To create the backup schedule, use the ConfD job db_backup_add_schedule.

   If a local archive volume runs out of free space, expired backups will be automatically deleted. Expired remote archive volumes will not be deleted by this function.

   A common backup schedule is a weekly backup with an expiration of 10 days, and incremental backups on the first 6 days of the week with an expiration time of 3 days. To set up this configuration, create two backup schedules. For example:

   confd_client db_backup_add_schedule db_name: MY_DATABASE backup_name: weekly_full_backup backup_volume_name: VOLUME_NAME enabled: true level: expire: '1w 3d'  minute: 0 hour: 0 day: '*' month: '*' weekday: 0

   confd_client db_backup_add_schedule db_name: MY_DATABASE backup_name: daily_incremental backup_volume_name: VOLUME_NAME enabled: true level: 1 expire: '3d'  minute: 0 hour: 0 day: '*' month: '*' weekday: '1,2,3,4,5,6'