First Steps in Exasol SaaS

Sign up

To get started with Exasol SaaS, you first have to sign up for a free trial account.

1. Visit https://cloud.exasol.com/signup, enter your email address, and click Sign up.
2. You will receive an email to verify your email address and finish setting up your account, including creating a secure password.
3. After setting up your account, you will receive another email with your account details and can sign in.

When you log in to your Exasol SaaS environment, your user account is assigned the Owner role and can perform all actions. You can invite other users that can view the databases in your account. Only users with the Owner role can add new databases.

For more information about user accounts and access management, see Access Management.

Add your first database

The first time you sign in to Exasol SaaS, you will be asked to add a new database.

1. Choose a database type. If you want to accelerate your BI by replicating data into an Exasol database, choose Espresso. For more advanced use cases, choose Enterprise.

2. Select the AWS region where the database will be deployed. If you are unsure, select the region that is closest to your location.

3. For Espresso, the new database will be named EspressoDatabase. For Enterprise, you can enter a name for the new database. You can change the name later for both database types.

4. For Espresso, select the maximum data size that you will require for the database. The application will then choose the appropriate instance size for the main cluster. The cluster will be named MainCluster.

   For Enterprise, choose an instance type for the cluster from the dropdown menu. You can also set a name for the cluster.

   The optimal cluster size for an Exasol database is based on usage patterns. As a rule of thumb, start with a RAM size that corresponds to about 10 percent of the size of your raw data. For example, if you want to process about 1 TiB of raw data, the cluster size Small may be a good starting point.

   Depending on your workload, you may need a larger cluster size to use additional CPU and memory. Sometimes, a smaller cluster may however also meet your requirements and be more cost-effective. You can dynamically test which size best fits your needs by resizing a cluster.

5. If desired, set a timeout value for the Cluster auto-stop feature, which automatically stops the cluster after a period of inactivity. The default value is 120 minutes. You can also disable the auto-stop feature.

   Disabling the auto-stop feature may result in increased cloud resource usage.

6. When you have set the options for your database, click on Add database. You will be redirected to the Databases page in the web console.

   

   The database and cluster will be in Creating status until they are ready for use, then the status will be shown as Running. The creation process will take about 15 minutes to complete. You will receive an email when your database is ready for use.

   

To learn more about how to create and manage your databases and clusters in Exasol SaaS, see Database Management.