HP Vertica Essentials (2014)

Preface

Column-oriented databases have emerged as one of the leading solutions for performing analytics on a huge amount of data. Vertica, recently acquired by Hewlett Packard (HP), is one of the flag bearers in the field of distributed-column-oriented databases. Vertica can be easily classified as a Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) database, which allows to you process queries concurrently on a large number of databases. Vertica's distributed architecture not only allows fast query processing, but also a highly fault tolerant architecture. With innovative features such as projections, a replacement for indexes, and views, Vertica has emerged as one of the most sought after relational analytical database solutions.

With more and more clients pressing for Vertica as a solution, we are glad to present a small admin book on Vertica, which will empower DBAs to learn and perform the most essential administration activities on Vertica.

This book has been especially written for Vertica 6.0 (and later). It is assumed that you are a little familiar with the Vertica database. Our references for this book were our experiences with Vertica, the Vertica administration guide, and the Vertica forums. Since this book is just a snapshot of the day-to-day administration activities of Vertica, it is highly advised to look into the official Vertica guides for more information and other administration tasks.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Installing Vertica, explains how to install Vertica.

Chapter 2, Cluster Management, helps you to learn how to manage a running Vertica cluster.

Chapter 3, Monitoring Vertica, elucidates different methods of monitoring various aspects of a Vertica cluster.

Chapter 4, Backup and Restore, explains how to create backups of a database and restore them.

Chapter 5, Performance Improvement, helps you learn some tricks of the trade to achieve good performance in Vertica.

Chapter 6, Bulk Loading, illustrates the working of the bulk loading utility of Vertica.

What you need for this book

You just need a running Vertica cluster. If you don't have one, then Chapter 1, Installing Vertica, will explain how to create one of your own.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for Vertica users and DBAs who want to perform basic administration and fine tuning. Prior knowledge of Vertica will help in understanding the chapters better, but is not mandatory.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Now log in as root or use the sudo command."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

/opt/vertica/bin/adminTools

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Now, to create a database, navigate to Main Menu | Configuration Menu | Create Database."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.