Run Vantage Express on VMware

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You can now get a hosted instance of Vantage for free at https://clearscape.teradata.com.

Overview

This how-to shows how to gain access to a Teradata database by running it on your local machine. Once you finish the steps you will have a working Teradata Vantage Express database on your computer.

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Starting with version 17.20, Vantage Express includes the following analytics packages: Vantage Analytics Library, Bring Your Own Model (BYOM), API Integration with AWS SageMaker.

Prerequisites

1. A computer using one of the following operating systems: Windows, Linux or Intel-based MacOS.
   note

   For M1/M2 MacOS systems, see Run Vantage Express on UTM.

2. 30GB of disk space and enough CPU and RAM to be able to dedicate at least one core and 6GB RAM to the virtual machine.
3. Admin rights to be able to install and run the software.

Installation

Download required software

• The latest version of Vantage Express. If you have not used the Teradata downloads website before, you will need to register.
• VMware Workstation Player.

info

Commercial organizations require commercial licenses to use VMware Workstation Player. If you don't want to acquire VMware licenses you can run Vantage Express on VirtualBox.

info

VMware doesn't offer VMware Workstation Player for MacOS. If you are on a Mac, you will need to install VMware Fusion instead. It's a paid product but VMware offers a free 30-day trial. Alternatively, you can run Vantage Express on VirtualBox or UTM.

• On Windows, you will also need 7zip to unzip Vantage Express.

Run installers

1. Install VMware Player or VMware Fusion by running the installer and accepting the default values.
2. If on Windows, install 7zip.

Run Vantage Express

• Go to the directory where you downloaded Vantage Express and unzip the downloaded file.
• Double-click on the .vmx file. This will start the VM image in VMware Player/Fusion.

• Press [ENTER] to select the highlighted LINUX boot partition.

• On the next screen, press ENTER again to select the default SUSE Linux kernel.

• After completing the bootup sequence a terminal login prompt as shown in the screenshot below will appear. Don't enter anything in the terminal. Wait till the system starts the GUI.

• After a while the following prompt will appear - assuming that you did not enter anything after the command login prompt above. Press okay button in the screen below.

• Once the VM is up, you will see its desktop environment. When prompted for username/password enter root for both.

• The database is configured to autostart with the VM. To confirm that the database has started go to the virtual desktop and start Gnome Terminal.

• In the terminal execute pdestate command that will inform you if Vantage has already started:

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To paste into Gnome Terminal press SHIFT+CTRL+V.

You want to wait till you see the following message:

See examples of messages that pdestate returns when the database is still initializing.

PDE state is DOWN/HARDSTOP.
PDE state is START/NETCONFIG.
PDE state is START/GDOSYNC.
PDE state is START/TVSASTART.
PDE state is START/READY.
PDE state is RUN/STARTED.
DBS state is 1/1: DBS Startup - Initializing DBS Vprocs
PDE state is RUN/STARTED.
DBS state is 1/5: DBS Startup - Voting for Transaction Recovery
PDE state is RUN/STARTED.
DBS state is 1/4: DBS Startup - Starting PE Partitions
PDE state is RUN/STARTED.

• Now that the database is up, go back to the virtual desktop and launch Teradata Studio Express

• When you first start it you will be offered a tour. Once you close the tour, you will see a wizard window to add a new connection. Select Teradata:

• On the next screen, connect to the database on your localhost using dbc for the username and password:

Run sample queries

1. We will now run some queries in the VM. To avoid copy/paste issues between the host and the VM, we will open this quick start in the VM. Go to the virtual desktop, start Firefox and point it to this quick start.
2. Once in Teradata Studio Express, go to Query Development perspective (go to the top menu and select Window -> Query Development).
3. Connect using the previously created connection profile by double-clicking on Database Connections -> New Teradata.
4. Using dbc user, we will create a new database called HR. Copy/paste this query and run it by hitting the run query button () or pressing [F5] key:

• Let’s create a sample table and insert some data and query it. We will first create a table to hold employee information:

• Now, let's insert a record:

• Finally, let's see if we can retrieve the data:

You should get the following results:

Summary

In this guide we have covered how to quickly create a working Teradata environment. We used Teradata Vantage Express in a VM running on VMware. In the same VM, we ran Teradata Studio Express to issue queries. We installed all software locally and didn't have to pay for cloud resources.

Next steps

• Query data stored in object storage

Further reading

• Teradata® Studio™ and Studio™ Express Installation Guide

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If you have any questions or need further assistance, please visit our community forum where you can get support and interact with other community members.