Run Vantage Express on Google Cloud

Author: Adam Tworkiewicz
Last updated: August 23rd, 2022

Overview

This how-to demonstrates how to run Vantage Express in Google Cloud Platform. Vantage Express contains a fully functional Teradata SQL Engine.

If do not wish to pay for cloud usage you can install Vantage Express locally using VMware, VirtualBox, UTM.

Prerequisites

A Google Cloud account.
gcloud command line utility installed on your machine. You can find installation instructions here: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install.

Installation

Create a Ubuntu VM with 4 CPU’s and 8GB of RAM, a 70GB balanced disk. The following command creates a VM in us-central1 region. For best performance, replace the region with one that is the closest to you. For the list of supported regions see Google Cloud regions documentation.

Windows
MacOS
Linux

Run in Powershell:

gcloud compute instances create teradata-vantage-express `
  --zone=us-central1-a `
  --machine-type=n2-custom-4-8192 `
  --create-disk=boot=yes,device-name=ve-disk,image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud,image-family=ubuntu-2004-lts,size=70,type=pd-balanced `
  --enable-nested-virtualization `
  --tags=ve

gcloud compute instances create teradata-vantage-express \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=n2-custom-4-8192 \
  --create-disk=boot=yes,device-name=ve-disk,image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud,image-family=ubuntu-2004-lts,size=70,type=pd-balanced \
  --enable-nested-virtualization \
  --tags=ve

gcloud compute instances create teradata-vantage-express \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=n2-custom-4-8192 \
  --create-disk=boot=yes,device-name=ve-disk,image-project=ubuntu-os-cloud,image-family=ubuntu-2004-lts,size=70,type=pd-balanced \
  --enable-nested-virtualization \
  --tags=ve

ssh to your VM:

gcloud compute ssh teradata-vantage-express --zone=us-central1-a

Switch to root user:
```
sudo -i
```
Prepare the download directory for Vantage Express:
```
mkdir /opt/downloads
cd /opt/downloads
```

Install VirtualBox and 7zip:

apt update && apt-get install p7zip-full p7zip-rar virtualbox -y

Retrieve the curl command to download Vantage Express.
1. Go to Vantage Expess download page (registration required).
2. Click on the latest download link, e.g. "Vantage Express 17.20". You will see a license agreement popup. Don’t accept the license yet.
3. Open the network view in your browser. For example, in Chrome press F12 and navigate to Network tab:
4. Accept the license by clicking on I Agree button and cancel the download.
5. In the network view, find the last request that starts with VantageExpress. Right click on it and select Copy → Copy as cURL:

Head back to the ssh session and download Vantage Express by pasting the curl command. Add -o ve.7z to the command to save the download to file named ve.7z. You can remove all the HTTP headers, e.g.:

curl -o ve.7z 'http://d289lrf5tw1zls.cloudfront.net/database/teradata-express/VantageExpress17.20_Sles12_202108300444.7z?Expires=1638719978&Signature=GKBkNvery_long_signature__&Key-Pair-Id=********************'

Unzip the downloaded file. It will take several minutes:
```
7z x ve.7z
```

Start the VM in VirtualBox. The command will return immediately but the VM init process will take several minutes:

export VM_IMAGE_DIR="/opt/downloads/VantageExpress17.20_Sles12"
DEFAULT_VM_NAME="vantage-express"
VM_NAME="${VM_NAME:-$DEFAULT_VM_NAME}"
vboxmanage createvm --name "$VM_NAME" --register --ostype openSUSE_64
vboxmanage modifyvm "$VM_NAME" --ioapic on --memory 6000 --vram 128 --nic1 nat --cpus 4
vboxmanage storagectl "$VM_NAME" --name "SATA Controller" --add sata --controller IntelAhci
vboxmanage storageattach "$VM_NAME" --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium  "$(find $VM_IMAGE_DIR -name '*disk1*')"
vboxmanage storageattach "$VM_NAME" --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 1 --device 0 --type hdd --medium  "$(find $VM_IMAGE_DIR -name '*disk2*')"
vboxmanage storageattach "$VM_NAME" --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 2 --device 0 --type hdd --medium  "$(find $VM_IMAGE_DIR -name '*disk3*')"
vboxmanage modifyvm "$VM_NAME" --natpf1 "tdssh,tcp,,4422,,22"
vboxmanage modifyvm "$VM_NAME" --natpf1 "tddb,tcp,,1025,,1025"
vboxmanage startvm "$VM_NAME" --type headless
vboxmanage controlvm "$VM_NAME" keyboardputscancode 1c 1c

ssh to Vantage Express VM. Use root as password:
```
ssh -p 4422 root@localhost
```
Validate that the DB is up:
```
pdestate -a
```
If the command returns PDE state is RUN/STARTED. DBS state is 5: Logons are enabled - The system is quiescent, it means that Vantage Express has started. If the status is different, repeat pdestate -a till you get the correct status.
Once Vantage Express is up and running, start bteq client command line client. BTEQ (pronounced “bee-teek”) is a general-purpose, command-based client tool used to submit SQL queries to a Teradata Database.
```
bteq
```
Once in bteq, connect to your Vantage Express instance. When asked for the password, enter dbc:
```
.logon localhost/dbc
```

Run sample queries

Using dbc user, we will create a new database called HR. Copy/paste this query and run press Enter:
```
CREATE DATABASE HR
AS PERMANENT = 60e6, -- 60MB
    SPOOL = 120e6; -- 120MB
```
x

Were you able to run the query?

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

CREATE SET TABLE HR.Employees (
   GlobalID INTEGER,
   FirstName VARCHAR(30),
   LastName VARCHAR(30),
   DateOfBirth DATE FORMAT 'YYYY-MM-DD',
   JoinedDate DATE FORMAT 'YYYY-MM-DD',
   DepartmentCode BYTEINT
)
UNIQUE PRIMARY INDEX ( GlobalID );

Now, let’s insert a record:

INSERT INTO HR.Employees (
   GlobalID,
   FirstName,
   LastName,
   DateOfBirth,
   JoinedDate,
   DepartmentCode
)
VALUES (
   101,
   'Adam',
   'Tworkowski',
   '1980-01-05',
   '2004-08-01',
   01
);

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

SELECT * FROM HR.Employees;

You should get the following results:

GlobalID  FirstName  LastName   DateOfBirth  JoinedDate  DepartmentCode
--------  ---------  ---------- -----------  ----------  --------------
     101  Adam       Tworkowski  1980-01-05  2004-08-01               1

Optional setup

If you intend to stop and start the VM, you may want to add Vantage Express to autostart. ssh to your VM and run the following commands:

sudo -i

cat <<EOF >> /etc/default/virtualbox
VBOXAUTOSTART_DB=/etc/vbox
VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG=/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
EOF

cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/system/vantage-express.service
[Unit]
Description=vm1
After=network.target virtualbox.service
Before=runlevel2.target shutdown.target
[Service]
User=root
Group=root
Type=forking
Restart=no
TimeoutSec=5min
IgnoreSIGPIPE=no
KillMode=process
GuessMainPID=no
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/bin/VBoxManage startvm vantage-express --type headless
ExecStop=/usr/bin/VBoxManage controlvm vantage-express savestate
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable vantage-express
systemctl start vantage-express

If you would like to connect to Vantage Express from the Internet, you will need to open up firewall holes to your VM. You should also change the default password to dbc user:
1. To change the password for dbc user go to your VM and start bteq:
  bteq
2. Login to your database using dbc as username and password:
  .logon localhost/dbc
3. Change the password for dbc user:
  MODIFY USER dbc AS PASSWORD = new_password;
4. You can now open up port 1025 to the internet using gcloud command:
  gcloud compute firewall-rules create vantage-express --allow=tcp:1025 --direction=IN --target-tags=ve

Cleanup

To stop incurring charges, delete the VM:

gcloud compute instances delete teradata-vantage-express --zone=us-central1-a

Also, remember to remove any firewall rules that you have added, e.g.:

gcloud compute firewall-rules delete vantage-express

Next steps

Query data stored in object storage