Setting Up the Greenplum Virtual Appliance

The Greenplum Virtual Appliance is a pre-built OVA file that you deploy in VMware vSphere as a virtual machine, and contains all the necessary tools and environment settings to configure and deploy a Greenplum Database cluster. You download the Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA from Broadcom Support Portal, deploy the OVA in VMware vSphere, and use the Greenplum Virtual Operator utility to provision the Greenplum cluster coordinator hosts and segment hosts.

Downloading the Greenplum Virtual Appliance

The Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA is available on Broadcom Support Portal under the desired Greenplum release. Log in and download the OVA. Make note of the directory where you save the file.

Note

For more information about download prerequisites, troubleshooting, and instructions, see Download Broadcom products and software.

Importing and Deploying the Greenplum Virtual Appliance

1. Log in to vCenter and navigate to Hosts and Clusters.
2. Right click your cluster, then click Deploy OVF Template.
3. Choose Local file, select the Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA file from your local machine, then click Next.
4. Set Virtual machine name as greenplum-virtual-appliance. Select the desired location for the virtual machine, then click Next.
5. Select the desired compute resource, then click Next. Wait while vCenter queries the OVA advanced configuration options.
6. Verify that the Review details section is correct, then click Next.
7. Select the desired storage, then click Next.
8. Select gp-virtual-external as the Destination Network, then click Next.
9. Configure the Customize Template section:
10. If you have a DHCP server set up for gp-virtual-external Network and you want to use it to assign the IP address automatically, set External Network Type to DHCP. Then, skip Static IP configuration section and click Next.
11. If you want to assign a static IP for the greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine, set External Network Type to Static. Then, finish the Static IP Configuration section as follows:
    • Set Static IPv4 Address to the desired IPv4 Address in format of #.#.#.#.
    • Set Static IPv4 Subnet Mask to the subnet mask as an integer.
    • Set Static IPv4 Network Gateway to the subnet gateway in the format of #.#.#.#.
    • Set DNS to the IP address of the DNS server.
    • Set NTP Server to the NTP server entry you want to use in /etc/ntp.conf inside the virtual machine.
12. Review the configuration, then click Finish.
13. Power on the greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine.

Logging In To The Appliance Virtual Machine

Before you continue to the next sections, log in and change the password:

1. Wait for the IP address of the newly created virtual machine to show up in vSphere.
2. Once the IP is up, log in to the greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine as root using ssh. When you first log in, the virtual machine prompts you to change the root password. The default password is changeme.

The greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine is now ready for use. Refer to gpv or run gpv --help to learn more about the gpv utility command options.

Deleting or Removing a Greenplum Virtual Appliance

If you choose to delete the Greenplum Virtual Appliance, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to vCenter and navigate to Hosts and Clusters.
2. Right click on the deployed Greenplum Virtual Appliance virtual machine and select Power, and click Power Off.
3. Confirm and wait for the virtual machine to power off.
4. Right click on the powered off virtual machine and click Delete from Disk.
5. Confirm and Delete the virtual machine.

Next Steps

The greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine is now ready for use. Continue to Deploying Greenplum on vSphere to deploy a new Greenplum Database cluster using this virtual machine.