Installing Riak Data Platform

Riak Data Platform (BDP) enables you to extend Riak with Spark and Redis. This page will guide you through the process of installing BDP on most supported operating systems.

BDP is supported on a limited number of platforms. See the list of supported OSes here.

Prerequisites

You need to have root or sudo access on the nodes you will be installing BDP on.

Installing

  1. First, change the open-files limit.
  2. If you plan to use Spark, then install Java 8.
  3. Finally, install the BDP package.

Increase The Open-Files Limit

Before you can install BDP, both the total open-files limit and the per-user open-files limit must be high enough to allow BDP to function.

For a fuller guide on changing limits for Riak, see Changing the limit .

On most Linux distributions, the total limit for open files is controlled by sysctl.

sudo sysctl fs.file-max fs.file-max=65536
sudo sysctl -p

To change the per-user file limit, you need to edit /etc/security/limits.conf.

On CentOS systems, set a proper limit for the user you’re usually logging in with to do any kind of work on the machine, including managing Riak. On CentOS, sudo properly inherits the values from the executing user.

On Ubuntu systems, the following settings are recommended:

»USERNAME« hard nofile 65536
»USERNAME« soft nofile 65536
root hard nofile 65536
root soft nofile 65536

You may need to log out of your shell and then log back in for these changes to take effect.

Java 8

If you are using or plan to use Spark, you must install Java 8 on each node that will run Spark services (unless you are using Spark with Python). Installing Java works a little differently depending on whether you are running Ubuntu or CentOS.

If you are on Ubuntu, run the following to install Java 8:

sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common python-software-properties debconf-utils
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
# accept java license
sudo echo -e oracle-java8-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | sudo debconf-set-selections
sudo apt-get install -y oracle-java8-installer

If you are on CentOS, run the following to install Java 8:

cd /opt
sudo wget -O jdk-8.rpm --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u45-b14/jdk-8u45-linux-x64.rpm"
sudo yum -y localinstall jdk-8.rpm

Regardless of your OS, once you have installed Java 8 you need to add a specific JAVA_HOME line to your /etc/environment. You can add the correct line by running:

JAVA_HOME=$(dirname $(dirname $(readlink -f $(which javac))))
grep JAVA_HOME /etc/environment >/dev/null 2>&1 || test $? -ne 0 && sudo bash -c "echo JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_HOME >>/etc/environment"
export JAVA_HOME

Install BDP

Now that you’ve increased your open-files limit and installed Java 8 where necessary, you’re ready to install the BDP packages.

Enterprise Note: If you are an Enterprise customer, make sure to download the -extras package as well. The -extras package is available alongside the regular packages in the usual Zendesk forums.

BDP open source packages for all supported operating systems are available for download on the Download Riak Data Platform page.

Choose the installation instructions below that match your OS.

Ubuntu

  1. Download the packages from the downloads page (or packages from Zendesk).
  2. Unpack the packages using sudo dpkg -i »package_name_here« for each one.

CentOS

  1. Download the packages from the downloads page (or packages from Zendesk).
  2. Unpack the packages using sudo yum -y --nogpgcheck --noplugins localinstall »package_name_here« for each one.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed Riak Data Platform. Now, set up a data platform cluster.