Getting started

You can run Netezza Performance Server only on 4 TB Cloud Pak for Data System with redundant switch configuration. The hardware and software is installed and configured at the customer's site by IBM Support.

Data is stored, managed, and processed on solid-state disks (SSDs) attached to a collection of SPU (Snippet Processing Unit) nodes. The SPU nodes are aggregated into one or more Cloud Pak for Data System expansion units, where each expansion unit has four nodes. Each SPU node has 4 locally attached 4 TB NVMe (nonvolatile memory express) SSDs. The SSDs are self-encrypting drives (SEDs), and Netezza Performance Server makes available the encryption capabilities of the drives.

Approximately 1.2 TB of the space on each drive is dedicated to swap space for intermediate query results, and the remaining 2.8 TB is divided equally among some number of data partitions. Each data partition holds either a primary copy or a mirror copy of a data slice (a horizontal subset of the rows of each table in the system). Or, it is spare and available to be populated with a data slice copy if a disk or SPU node fails. (If a node fails, the four locally attached disks of the failed node are inaccessible.)

Administering

A web console-based user interface is available for database monitoring and administration, with which you can:

• View database metrics (utilization, query performance, active queries, sessions).
• Administer database objects, users.
• Run queries through an SQL editor.
• Create and edit event and or scheduler rules.
• Administer and manage backups and restores.

Backup and restore

• Backups and restores are built on an external table framework.
• You can back up and restore user data by using the nzbackup and nzrestore commands.
• You can issue a database backup with a table restore.
  Supported backup types:

  Full

  Saves only database objects (tables, views, stored procedures, privileges) but no user data.

  Differential

  Saves only the data that has changed since the last backup (whether it was full, differential, or cumulative).

  Cumulative

  Backups everything that has changed since the last full backup.

  Supported connectors:

  • File system Connector
  • Veritas NetBackup Connector
  • IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Connector
  • EMC NetWorker.

• Netezza Performance Server is based on the same code as IBM® PureData® System for Analytics, so it is fully compatible with these appliances.

• The database backup and restore formats are compatible with IBM PureData System for Analytics 7.2.1.x and earlier.

• Netezza Performance Server is compatible with IBM Netezza Analytics (INZA).