Lab: Install and Start ScyllaDB (Part 1 of 2)

In this lab, we will see how to quickly start ScyllaDB by running a single instance using Docker. We will then see how to run the CQL Shell.

Please ensure that your environment meets the following prerequisites:

1. Docker for Linux, Mac, or Windows. Please note that running ScyllaDB in Docker is only recommended to evaluate and try ScyllaDB. For best performance, a regular OS install is recommended.
2. 3GB of RAM or greater for Docker.
3. If you are using Linux, you will need docker-compose.

Before starting the cluster, make sure the aio-max-nr value is high enough (1048576 or more). 

This parameter determines the maximum number of allowable Asynchronous non-blocking I/O (AIO) concurrent requests by the Linux Kernel, and it helps ScyllaDB perform in a heavy I/O workload environment.

Check the value: 

cat /proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr

If it needs to be changed:

echo "fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

First, we’ll start a single instance and call it ScyllaDBU:

docker run --name scyllaU -d scylladb/scylla:5.2.0 --overprovisioned 1 --smp 1

Notice that some files might be downloaded in this step. After waiting for a few seconds, we’ll verify that the cluster is up and running with the Nodetool Status command:

docker exec -it scyllaU nodetool status

The node scyllaU has a UN status. “U” means up, and N means normal. Read more about Nodetool Status Here.

Finally, we use the CQL Shell to interact with ScyllaDB:

docker exec -it scyllaU cqlsh

The CQL Shell allows us to run Cassandra Query Language commands on ScyllaDB, as we will see in the next part.