Teradata makes its latest version of its Analytical DBMS available for developers to try out in their own sandbox (“Teradata Express”). This catched my interested as I wanted to learn more about Teradata. Teradata Express 13 is available for Windows, for VMware and as SaaS hosted on Amazon EC2.

I tried out the Amazon EC2 hosted version first, but I dislike the fact that it looses all its configuration and data when you shutdown the VM. So you have to reload all your settings and data after a reboot. Keeping it running all the time is also no option for me (you pay 0.30 US$ per hour).

I don’t run Windows on any of my private computers (only Mac OS X and OpenSolaris). So the Windows version wasn’t an option either. So I decided to use the VMware version.

Unfortunately there isn’t a free VMware Player available for Mac OS or Solaris. So I decided to download a trial version of VMware Fusion for Mac OS to give it a try. The good news is that it is working perfectly with VMware Fusion on my MacBook. The bad news is that VMware Fusion has a price tag of about 40 US$ and it would have been the third virtualisation product on this computer besides Parallels and VirtualBox.

So I started figuring out how to use Teradata Express with VirtualBox:

1. Start TDE VM in VMware and remove the VMware tools (execute vmware-uninstall-tools.pl as root)

2. Shutdown the TDE VM in VMware

3. Copy or move the five VMDK-Diskimage files from the folder containing the VMware VM to a new location where you want them to stay permanently

4. Create a new VirtualBox like this (you can use the VirtualBox UI as well):

VBoxManage createvm —name TDE13 —ostype Linux26_64 —register

VBoxManage modifyvm TDE13 —memory 768 —acpi on —ioapic on —pae on —hwvirtex on —hwvirtexexcl off —nestedpaging on —vtxvpid on —boot1 disk —nic1 bridged —bridgeadapter “en1: AirPort” —audio none —vrdp on —usb off

VBoxManage storagectl TDE13 —name SCSI1 —add scsi —controller LsiLogic

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl SCSI1 —port 0 —device 0 —type hdd —medium /Users/martin/VM/TDE13/Disk\ sda.vmdk

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl SCSI1 —port 1 —device 0 —type hdd —medium /Users/martin/VM/TDE13/Disk\ sdb.vmdk

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl SCSI1 —port 2 —device 0 —type hdd —medium /Users/martin/VM/TDE13/Disk\ sdc.vmdk

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl SCSI1 —port 3 —device 0 —type hdd —medium /Users/martin/VM/TDE13/Disk\ sdd.vmdk

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl SCSI1 —port 4 —device 0 —type hdd —medium /Users/martin/VM/TDE13/Teradata\ PDisk.vmdk

VBoxManage storagectl TDE13 —name IDE —add ide —controller PIIX4

VBoxManage storageattach TDE13 —storagectl IDE —port 0 —device 0 —type dvddrive —medium emptydrive

5. Start the new virtual machine

6. Install VirtualBox tools in VM

7. Optional: assign a fixed IP address (via yast) and enter it into /etc/hosts (Hostname dbccop1)

8. /etc/init.d/tpa start

That’s it. You can now use bteq or other tools to connect to Teradata.

Using VirtualBox Teradata is now running on my OpenSolaris server at home and on my MacBook.