developer_package

IBM watsonx.data

IBM® watsonx.data is a new open architecture lakehouse that combines the open, flexible, and low-cost storage benefits of data lakes with the transactional qualities and performance of the data warehouse. The best-in-class features and optimizations available in watsonx.data make it an optimal choice for next generation data analytics and automation. It offers a single platform where you can attach data residing in object store and relational databases, synthesize the data through a SQL interface and make the data available for AI and BI applications. To learn more, see watsonx.data

IBM watsonx.data developer version

The watsonx.data developer version is an entry-level watsonx.data for the student, developer and partner community. The developer version offers a set of containers that can be installed on a suitable host machine at the same release level as the Enterprise version, with restricted features. For more information see watsonx.data developer version

Installing watsonx.data developer version

To install watsonx.data developer version, you will need the ibm-lh-dev.tgz and the container images.

Before you begin

1. You need to procure credentials to access the container images for the developer version hosted in the IBM container registry.
   If you have purchased watsonx.data, you can use your entitlement key from My IBM. If you have not purchased watsonx.data, reach out to your IBM contact to get the read key to access the watsonx.data images. Depending on how the entitlement key was generated, you will need to specify the users as either iamapikey or cp.
2. Setup a single-node virtual machine to install the package. The supported operating system environments are

• Linux
• Windows
• Mac OS x86
• Mac with Apple Silicon with Rosetta. For more information see here

4. Install docker or podman on the machine to run the container images.

If you are using SUSE Linux, podman is only availaible for version SLES 15.4. Also, make sure to upgrade the system first (zypper dist-upgrade) before installing the dependencies that are not provided but are needed for the installation of docker or podman.

For Docker:

• sysuser-shadow in SLES 12.5
• catatonit in SLES 15.5

For Podman:

• fuse-overlayfs in SLES 15.4

Packages can be downloaded from the official site.

5. Install podman-plugins. It is important that you install podman-plugins before intalling watsonx.data.

yum install podman-plugins

For SUSE, install cni-plugin-dnsname instead.

Procedure

1. Set up the installation directory and environment variables

a. Create a directory under which you wish to install watsonx.data developer version.

export LH_ROOT_DIR=~/ibm-watsonx-data
mkdir $LH_ROOT_DIR
cd $LH_ROOT_DIR

b. Download and extract the developer package

wget https://github.com/IBM/watsonx-data/releases/download/v2.1.1/ibm-lh-dev-2.1.1-353-20250207-091522-onprem-v2.1.1.tgz

tar -xvf ibm-lh-dev-2.1.1-353-20250207-091522-onprem-v2.1.1.tgz

This will create a directory by the name ibm-lh-dev

c. Review the license files located under $LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/licenses

2. Set the environment variables
   If you have purchased watsonx.data, you should pull the container images from cp.icr.io/cp/watsonx-data

   export LH_REGISTRY=cp.icr.io/cp/watsonx-data
   

   If you have not purchased watsonx.data and have a readkey from IBM, you should pull the container images from icr.io/watsonx_data_dev_client_pkg

   export LH_REGISTRY=icr.io/watsonx_data_dev_client_pkg
   

3. Authenticate to the container registry

   docker login $LH_REGISTRY -u iamapikey -p <credentials>
   

   or

   podman login $LH_REGISTRY -u iamapikey -p <credentials>
   

4. Optional: You can customize your installation by editting the values in $LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/etc/launch_config.env
5. Run the setup script

   ./ibm-lh-dev/bin/setup --license_acceptance=y --runtime=docker
   

   or

   ./ibm-lh-dev/bin/setup --license_acceptance=y --runtime=podman
   

   This will pull the images from the container registry and perform the initial setup.

Managing the developer version

The developer version includes a convenient set of scripts that allow you to manage the installation

Starting watsonx.data

To start all the containers, run the following command

$LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/bin/start

View the status of watsonx.data

To check the status of all the containers, run the following command

$LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/bin/status --all

Stop watsonx.data

To stop all the containers, run the following command

$LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/bin/stop

User management

When you run the setup command to install the developer version, it will create a default user ibmlhadmin with password password. This user has admin privileges on teh installation. You can a users by running the following command

./ibm-lh-dev/bin/user-mgmt add-user <user-name> Admin|User <user-password>

You can delete a user by running ths following command

./ibm-lh-dev/bin/user-mgmt delete-user <user-name>

Working with watsonx.data

UI Interface

You can access the UI interface by visitng https://localhost:9443, or https:/<machine_name>:9443 if you have installed on a remote machine. To login, specify ibmlhadmin for the Username field and password for the Password field. These are the default values. If you have customized the install, you will need to specify the values accordingly.

API interface

You can interact with watsonx.data through the API interface. For more details, see https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/watsonxdata-software

presto-cli interface

The developer version includes presto-cli to allow you to directly interact with presto. You can run presto-cli if you want to access presto in an interactive mode, and run presto-run to access in non-interactive mode. You will be accessing presto as user ibmlhadmin. If you want to interact as any other user added to the installation, use the client package.

Examples

The developer version includes examples that can be used to explore the product and build further use cases. The examples are located under $LH_ROOT_DIR/ibm-lh-dev/examples