Quick Start Guide for the TiDB Database Platform

This guide walks you through the quickest way to get started with TiDB. For non-production environments, you can deploy your TiDB database by either of the following methods:

Deploy a local test cluster (for macOS and Linux)
Simulate production deployment on a single machine (for Linux only)

Note

TiDB, TiUP and TiDB Dashboard share usage details with PingCAP to help understand how to improve the product. For details about what is shared and how to disable the sharing, see Telemetry.
The deployment method provided in this guide is ONLY FOR quick start, NOT FOR production.
- To deploy an on-premises production cluster, see production installation guide.
- To deploy TiDB in Kubernetes, see Get Started with TiDB in Kubernetes.
- To manage TiDB in the cloud, see TiDB Cloud Quick Start.

Deploy a local test cluster

Scenario: Quickly deploy a local TiDB cluster for testing using a single macOS or Linux server. By deploying such a cluster, you can learn the basic architecture of TiDB and the operation of its components, such as TiDB, TiKV, PD, and the monitoring components.

macOS
Linux

As a distributed system, a basic TiDB test cluster usually consists of 2 TiDB instances, 3 TiKV instances, 3 PD instances, and optional TiFlash instances. With TiUP Playground, you can quickly build the test cluster by taking the following steps:

Download and install TiUP:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com/install.sh | sh

If the following message is displayed, you have installed TiUP successfully:

Successfully set mirror to https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com
Detected shell: zsh
Shell profile:  /Users/user/.zshrc
/Users/user/.zshrc has been modified to add tiup to PATH
open a new terminal or source /Users/user/.zshrc to use it
Installed path: /Users/user/.tiup/bin/tiup
===============================================
Have a try:     tiup playground
===============================================

Note the Shell profile path in the output above. You need to use the path in the next step.

Declare the global environment variable:
Note
After the installation, TiUP displays the absolute path of the corresponding Shell profile file. You need to modify ${your_shell_profile} in the following source command according to the path. In this case, ${your_shell_profile} is /Users/user/.zshrc from the output of Step 1.
```
source ${your_shell_profile}
```
Start the cluster in the current session:
- If you want to start a TiDB cluster of the latest version with 1 TiDB instance, 1 TiKV instance, 1 PD instance, and 1 TiFlash instance, run the following command:
```
tiup playground
```
- If you want to specify the TiDB version and the number of the instances of each component, run a command like this:
```
tiup playground v6.1.1 --db 2 --pd 3 --kv 3
```
  The command downloads a version cluster to the local machine and starts it, such as v6.1.1. To view the latest version, run tiup list tidb.
  This command returns the access methods of the cluster:
```
CLUSTER START SUCCESSFULLY, Enjoy it ^-^
To connect TiDB: mysql --comments --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4001 -u root -p (no password)
To connect TiDB: mysql --comments --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4000 -u root -p (no password)
To view the dashboard: http://127.0.0.1:2379/dashboard
PD client endpoints: [127.0.0.1:2379 127.0.0.1:2382 127.0.0.1:2384]
To view Prometheus: http://127.0.0.1:9090
To view Grafana: http://127.0.0.1:3000
```
  Note
  Since v5.2.0, TiDB supports running tiup playground on the machine that uses the Apple M1 chip.
  For the playground operated in this way, after the test deployment is finished, TiUP will clean up the original cluster data. You will get a new cluster after re-running the command.
  If you want the data to be persisted on storage, run tiup --tag <your-tag> playground .... For details, refer to TiUP Reference Guide.
Start a new session to access TiDB:
- Use the TiUP client to connect to TiDB.
```
tiup client
```
- You can also use the MySQL client to connect to TiDB.
```
mysql --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4000 -u root
```
Access the Prometheus dashboard of TiDB at http://127.0.0.1:9090.
Access the TiDB Dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:2379/dashboard. The default username is root, with an empty password.
Access the Grafana dashboard of TiDB through http://127.0.0.1:3000. Both the default username and password are admin.
(Optional) Load data to TiFlash for analysis.
Clean up the cluster after the test deployment:
1. Stop the above TiDB service by pressing Control+C.
2. Run the following command after the service is stopped:
```
tiup clean --all
```

Note

TiUP Playground listens on 127.0.0.1 by default, and the service is only locally accessible. If you want the service to be externally accessible, specify the listening address using the --host parameter to bind the network interface card (NIC) to an externally accessible IP address.

Download and install TiUP:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com/install.sh | sh

If the following message is displayed, you have installed TiUP successfully:

Successfully set mirror to https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com
Detected shell: zsh
Shell profile:  /Users/user/.zshrc
/Users/user/.zshrc has been modified to add tiup to PATH
open a new terminal or source /Users/user/.zshrc to use it
Installed path: /Users/user/.tiup/bin/tiup
===============================================
Have a try:     tiup playground
===============================================

Note the Shell profile path in the output above. You need to use the path in the next step.

Declare the global environment variable:
Note
After the installation, TiUP displays the absolute path of the corresponding Shell profile file. You need to modify ${your_shell_profile} in the following source command according to the path.
```
source ${your_shell_profile}
```
Start the cluster in the current session:
- If you want to start a TiDB cluster of the latest version with 1 TiDB instance, 1 TiKV instance, 1 PD instance, and 1 TiFlash instance, run the following command:
```
tiup playground
```
- If you want to specify the TiDB version and the number of the instances of each component, run a command like this:
```
tiup playground v6.1.1 --db 2 --pd 3 --kv 3
```
  The command downloads a version cluster to the local machine and starts it, such as v6.1.1. To view the latest version, run tiup list tidb.
  This command returns the access methods of the cluster:
```
CLUSTER START SUCCESSFULLY, Enjoy it ^-^
To connect TiDB: mysql --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4000 -u root -p (no password) --comments
To view the dashboard: http://127.0.0.1:2379/dashboard
PD client endpoints: [127.0.0.1:2379]
To view the Prometheus: http://127.0.0.1:9090
To view the Grafana: http://127.0.0.1:3000
```
  Note
  For the playground operated in this way, after the test deployment is finished, TiUP will clean up the original cluster data. You will get a new cluster after re-running the command. If you want the data to be persisted on storage, run tiup --tag <your-tag> playground .... For details, refer to TiUP Reference Guide.
Start a new session to access TiDB:
- Use the TiUP client to connect to TiDB.
```
tiup client
```
- You can also use the MySQL client to connect to TiDB.
```
mysql --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4000 -u root
```
Access the Prometheus dashboard of TiDB at http://127.0.0.1:9090.
Access the TiDB Dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:2379/dashboard. The default username is root, with an empty password.
Access the Grafana dashboard of TiDB through http://127.0.0.1:3000. Both the default username and password are admin.
(Optional) Load data to TiFlash for analysis.
Clean up the cluster after the test deployment:
1. Stop the process by pressing Control+C.
2. Run the following command after the service is stopped:
```
tiup clean --all
```

Note

Simulate production deployment on a single machine

Scenario: Experience the smallest TiDB cluster with the complete topology and simulate the production deployment steps on a single Linux server.

This section describes how to deploy a TiDB cluster using a YAML file of the smallest topology in TiUP.

Prepare

Prepare a target machine that meets the following requirements:

CentOS 7.3 or a later version is installed
The Linux OS has access to the Internet, which is required to download TiDB and related software installation packages

The smallest TiDB cluster topology is as follows:

Note

The IP address of the following instances only serves as an example IP. In your actual deployment, you need to replace the IP with your actual IP.

Instance	Count	IP	Configuration
TiKV	3	10.0.1.1 10.0.1.1 10.0.1.1	Avoid conflict between the port and the directory
TiDB	1	10.0.1.1	The default port Global directory configuration
PD	1	10.0.1.1	The default port Global directory configuration
TiFlash	1	10.0.1.1	The default port Global directory configuration
Monitor	1	10.0.1.1	The default port Global directory configuration

Other requirements for the target machine:

The root user and its password is required
Stop the firewall service of the target machine, or open the port needed by the TiDB cluster nodes
Currently, the TiUP cluster supports deploying TiDB on the x86_64 (AMD64) and ARM architectures:
- It is recommended to use CentOS 7.3 or later versions on AMD64
- It is recommended to use CentOS 7.6 1810 on ARM

Deploy

Note

You can log in to the target machine as a regular user or the root user. The following steps use the root user as an example.

Download and install TiUP:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://tiup-mirrors.pingcap.com/install.sh | sh

Declare the global environment variable.
Note
After the installation, TiUP displays the absolute path of the corresponding Shell profile file. You need to modify ${your_shell_profile} in the following source command according to the path.
```
source ${your_shell_profile}
```
Install the cluster component of TiUP:
```
tiup cluster
```
If the TiUP cluster is already installed on the machine, update the software version:
```
tiup update --self && tiup update cluster
```
Use the root user privilege to increase the connection limit of the sshd service. This is because TiUP needs to simulate deployment on multiple machines.
1. Modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and set MaxSessions to 20.
2. Restart the sshd service:
```
service sshd restart
```

Create and start the cluster:

Edit the configuration file according to the following template, and name it as topo.yaml:

# # Global variables are applied to all deployments and used as the default value of
# # the deployments if a specific deployment value is missing.
global:
 user: "tidb"
 ssh_port: 22
 deploy_dir: "/tidb-deploy"
 data_dir: "/tidb-data"

# # Monitored variables are applied to all the machines.
monitored:
 node_exporter_port: 9100
 blackbox_exporter_port: 9115

server_configs:
 tidb:
   log.slow-threshold: 300
 tikv:
   readpool.storage.use-unified-pool: false
   readpool.coprocessor.use-unified-pool: true
 pd:
   replication.enable-placement-rules: true
   replication.location-labels: ["host"]
 tiflash:
   logger.level: "info"

pd_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1

tidb_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1

tikv_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1
   port: 20160
   status_port: 20180
   config:
     server.labels: { host: "logic-host-1" }

 - host: 10.0.1.1
   port: 20161
   status_port: 20181
   config:
     server.labels: { host: "logic-host-2" }

 - host: 10.0.1.1
   port: 20162
   status_port: 20182
   config:
     server.labels: { host: "logic-host-3" }

tiflash_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1

monitoring_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1

grafana_servers:
 - host: 10.0.1.1

user: "tidb": Use the tidb system user (automatically created during deployment) to perform the internal management of the cluster. By default, use port 22 to log in to the target machine via SSH.
replication.enable-placement-rules: This PD parameter is set to ensure that TiFlash runs normally.
host: The IP of the target machine.

Execute the cluster deployment command:
```
tiup cluster deploy <cluster-name> <tidb-version> ./topo.yaml --user root -p
```
- <cluster-name>: Set the cluster name
- <tidb-version>: Set the TiDB cluster version. You can see all the supported TiDB versions by running the tiup list tidb command
- -p: Specify the password used to connect to the target machine.
  Note
  If you use secret keys, you can specify the path of the keys through -i. Do not use -i and -p at the same time.
Enter "y" and the root user's password to complete the deployment:
```
Do you want to continue? [y/N]:  y
Input SSH password:
```
Start the cluster:
```
tiup cluster start <cluster-name>
```
Access the cluster:
- Install the MySQL client. If it is already installed, skip this step.
```
yum -y install mysql
```
- Access TiDB. The password is empty:
```
mysql -h 10.0.1.1 -P 4000 -u root
```
- Access the Grafana monitoring dashboard at http://{grafana-ip}:3000. The default username and password are both admin.
- Access the TiDB Dashboard at http://{pd-ip}:2379/dashboard. The default username is root, and the password is empty.
- To view the currently deployed cluster list:
```
tiup cluster list
```
- To view the cluster topology and status:
```
tiup cluster display <cluster-name>
```

What's next

If you have just deployed a TiDB cluster for the local test environment:
- Learn Basic SQL operations in TiDB
- Migrate data to TiDB
If you are ready to deploy a TiDB cluster for the production environment:
- Deploy TiDB using TiUP
- Deploy TiDB on Cloud using TiDB Operator
If you're looking for analytics solution with TiFlash:
- Use TiFlash
- TiFlash Overview