Best Practices for Configuring HAWQ Parameters

HAWQ configuration parameters are maintained in the $GPHOME/etc/hawq-site.xml file. This file resides on all HAWQ instances and is modified either via Ambari or when using the HAWQ command line interface hawq config command. Use a consistent strategy (Ambari or command line) to maintain the contents of hawq-site.xml.

For Ambari-managed clusters, always use Ambari for configuring hawq-site.xml parameters; restarting or reconfiguring HAWQ via Ambari will overwrite any configuration changes to hawq-site.xml made outside of the Ambari interface. If you cannot tolerate cluster downtime when updating HAWQ configuration parameters, refer to Updating HAWQ Configuration Without Cluster Restart for a specific procedure for Ambari-managed clusters.

If you manage your cluster using command line tools instead of Ambari, use a consistent hawq-site.xml file to configure your entire cluster.

Note: Do not use the postgresql.conf file to configure HAWQ configuration parameters; HAWQ uses only hawq-site.xml for this purpose.