In previous articles, we explored the fundamentals of Presto as a powerful open-source SQL query engine and the modern data storage paradigms of data warehouses and data lakes. Now it's time to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty with a practical implementation.

In this guide, I'll walk you through installing Presto and show how to run queries with ease.

Pre-Requisites 🎯
Before getting started, ensure that the following are installed:

  • Java 8 or newer installed.
  • Python 3 or newer installed.
  • At least 4GB of available RAM. (8 GB Recommended)
  • Minimum 20GB of free disk space.
  • Basic command-line knowledge.
  • Sudo/root access to your system.
  • OS (Mac/Windows/Linux)

Java Version (1.8.0_371) ✅

Python Version (3.13.2) ✅

Now, let's see the Step by Step Process to Install Presto.

Step - 1: Installing Presto Server 📥

  • Create a directory at Desktop or any preferred location in your system and name it PrestoDB (or whatever you like).
  • Open terminal/command line interface and navigate to your PrestoDB directory and run below command. 
wget https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/facebook/presto/presto-server/0.291/presto-server-0.291.tar.gz

📌 wget - Fetches the specified URL and save the file locally

  • Extract the tarball using below command 
tar -xvzf presto-server-0.291.tar.gz

📌 tar - Unix command used to create and extract tar archive files

📌 x - Extracts the contents from the archive.

📌 v - Verbose mode, shows a list of files being extracted.

📌 z - Decompresses the archive using gzip (since the file is .gz).

📌 f - Specifies the filename of the archive to work with (presto-server-0.291.tar.gz).

  • Now your directory structure will look like this.

Directory Structure after Installing Presto

  • Create a directory inside presto-server-0.291 named as etc.
  • Create 3 files inside etc directory named as (config.properties, jvm.config and node.properties)
  • Configure config.properties file as per below mentioned code. 
coordinator=true
node-scheduler.include-coordinator=true
http-server.http.port=8080
query.max-memory=1GB
query.max-memory-per-node=512MB
discovery-server.enabled=true
discovery.uri=http://localhost:8080

📌 coordinator=true – Makes this node the query coordinator.

📌 node-scheduler.include-coordinator=true – Allows the coordinator to process query tasks.

📌 http-server.http.port=8080 – Sets the HTTP port to 8080 for incoming requests.

📌 query.max-memory=1GB – Limits the total memory for a query to 1 GB.

📌 query.max-memory-per-node=512MB – Limits query memory usage to 512 MB per node.

📌 discovery-server.enabled=true – Enables the discovery server to track cluster nodes.

📌 discovery.uri=http://localhost:8080 – Sets the discovery server URI to localhost on port 8080.

  • Configure jvm.config file as per below mentioned code. 
-server
-Xmx16G
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:G1HeapRegionSize=32M
-XX:+UseGCOverheadLimit
-XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent
-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError
-XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError
  • Configure node.properties file as per below mentioned code. 
node.environment=production
node.id=ffffffff-ffff-ffff-ffff-ffffffffffff
node.data-dir=/var/presto/data
  • Save all these files and create a new directory inside etc named as catalog

After completing all these steps your directory structure will look like this.

Directory Structure after Making Changes

  • Inside catalog directory create two files mysql.properties and tpch.properties

  • Configure mysql.properties as per below mentioned code.

connector.name=mysql
connection-url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306
connection-user= Your MySQL Username
connection-password= Your MySQL Password
  • Configure tpch.properties as per below mentioned code. 
connector.name=tpch

Save all these configurations and follow next steps.

Step - 2: Start Presto Server 🟢

Navigate to the presto-server-0.291 directory and run command

sudo bin/launcher start

As soon as you hit the command Presto server will start automatically. Open the browser and enter http://localhost:8080

Whoa Congratulations 🎉 🥳 (Presto has been installed successfully)

Presto Web UI

Note: Presto Server run on port 8080 by default 📍

To check the status of server ↺

sudo bin/launcher status

To Stop the server 🔴

sudo bin/launcher stop

In the next article, we will see how to install Apache Zeppelin and connect it with Presto.

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