Part 2: Installation & Quick Start

Ready to start querying? Let’s get ClickHouse installed. We’ll use Docker for the quickest setup, but you can also install it natively on Linux or macOS.

Using Docker

The easiest way to try ClickHouse is via Docker. Run the following command:

docker run -d —name clickhouse-server —ulimit nofile=262144:262144 -p 8123:8123 -p 9000:9000 clickhouse/clickhouse-server

Connecting to the Client

Once the container is running, you can connect using the command-line client:

docker exec -it clickhouse-server clickhouse-client

You should see a prompt like :). This is the friendly ClickHouse smiley!

Your First Query

Let’s verify everything is working:

SELECT ‘Hello, ClickHouse!’

Conclusion

That was easy! You now have a running ClickHouse server. In the next part, we’ll dive into the most important engine in ClickHouse: MergeTree.