Install Timescale Cloud

Timescale Cloud is a hosted, cloud-native TimescaleDB service that allows you to quickly spin up new TimescaleDB instances. You can try Timescale Cloud for free, no credit card required.

Powered by TimescaleDB, Timescale Cloud is an innovative and cost-effective way to store and analyze your time-series data. Get started super fast with demo data, or your own dataset, and enjoy the security of automated upgrades and backups.

Installing Timescale Cloud

  1. Sign up for a Timescale Cloud account with your name and email address. You do not need to provide payment details to get started. A confirmation email is sent to the email address you provide.
  2. Verify your email by clicking on the link in the email you received. Don’t forget to check your spam folder in case the email ends up there.

  3. Sign in to the Timescale Cloud portal with the password you set:

    Timescale Cloud Portal

important

Your Timescale Cloud trial is completely free for you to use for the first thirty days. This gives you enough time to complete all our tutorials and run a few test projects of your own.

Create your first service

A service in Timescale Cloud is a cloud instance which contains your database. Each service contains a single database, named tsdb.

Create a Timescale Cloud service

  1. Sign in to the Timescale Cloud portal.

  2. Click Create service.

  3. You can choose to build your service with or without demo data. If this is your first service, we recommend that you choose the option to deploy a service with a demo dataset, because it is the best way to see how Timescale Cloud works in the real world.

  4. Click Get started to create your service with demo data, and launch the Allmilk Factory interactive demo. You can exit the demo at any time, and revisit it from the same point later on. You can also re-run the demo after you have completed it.

    Create a new service in the Timescale Cloud portal

Connect to your service from the command prompt

When you have a service up and running, you can connect to it from your local system using the psql command-line utility. If you’ve used PostgreSQL before, you might already have psql installed. If not, check out the installing psql section.

Connecting to your service from the command prompt

  1. Sign in to the Timescale Cloud portal.

  2. In the Services tab, find the service you want to connect to, and check it is marked as Running.

  3. Click the name of the service you want to connect to see the connection information. Take a note of the Service URL.

  4. Navigate to the Operations tab, and click Reset password. You can choose your own password for the service, or allow Timescale Cloud to generate a secure password for you. Take a note of your new password.

  5. On your local system, at the command prompt, connect to the service using the service URL. When you are prompted for the password, enter the password you just created:

    1. psql -x "postgres://[email protected]:33251/tsdb?sslmode=require"
    3. Password for user tsdbadmin:

    If your connection is successful, you’ll see a message like this, followed by the psql prompt:

    1. psql (13.3, server 12.8 (Ubuntu 12.8-1.pgdg21.04+1))
    3. SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, bits: 256, compression: off)
    5. Type "help" for help.
    7. tsdb=>

Check that you have the TimescaleDB extension

TimescaleDB is provided as an extension to your PostgreSQL database, and it is enabled by default when you create a new service on Timescale Cloud. You can check that the TimescaleDB extension is installed by using the \dx command at the psql prompt. It looks like this:

  2. tsdb=> \dx
  4. List of installed extensions
  6. -[ RECORD 1 ]------------------------------------------------------------------
  8. Name        | pg_stat_statements
  10. Version     | 1.7
  12. Schema      | public
  14. Description | track execution statistics of all SQL statements executed
  16. -[ RECORD 2 ]------------------------------------------------------------------
  18. Name        | plpgsql
  20. Version     | 1.0
  22. Schema      | pg_catalog
  24. Description | PL/pgSQL procedural language
  26. -[ RECORD 3 ]------------------------------------------------------------------
  28. Name        | timescaledb
  30. Version     | 2.4.1
  32. Schema      | public
  34. Description | Enables scalable inserts and complex queries for time-series data
  36. -[ RECORD 4 ]------------------------------------------------------------------
  38. Name        | timescaledb_toolkit
  40. Version     | 1.3.1
  42. Schema      | public
  44. Description | timescaledb_toolkit
  46. tsdb=>

Where to next

Now that you have your first service up and running, you can check out the Timescale Cloud section in our documentation, and find out what you can do with it.

If you want to work through some tutorials to help you get up and running with TimescaleDB and time-series data, check out our tutorials section.

If you’re interested in learning more about pricing for Managed Service for TimescaleDB, visit the managed service for TimescaleDB pricing calculator.

You can always contact us if you need help working something out, or if you want to have a chat.