Configuring the Hive Metastore Service in Kubernetes#

The Starburst-packaged Hive Metastore Service (HMS) image is no longer included with SEP, starting with the August 2026 LTS release, and the starburst-hive Helm chart is no longer provided. Starburst continues to fully support connectivity to your own installation of HMS versions 3.13 and 4.x until H2 2027.

Note

Starburst recommends migrating from HMS to the Starburst Metastore before upgrading beyond 480-e. The Starburst Metastore provides a rich, Glue-compatible, fully supported metadata experience.

This page presumes you have an installed, tested, and working HMS instance.

HMS configuration properties#

You can use the base Hive connector’s metastore configuration properties, the Thrift metastore configuration properties, and the AWS Glue metastore configuration properties as needed, depending on your environment.

External backend database for HMS#

This section shows the setup for using of an external PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server database. You must provide the necessary details for the external server, and ensure that it can be reached from the k8s cluster pod. Set the database.type to external and configure the connection properties:

database:
  type: external
  external:
    driver:
    jdbcUrl:
    password:
    setPasswordsViaEnvFrom: false
    user:
External HMS backend database configuration#

Node name

Description

database.type

Set to external to use an existing PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or SQL Server database outside the cluster.

database.external.jdbcUrl

JDBC URL to connect to the external database as required by the database and used driver, including hostname and port. Ensure you use a valid JDBC URL as required by the PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or SQL Server driver. Typically, the syntax requires the host, port, and database name as follows:

  • For PostgreSQL: jdbc:postgresql://host:port/database.

  • For MySQL: jdbc:mysql://host:port/database.

  • For Oracle, using the thin or OCI driver: jdbc:oracle:<driver>:@//host:port/<service_name>.

  • For SQL Server: The database name must be passed as the environment variable HIVE_METASTORE_DB_NAME and the JDBC connection string syntax jdbc:sqlserver://host:port.

database.external.driver

Valid values are as follows:

  • For PostgreSQL: org.postgresql.Driver.

  • For an external MySQL or a compatible database: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver.

  • For Oracle: oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver.

  • For SQL Server: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver.

database.external.user

Database user name to access the external database using JDBC.

database.external.password

Password for the user configured to access the external database using JDBC.