chosing a node to use as Administration Host

Will you call (by your terms) Management Console as  Administration Host?

Yes, that's what I was thinking.

You can use any node in your cluster to host the MC ( Management Console).
If you feel that the head node is having more resources than any other nodes then feel free to install on Head node.

Thanks all!

"Administration Host" is a Vertica technical term:

https://my.vertica.com/docs/6.1.x/HTML/index.htm#4260.htm

(It's the node on which you generally run adminTools, our command-line interface.)

The intent is that the Administration Host be a member of the cluster.

It is possible to have a separate host be the Administration Host, but it's not a common configuration and may be tricky to get right.

Also, adminTools must be installed on all Vertica nodes anyway; it's part of our base RPM.

The Management Console is a separate tool and separate package.  As has been correctly noted, it can be run on a separate "Head" node.  (In fact, prior to one of the Vertica 6.1 Service Packs, it was *required* that you run it on a separate node.)  It provides most of the functionality of adminTools, as well as many additional monitoring tools, through a Web interface rather than the command line.

So I would put the MC on your head node and do most things from there, and pick one compute node to run adminTools if you ever need to.

Note that, with the default config, you will still have to pick a compute node to connect to in order to run queries.  (Any node will do; in a Vertica cluster, any node can initiate a cluster-wide query.  The Vertica 7.0 drivers can automatically distribute new sessions among all nodes in your cluster.)

Thanks a ton, Adam! Exactly what I needed to know.