The Hortonworks SmartSense Tool (HST) is used to collect cluster diagnostic data, both for assisting with support case troubleshooting, and for SmartSense analysis. HST uses a central server daemon and a distributed set of passive HST agents. The HST Agent processes are not long-lived services, and are only started when specific data capture tasks are required. Once the HST Agent has captured the requested data, the process stops. All data captured by HST Agents are sent to the central HST server to coalesce into a single downloadable bundle file. These bundles can then be uploaded to Support for troubleshooting, or to the SmartSense SFTP server for SmartSense analysis.

In order to provide the most complete picture of cluster utilization, HST agents must be installed on every node in the cluster. HST can be installed as a standalone component, and manually installed on all nodes of the cluster, or can be integrated with Apache Ambari for automatic installation and service management.