Understand your Base cluster layout
Provides an explanation of a Base cluster installation and information about the Base cluster layout.
A Base cluster is a large cluster that contains SDX services like Ranger and Atlas, as well as compute and storage services like NiFi, Impala, and Hive.
A Base cluster is sometimes called a Regular cluster in Cloudera Manager. It is also known as an SDX cluster, a Shared cluster, or a Data Lake cluster.
Installing NiFi on your Base cluster is a simplified deployment during which you create only one cluster. You can do this if you are deploying one cluster in trial deployments or in simple production scenarios.
When you install both NiFi and NiFi Registry on your Base cluster, your cluster layout will look similar to the following:
![](../images/cfm-deployment-base-cluster-layout.png)