Cloudera Docs

Inbound Connections

An Inbound Connection Endpoint provides a stable hostname allowing you to stream data from an external source application to a Cloudera DataFlow (CDF) deployment located in the same environment.

Inbound Connection architecture

Endpoints have the following attributes:

  • The environment in which it exists

  • A stable hostname

  • An SSLContextService configured that can work with the TLS context auto created during flow deployment that corresponds to the Inbound Connection Endpoint hostname

  • A server certificate that corresponds to the hostname, signed by a public root CA

  • A single Intermediate CA (issued by the Environment CA) for signing client certificates for this endpoint, with the public certificate part available to download for client truststores

Endpoints exist within the environment where they were created. They cannot be moved between environments. If the environment is deleted, the endpoint gets deleted as well, and cannot be reused.

An endpoint can be assigned to one flow deployment at a time, but it is possible to reassign them.

Setting up an Inbound Connection Endpoint

To create in NiFi, deploy in CDF, and configure the client side of an Inbound Connection, follow these steps:

Inbound Connection workflow

Adding Inbound Connection support to a NiFi flow

You can enable a dataflow to listen on a public endpoint to data sources that are outside your CDP environment by adding inbound connection support to your flow definition.

Creating a Connection Endpoint

During flow deployment, you can enable an endpoint that allows NiFi to listen to external data sources.

Connecting to an Endpoint

Once a dataflow deployment with inbound connection is available, you can go on and connect an external application to start sending data.

Managing Connection Endpoints

Learn about deleting and reassigning Inbound Connection Endpoints.