Engine Environment Variables

Environmental variables allow you to customize engine environments for projects. For example, if you need to configure a particular timezone for a project, or increase the length of the session/job timeout windows, you can use environmental variables to do so. Environmental variables can also be used to assign variable names to secrets such as passwords or authentication tokens to avoid including these directly in the code.

In general, Cloudera recommends that you do not include passwords, tokens, or any other secrets directly in your code because anyone with read access to your project will be able to view this information. A better place to store secrets is in your project's environment variables, where only project collaborators and admins have view access. They can therefore be used to securely store confidential information such as your AWS keys or database credentials.

Cloudera Data Science Workbench allows you to define environmental variables for the following scopes:
Global

A site administrator for your Cloudera Data Science Workbench deployment can set environmental variables on a global level. These values will apply to every project on the deployment.

To set global environmental variables, go to Admin > Engines.

Project

Project administrators can set project-specific environmental variables to customize the engines launched for a project. Variables set here will override the global values set in the site administration panel.

To set environmental variables for a project, go to the project's Overview page and click Settings > Engine.

Job

Environments for individual jobs within a project can be customized while creating the job. Variables set per-job will override the project-level and global settings.

To set environmental variables for a job, go to the job's Overview page and click Settings > Set Environmental Variables.

Experiments

Engines created for execution of experiments are completely isolated from the project. However, these engines inherit values from environmental variables set at the project-level and/or global level. Variables set at the project-level will override the global values set in the site administration panel.

Models

Model environments are completely isolated from the project. Environmental variables for these engines can be configured during the build stage of the model deployment process. Models will also inherit any environment variables set at the project and global level. However, variables set per-model build will override other settings.

Environment Variables from Cloudera Manager

In addition to the environment variables that you can specify with different scopes, Cloudera Data Science Workbench inherits a set of environment variables from Cloudera Manager:
  • HTTP_PROXY
  • HTTPS_PROXY
  • ALL_PROXY
  • NO_PROXY
For information about what these variables are used for, see Configuring Cloudera Data Science Workbench Deployments Behind a Proxy.

Site and project administrators can change these values by manually modifying them at the project or global level. The values set within Cloudera Data Science Workbench take precedence over the ones inherited from Cloudera Manager.

Accessing Environmental Variables from Projects

Environmental variables are injected into every engine launched for a project, contingent on the scope at which the variable was set (global, project, etc.). The following code samples show how to access a sample environment variable called DATABASE_PASSWORD from your project code.

R

database.password <- Sys.getenv("DATABASE_PASSWORD")

Python

import os
database_password = os.environ["DATABASE_PASSWORD"]

Scala

System.getenv("DATABASE_PASSWORD")

Engine Environment Variables

The following table lists Cloudera Data Science Workbench environment variables that you can use to customize your experience within the Workbench console. These can be set either as a site administrator, or within the scope of a project or a job.

Environment Variable Description
MAX_TEXT_LENGTH

Maximum number of characters that can be displayed in a single text cell. By default, this value is set to 800,000 and any more characters will be truncated.

Default: 800,000
SESSION_MAXIMUM_MINUTES

Maximum number of minutes a session can run before it times out.

Default: 60*24*7 minutes (7 days)

Maximum Value: 35,000 minutes
JOB_MAXIMUM_MINUTES

Maximum number of minutes a job can run before it times out.

Default: 60*24*7 minutes (7 days)

Maximum Value: 35,000 minutes
IDLE_MAXIMUM_MINUTES

Maximum number of minutes a session can remain idle before it exits.

An idle session is defined as no browser interaction. Contrast this to session_maximum_minutes which is the total time the session is open, regardles of browser interaction.

Default: 60 minutes

Maximum Value: 35,000 minutes
CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV

Points to the default Conda environment so you can use Conda to install/manage packages in the Workbench. For more details on when to use this variable, see Using Conda with Cloudera Data Science Workbench.

Per-Engine Environmental Variables: In addition to the previous table, there are some more built-in environmental variables that are set by the Cloudera Data Science Workbench application itself and do not need to be modified by users. These variables are set per-engine launched by Cloudera Data Science Workbench and only apply within the scope of each engine.

Environment Variable Description
CDSW_PROJECT

The project to which this engine belongs.
CDSW_ENGINE_ID

The ID of this engine. For sessions, this appears in your browser's URL bar.
CDSW_MASTER_ID

If this engine is a worker, this is the CDSW_ENGINE_ID of its master.
CDSW_MASTER_IP

If this engine is a worker, this is the IP address of its master.
CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT

A port on which you can expose HTTP services in the engine to browsers. HTTP services that bind CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT will be available in browsers at: http(s)://<$CDSW_ENGINE_ID>.<$CDSW_DOMAIN>. By default, CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT is set to 8080.

A direct link to these web services will be available from the grid icon in the upper right corner of the Cloudera Data Science Workbench web application, as long as the job or session is still running. For more details, see Accessing Web User Interfaces from Cloudera Data Science Workbench.
CDSW_DOMAIN

The domain on which Cloudera Data Science Workbench is being served. This can be useful for iframing services, as demonstrated in the Shiny example.
CDSW_CPU_MILLICORES

The number of CPU cores allocated to this engine, expressed in thousandths of a core.
CDSW_MEMORY_MB

The number of megabytes of memory allocated to this engine.
CDSW_IP_ADDRESS

Other engines in the Cloudera Data Science Workbench cluster can contact this engine on this IP address.