Modifying or Updating Clusters Using Cloudera Manager

Some modifications or updates to a Cloudera Director-managed cluster can be made directly in Cloudera Manager. Other changes cannot be safely made directly in Cloudera Manager because Cloudera Director will not become aware of the change, resulting in failures when a user later tries to expand or otherwise modify the cluster.

The following table shows changes that are safe and unsafe to make directly in Cloudera Manager.

Description Safe Changes Unsafe Changes
Cloudera Manager or CDH version upgrade Maintenance upgrades of Cloudera Manager or CDH, where only the 3rd digit of the Cloudera Manager or CDH version changes (for example, 5.4.0 to 5.4.3) are supported. The upgrade must be done using Cloudera Manager; it cannot be done from within Cloudera Director. Minor or major version upgrades of Cloudera Manager or CDH (for example, 5.4 to 5.5 or 5 to 6) are not supported, even if done outside Cloudera Director.
Configuration changes

Configuration changes made on the Cloudera Manager Server or the Cloudera Management Service are supported if the configurations will not be affected by the addition of new hosts to a cluster, that is, the configurations will not need to be set up on the new host.

Configuration changes made to hosts, to CDH services and roles, or to the Cloudera Manager Server in areas that will impact future hosts (for example, parcels or agent-related configurations), are supported, but only in the present state of the deployment and cluster. You can use the cluster with these changes, but future modifications to the cluster from Cloudera Director will not propagate the changes to new hosts or roles you add to the cluster, since Cloudera Director will not be aware of the changes.
 
Role assignment   Adding new roles to hosts directly in Cloudera Manager is not supported.
Role migration   Migrating roles from one host to another within Cloudera Manager is not supported.
Decommissioning hosts outside Cloudera Director  

Cloudera recommends that you do not decommission hosts using Cloudera Manager directly. Doing so puts Cloudera Director and Cloudera Manager out of sync with one another and can negatively impact future operations on the cluster.

Adding new hosts or clusters outside of Cloudera Director   Adding new hosts to existing clusters or adding a new cluster to Cloudera Manager, done directly in Cloudera Manager is not supported. Both these should be done from within Cloudera Director.
Changing Cloudera Manager username and password This can be done in Cloudera Manager, but Cloudera Director has to be updated to be made aware of the new values.  
A Cloudera Manager cluster that was set up using Cloudera Manager, rather than through Cloudera Director   Not supported. Cloudera Director is not aware of clusters set up directly in Cloudera Manager.
Enabling Kerberos outside of Cloudera Director   Do not enable Kerberos through Cloudera Manager directly. Enable Kerberos using Cloudera Director 2.0 or higher. Use the configuration file, not the Cloudera Director UI, to enable Kerberos.
Modifying a cluster after enabling high availability outside Cloudera Director If HDFS high availability has been enabled outside Cloudera Director, using Cloudera Manager directly, then you can run future Modify operations on the cluster, but only on those instance groups that do not contain highly available master roles on Cloudera Manager. Do not enable high availability through Cloudera Manager directly, do so using Cloudera Director 2.0. Use the configuration file, not the Cloudera Director UI, to enable high availability.
Upgrading your Cloudera Manager license Upgrading a license using Cloudera Manager, for example, from Cloudera Express to Cloudera Enterprise, is supported.