Simple Setup: Creating a Cluster on AWS with Default Settings

The simple setup procedure provides the simplest and most reliable way to get a Cloudera Manager deployment and CDH cluster up and running quickly when you do not require custom configurations or advanced features, like Kerberos, TLS, or external databases. To bootstrap a new cluster, you need only provide some information about your cloud provider of choice, and about the type of cluster you want to create. All of the other details about how your cluster is configured, like its topology and versions of Cloudera Manager and CDH, are determined for you by Altus Director.

Simple setup clusters are not recommended as production clusters. But a good strategy for creating a production cluster is to export a client configuration file for a simple setup cluster, and then edit that configuration file to add more advanced features. In this way, you simplify the task of creating a custom cluster, beginning from a known working configuration, rather than starting from the more complete, but more complex aws.reference.conf file. You can export a client configuration file through the web UI or through the server API. For more information, see Exporting a Configuration File.

Type of Simple Setup Clusters

Choose from five different types of cluster with Simple Setup, based on the workloads you will run in the cluster. The workload type you choose determines the services in the cluster.
  • Basic: Provides a simple Hadoop environment. Includes Hive and MapReduce.
  • Data Engineering: For Spark workloads and ETL jobs. Includes Hive and Spark.
  • Analytic Database: For business intelligence and SQL analytics. Includes Impala and Hive.
  • Operational Database: For NoSQL real-time application serving. Includes HBase.
  • Enterprise Data Hub: Provides a comprehensive range of services for the Cloudera platform.

Ways to Create a Simple Setup Cluster

There are several ways to create a cluster with the simple setup procedure:
  • Use the Altus Director UI, and click the tile Simple Setup at the conclusion of the Add Environment procedure, or navigate to an existing environment and clicking the Add Cluster button.
  • Use the Altus Director CLI and the bootstrap-remote command with a configuration file. You can define a simple client configuration file with the same environment and cluster information that you would supply through the web user interface. For a sample configuration file, including instructions for creating a cluster, see aws.simple_setup.conf on the Cloudera GitHub site.
  • Submit JSON or HOCON input to the Altus Director API import endpoint. For details, see importClientConfig in the Altus Director API console at director_ip_address:port/api-console/index.html.

Launching a Simple Setup Cluster with the Altus Director UI

To launch a cluster using the simple setup procedure with the Altus Director UI, perform the following steps:
  1. Add a Altus Director environment, as described in Adding a Altus Director Environment on AWS.
  2. Begin the simple setup cluster installation in one of the following ways:
    • Click the Simple Setup tile at the conclusion of the Add Environment procedure.
    • Navigate to an existing environment and click the Add Cluster button.
  3. Provide values for the fields on the Add Cluster screen:
    1. Cluster name: Between 2 and 40 alphanumeric characters. Space, underscore, and hyphen are allowed except at the beginning or end of the name. EC2 instances for the cluster nodes are prefixed with the cluster name.
    2. Workload Type: Select the typical workload that this cluster will run on from the drop-down list. The workload type is used to determine the services that run inside the cluster.
    3. Worker Node Instance Type: m4.xlarge or larger is recommended.
    4. Worker Node Count: Number of cluster nodes for worker roles.
    5. Security group IDs: Specify a list of one or more security group IDs. Must begin with sg-.
    6. VPC subnet ID: The AWS virtual private cloud (VPC) subnet ID.
  4. Click Continue to launch the cluster.
If you launch additional clusters with the simple setup procedure using the same Altus Director environment, the fields on the Add Cluster screen for Worker Node Instance Type, Worker Node Count, Security Group IDs, and VPC subnet ID will be pre-populated with the values you used for your previous simple setup cluster.

Converting a Configuration File from Simple to Standard Format

When you launch a cluster using the Altus Director CLI and the bootstrap-remote command with a simple configuration file, your configuration file is automatically converted from a simple cluster configuration file to a standard one. If you want to see your configuration file converted from simple to standard format before you have used it, run the CLI command convert-remote.
The default name for files created with the convert-remote command is director.out. Use the lp.cli.file.outputFilename property if you want to give the output file a different name. You can do this in the CLI application.properties file (/etc/cloudera-director-client/application.properties on the Altus Director instance). Another way is to pass your desired file name on the command line with the convert-remote command: 
cloudera-director convert-remote simple.conf \
  --lp.cli.file.outputFilename=myoutputfilename.conf \
  --lp.remote.username=admin --lp.remote.password=admin
This method enables you to provide a different file name each time you convert a configuration file from simple to standard format.