Web Applications Embedded in Sessions

This topic describes how Cloudera AI allows you to embed web applications for frameworks such as Spark 2, TensorFlow, Shiny, and so on within sessions and jobs.

Many data science libraries and processing frameworks include user interfaces to help track progress of your jobs and break down workflows. These are instrumental in debugging and using the platforms themselves. For example, TensorFlow visualizations can be run on TensorBoard. Other web application frameworks such as Shiny and Flask are popular ways for data scientists to display additional interactive analysis in the languages they already know.

Cloudera AI allows you to access these web UIs directly from sessions and jobs. This feature is particularly helpful when you want to monitor and track progress for batch jobs. Even though jobs don't give you access to the interactive workbench console, you can still track long running jobs through the UI. However, note that the UI is only active so long as the job or session is active. If your session times out after 60 minutes (default timeout value), so will the UI.

HTTP services running in containers that bind to CDSW_APP_PORT, CDSW_READONLY_PORT, and CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT are available in browsers at the following urls:

CDSW_APP_PORT is available at

https://<$CDSW_ENGINE_ID>.<$CDSW_DOMAIN>

CDSW_READONLY_PORT is available at

https://read-only-<$CDSW_ENGINE_ID>.<$CDSW_DOMAIN>

CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT is available at

https://public-<$CDSW_ENGINE_ID>.<$CDSW_DOMAIN>

Therefore, TensorBoard, Shiny, Flask or any other web framework accompanying a project can be accessed directly from within a session or job, as long as it is run on CDSW_APP_PORT or CDSW_READONLY_PORT.

CDSW_APP_PORT is meant for applications that grant some level of control to the project, such as access to the active session or terminal. CDSW_READONLY_PORT must be used for applications that grant read-only access to project results.

To access the UI while you are in an active session, click the grid icon in the upper right hand corner of the Cloudera AI web application, and select the UI from the dropdown. For a job, navigate to the job overview page and click the History tab. Click on a job run to open the session output for the job. You can now click the grid icon in the upper right hand corner of the Cloudera AI web application to access the UI for this session.

Limitations with port availability

Cloudera AI exposes only one port per-access level. This means, in version 1.6.0, you can run a maximum of 3 web applications simultaneously:

one on CDSW_APP_PORT, which can be used for applications that grant some level of control over the project to Contributors and Admins,
one on CDSW_READONLY_PORT, which can be used for applications that only need to give read-only access to project collaborators,
and, one on the now-deprecated CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT, which is accessible by all users.

However, by default the editors feature runs third-party browser-based editors on CDSW_APP_PORT. Therefore, for projects that are already using browser-based third-party editors, you are left with only 2 other ports to run applications on: CDSW_READONLY_PORT and CDSW_PUBLIC_PORT. Keep in mind the level of access you want to grant users when you are selecting one of these ports for a web application.