Simple Setup: Creating an Azure Cluster with Default Settings

Simple setup clusters provide 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 Cloudera 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 azure.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

You can choose from five different types of cluster with the simple setup procedure, 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 simple setup cluster:
  • Use the Cloudera Director UI, and clicking the tile Simple Setup at the conclusion of the Add Environment procedure, or by navigating to an existing environment and clicking the Add Cluster button.
  • Use the Cloudera 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 azure.simple_setup.conf on the Cloudera GitHub site.
  • Submit JSON or HOCON input to the Cloudera Director API import endpoint. For details, see importClientConfig in the Cloudera Director API console at director_ip_address:port/api-console/index.html.

Launching a Simple Setup Cluster with the Cloudera Director UI

To use simple setup to launch a cluster with the Cloudera Director UI, perform the following steps:
  1. Add a Cloudera Director environment, as described in Adding a Cloudera Director Environment on Azure.
  2. Begin the simple setup installation procedure 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. Environment name: The name of the Environment that includes this cluster. More information.
    2. Cluster name: Between 2 and 40 alphanumeric characters. Space, underscore, and hyphen are allowed except at the beginning or end of the name. Azure instance names for the cluster nodes will be prefixed with the cluster name.
    3. Workload Type: Select the typical workload that this cluster will run on from the dropdown list. The workload type will be used to determine the services that will run inside the cluster.
    4. Worker Node Instance Type: The machine type. More information.
    5. Worker Node Count: Number of cluster nodes for worker roles.
    6. Virtual Network: The Virtual Network for the deployment. This must exist in the Virtual Network Resource Group you selected. More information.
    7. Virtual Network Resource Group: The Resource Group where the Virtual Network is located.
    8. Network Security Group: The Network Security Group for the deployment. This must exist in the Network Security Group Resource Group you selected. More information.
    9. Network Security Group Resource Group: The Resource Group where the Network Security Group is located.
    10. Compute Resource Group: The Resource Group where the compute resources such as VM instances and availability sets will be created. More information.
    11. Host FQDN suffix: The private domain name used to create a FQDN for each host. Note: Azure provided DNS service does not support reverse DNS lookup for private IP addresses. You must setup a dedicated DNS service with reverse lookup support and use this FQDN Suffix.
  4. Click Continue to launch the cluster.

If you launch additional simple setup clusters using the same Cloudera Director environment, many of the fields on the Add Cluster screen will be pre-populated with the values you used for your previous simple setup cluster.