This configuration builds a docker container to run HBase (with embedded Zookeeper) running on the files inside the container.

The approach here requires editing the local server's /etc/hosts file to add an entry for the container hostname. This is because HBase uses hostnames to pass connection data back out of the container (from it's internal Zookeeper).

Hopefully this can be improved with Docker's newer networking but this hasn't been fixed yet.

$ docker build -t dajobe/hbase .

If you want to pull the image already built then use this

$ docker pull dajobe/hbase

More details at https://hub.docker.com/r/dajobe/hbase/

To run HBase by hand:

$ mkdir data
$ id=$(docker run --name=hbase-docker -h hbase-docker -d -v $PWD/data:/data dajobe/hbase)

To run it and adjust the host system's locally by editing /etc/hosts to alias the DNS hostname 'hbase-docker' to the container, use this:

$ ./start-hbase.sh

This will require you to enter your sudo password to edit the host machine's /etc/hosts file

Master status if docker container DNS name is 'hbase-docker'

http://hbase-docker:16010/master-status

The region servers status pages are linked from the above page.

Thrift UI

http://hbase-docker:9095/thrift.jsp

REST server UI

http://hbase-docker:8085/rest.jsp

(Embedded) Zookeeper status

http://hbase-docker:16010/zk.jsp

If you want to see the latest logs live use:

$ docker attach $id

Then ^C to detach.

To see all the logs since the HBase server started, use:

$ docker logs $id

and ^C to detach again.

To see the individual log files without using docker, look into the data volume dir eg $PWD/data/logs if invoked as above.

Here I am connecting to a docker container with the name 'hbase-docker' (such as created by the start-hbase.sh script). The port 9090 is the Thrift API port because [Happybase][1] [2] uses Thrift to talk to HBase.

$ ipython
Python 2.7.9 (default, Mar  1 2015, 12:57:24)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 2.3.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: import happybase

In [2]: connection = happybase.Connection('hbase-docker', 9090)

In [3]: connection.create_table('table-name', { 'family': dict() } )

In [4]: connection.tables()
Out[4]: ['table-name']

In [5]: table = connection.table('table-name')

In [6]: table.put('row-key', {'family:qual1': 'value1', 'family:qual2': 'value2'})

In [7]: for k, data in table.scan():
   ...:     print k, data
   ...:
row-key {'family:qual1': 'value1', 'family:qual2': 'value2'}

In [8]:
Do you really want to exit ([y]/n)? y
$

(Simple install for happybase: sudo pip install happybase although I use pip install --user happybase to get it just for me)

$ docker run --rm -it --link $id:hbase-docker dajobe/hbase hbase shell
HBase Shell; enter 'help<RETURN>' for list of supported commands.
Type "exit<RETURN>" to leave the HBase Shell
Version 0.94.11, r1513697, Wed Aug 14 04:54:46 UTC 2013

hbase(main):001:0> status
1 servers, 0 dead, 3.0000 average load

hbase(main):002:0> list
TABLE
table-name
1 row(s) in 0.0460 seconds

Showing the table-name table made in the happybase example above.

Alternatively if you have the Hbase distribution available on the host you can use bin/hbase shell if the hbase configuration has been set up to connect to host hbase-docker zookeeper port 2181 to get the servers via configuration property hbase.zookeeper.quorum

If you are running docker on a remote machine, it is handy to see these server-private urls in a local browser so here is a ~/.ssh/config fragment to do that

Host my-docker-server
Hostname 1.2.3.4
    LocalForward 127.0.0.1:16010 127.0.0.1:16010
    LocalForward 127.0.0.1:9095 127.0.0.1:9095
    LocalForward 127.0.0.1:8085 127.0.0.1:8085

When you ssh my-docker-server ssh connects to the docker server and forwards request on your local machine on ports 16010 / 16030 to the remote ports that are attached to the hbase container.

The bottom line, you can use these URLs to see what's going on:

• http://localhost:16010/master-status for the Master Server
• http://localhost:9095/thrift.jsp for the thrift UI
• http://localhost:8085/rest.jsp for the REST server UI
• http://localhost:16010/zk.jsp for the embedded Zookeeper

to see what's going on in the container and since both your local machine and the container are using localhost (aka 127.0.0.1), even the links work!

[1] http://happybase.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

[2] https://github.com/wbolster/happybase