This projects aim is to help you to get started with ambari. The 2 easiest way to have an ambari server:

• start an ec2 instance
• start a virtual instance on your dev box

Amazon is getting cheaper and cheaper, so its absolutely reasonable to spend the price of a cappuccino to try ambari on EC2. But sometimes you want it for 'free' or for whatever reason you don't want to use AWS.

You could go than for a virtual instance, and the use virtualbox or vmware, but Docker has some benefits:

• starting containers under a second
• taking snapshots, its freaking quick (its just settinga label)
• snapshots are cheap, thanks to the layering nature of the underlaying aufs
• memory management is easier, as docker is using the same memory as the hosts, while for several virtual instances, you have to declare memory limits one by one

Follow the description at the docker getting started

Note: If you are using boot2docker make sure you forward all ports from docker: http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/installation/mac/#forwarding-vm-port-range-to-host

This will start (and download if you never used it before) an image based on centos-6 with preinstalled Ambari 1.7.0 ready to install HDP 2.2.

docker run -d -P -h amb0.mycorp.kom -e KEYCHAIN=<keychain@email> --name amb0  sequenceiq/ambari --tag ambari-server=true

The explanation of the parameters:

• -d: run as daemon
• -P: expose all ports defined in the Dockerfile
• -h amb0.mycorp.kom: sets the hostname
• --name amb0: sets the container name to amb0 (no need to use )
• -e KEYCHAIN= your keychain.io email. Keychain.io is a free service which can store, and serve pulic keys for ssh authentication. You can upload you public key as: curl -s ssh.keychain.io/<email>/upload | bash

Once the container is running, you can deploy a cluster. Instead of going to the webui, we can use ambari-shell, which can interact with ambari via cli, or perform automated provisioning. We will use the automated way, and of course there is a docker image, with prepared ambari-shell in it:

docker run -e BLUEPRINT=single-node-hdfs-yarn --link amb0:ambariserver -t --rm --entrypoint /bin/sh sequenceiq/ambari-shell -c /tmp/install-cluster.sh

Ambari-shell uses Ambari's new Blueprints capability. It just simple posts a cluster definition JSON to the ambari REST api, and 1 more json for cluster creation, where you specify which hosts go to which hostgroup.

Ambari shell will show the progress in the upper right corner. So grab a cup coffee, and after about 10 minutes, you have a ready HDP 2.2 cluster.

For the multi node Hadoop cluster instructions please read our blog entry or run this one-liner:

curl -Lo .amb j.mp/docker-ambari && . .amb && amb-deploy-cluster

Note: there is a 1.7.0 Ambari early access in the v1.7.0-ea branch. if you are interested in a particular Ambari version, always check for the appropriate branch.