Apache Ambari

What Ambari Does

Ambari makes Hadoop management simpler by providing a consistent, secure platform for operational control. Ambari provides an intuitive Web UI as well as a robust REST API, which is particularly useful for automating cluster operations. With Ambari, Hadoop operators get the following core benefits:

• Simplified Installation, Configuration and Management. Easily and efficiently create, manage and monitor clusters at scale. Takes the guesswork out of configuration with Smart Configs and Cluster Recommendations.  Enables repeatable, automated cluster creation with Ambari Blueprints.
• Centralized Security Setup. Reduce the complexity to administer and configure cluster security across the entire platform. Helps automate the setup and configuration of advanced cluster security capabilities such as Kerberos and Apache Ranger.
• Full Visibility into Cluster Health. Ensure your cluster is healthy and available with a holistic approach to monitoring. Configures predefined alerts — based on operational best practices — for cluster monitoring. Captures and visualizes critical operational metrics — using Grafana — for analysis and troubleshooting. Integrated with Hortonworks SmartSense for proactive issue prevention and resolution.
• Highly Extensible and Customizable. Fit Hadoop seamlessly into your enterprise environment. Highly extensible with Ambari Stacks for bringing custom services under management, and with Ambari Views for customizing the Ambari Web UI.

Download Hortonworks Operations Solution Brief

Collaboration and Focus

Hortonworks is focused on going to market with a 100% open source solution. This focus allows us to collectively provide the product management guidance for Enterprise Grade Hadoop to mainstream enterprises and our partner ecosystem, and further innovate the core of Hadoop.

• OpenDeliver a complete set of features for Hadoop operations, in public and with the community, by defining the operational framework and lifecycle.
• IntegratedEnsure that Hadoop operations can be integrated with existing IT tools, behind a single pane of glass, by providing REST APIs and multiple views of the cluster.
• IntuitiveMake Hadoop’s most complex operational challenges easy to manage with more insight and visibility into cluster performance.

The community will continue to innovate Ambari so that its operational capabilities keep pace with Hadoop’s ever-expanding functionality for data management, data access, governance and security.

It is exciting to see Ambari come together and we are very interested in hearing feedback as these contributions mature. Therefore, we have made the Ambari Operations and User Views available within the Hortonworks Sandbox to make it easier for you to try them out.  For questions and feedback on Ambari operations please post to the Ambari Forum. If you have questions or feedback on the User Views please post them to the Ambari User View Forum.

Recent Improvements

Apache Ambari 2.7 which is part of the Hortonworks Data Platform 3.0 release, serves as the management system for enterprises looking to easily and securely adopt Apache Hadoop. Ambari simplifies the experience of provisioning, managing, monitoring, securing and troubleshooting Hadoop deployments. Ambari removes the manual — often error-prone — tasks associated with operating Hadoop. It also provides the necessary customization “hooks” to fit seamlessly into the enterprise, and enables the IT Operator to focus on delivering world-class service and support for their consumers of the Hortonworks Data Platform. Apache Ambari 2.7 includes many improvements in the following product areas:

• Usability
• Management at Scale
• Simplified Security Configuration
• Automation & Extensibility

Usability

Make Ambari easier to install and use, and provide a consistent look and feel across Hortonworks products

Ambari 2.7 has been redesigned using the Hortonworks Fluid Design Spec to enable a more intuitive cluster installation and management experience. We centralized the most commonly modified configurations (such as credentials, database choice, directories, and accounts) and created a more natural way to help you choose the right configuration, so your installation is successful.

Ambari 2.7 also makes it easier to generate and download the blueprint of a cluster, enabling a repeatable and consistent cluster deployment process.

Management At Scale

Manage 5,000 node clusters with multiple concurrent admins

Large clusters have large administrative teams managing them, and we wanted to not only support the management of these large clusters but also give the right tools and experience to support large operational teams.

To reduce the load on the Ambari Server, Ambari 2.7 includes a redesigned agent/server communication pattern utilizing WebSockets. This allows more work to be pushed down to the individual agents, even giving the Ambari Agent autonomy over the state of the services it manages, which means services can be automatically started if the Ambari Server is not reachable.

To support more effective team communication, Ambari 2.7 makes it easy to identify which user restarted specific services, or is currently adding a host or service to the cluster.

To reduce the daily pain of large cluster operators, Ambari also improved support for bulk host actions, such as adding and removing components and hosts.

For those large deployments looking to take advantage of HDFS Federation in HDP 3.0, Ambari 2.7 supports the configuration and management of multiple HDFS namespaces.

Simplified Security Operations

Simplify SSO setup for DPS services, and integrate with FreeIPA

Securing distributed systems has always been challenging, due to the large surface area of attack they inherently have. Nevertheless, with the prevalence of cloud deployments and emerging regulations for data privacy, security in Hadoop clusters is becoming a ubiquitous requirement.

To make security more convenient to enable from the beginning, Ambari supports and automates Kerberos integration with Active Directory MIT KDC, and newly added in Ambari 2.7, FreeIPA.
In Ambari 2.7, it’s now easier to configure Single Sign-On with Knox for those services used with DataPlane.

Automation & Extensibility

Help teams discover and understand our API, and integrate with 3rd party file systems

Ambari has a powerful API that can be leveraged to automate many of the common configuration tasks via 3rd party tools. To make this API easier to use, Ambari 2.7 exposes a Swagger-based API reference portal where authenticated users can explore the API and try out actions directly from their browser.

Alongside supporting custom services via Management Packs, Ambari 2.7 includes native support for 3rd party file systems such as EMC Isilon OneFS. Using this new integration, it’s now easy to setup HDP services using OneFS as their default filesystem.

Ambari User Views

It’s time to put a new face on Hadoop using the Ambari Views framework.A “view” is a way of extending Ambari that allows 3rd parties to plug in new resource types along with the APIs, providers and UI to support them.  Ambari is the only open source and open community effort designed to provide a compelling user experience for Hadoop while delivering consistent lifecycle management and security.

Most notably, there are the Ambari User Views contributions actively being worked in the community. Ambari User Views are designed to provide capabilities that assist with the operational aspects of data application development and workload management. .

Beyond these out of the box User Views there is a growing ecosystem of Ambari User Views that are being developed by the community.  You can find community User Views in the Hortonworks Gallery.

Recent Ambari Releases

Download Ambari 2.7 and Learn More

For additional details about this release review the following resources:

• Ambari 2.7 Documentation
• Ambari 2.7 Release Notes
• Ambari 2.7 Install Guide
• Learn more about Ambari Views, Ambari Blueprints and Ambari Stacks