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Create HDInsight clusters using the Azure CLI

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The steps in this document walk-through creating a HDInsight 4.0 cluster using the Azure CLI.

Warning

Billing for HDInsight clusters is prorated per minute, whether you use them or not. Be sure to delete your cluster after you finish using it. See how to delete an HDInsight cluster.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create an Azure free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

Create a cluster

  1. Log in to your Azure subscription. If you plan to use Azure Cloud Shell, then select Try it in the upper-right corner of the code block. Else, enter the following command:

    az login

# If you have multiple subscriptions, set the one to use
# az account set --subscription "SUBSCRIPTIONID"

  2. Set environment variables. The use of variables in this article is based on Bash. Slight variations are needed for other environments. See az-hdinsight-create for a complete list of possible parameters for cluster creation.

    Parameter Description
    --workernode-count The number of worker nodes in the cluster. This article uses the variable clusterSizeInNodes as the value passed to --workernode-count.
    --version The HDInsight cluster version. This article uses the variable clusterVersion as the value passed to --version. See also: Supported HDInsight versions.
    --type Type of HDInsight cluster, like: hadoop, interactive hive, hbase, kafka, spark, rserver, mlservices. This article uses the variable clusterType as the value passed to --type. See also: Cluster types and configuration.
    --component-version The versions of various Hadoop components, in space-separated versions in 'component=version' format. This article uses the variable componentVersion as the value passed to --component-version. See also: Hadoop components.

    Replace RESOURCEGROUPNAME, LOCATION, CLUSTERNAME, STORAGEACCOUNTNAME, and PASSWORD with the desired values. Change values for the other variables as desired. Then enter the CLI commands.

    export resourceGroupName=RESOURCEGROUPNAME
export location=LOCATION
export clusterName=CLUSTERNAME
export AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT=STORAGEACCOUNTNAME
export httpCredential='PASSWORD'
export sshCredentials='PASSWORD'

export AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER=$clusterName
export clusterSizeInNodes=1
export clusterVersion=4.0
export clusterType=hadoop
export componentVersion=Hadoop=3.1

  3. Create the resource group by entering the following command:

    az group create \
    --location $location \
    --name $resourceGroupName

    For a list of valid locations, use the az account list-locations command, and then use one of the locations from the name value.

  4. Create an Azure Storage account by entering the following command:

    # Note: kind BlobStorage is not available as the default storage account.
az storage account create \
    --name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --https-only true \
    --kind StorageV2 \
    --location $location \
    --sku Standard_LRS

  5. Extract the primary key from the Azure Storage account and store it in a variable by entering the following command:

    export AZURE_STORAGE_KEY=$(az storage account keys list \
    --account-name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --query [0].value -o tsv)

  6. Create an Azure Storage container by entering the following command:

    az storage container create \
    --name $AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER \
    --account-key $AZURE_STORAGE_KEY \
    --account-name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT

  7. Create the HDInsight cluster by entering the following command:

    az hdinsight create \
    --name $clusterName \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --type $clusterType \
    --component-version $componentVersion \
    --http-password $httpCredential \
    --http-user admin \
    --location $location \
    --workernode-count $clusterSizeInNodes \
    --ssh-password $sshCredentials \
    --ssh-user sshuser \
    --storage-account $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT \
    --storage-account-key $AZURE_STORAGE_KEY \
    --storage-container $AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER \
    --version $clusterVersion

    Important

    HDInsight clusters come in various types, which correspond to the workload or technology that the cluster is tuned for. There is no supported method to create a cluster that combines multiple types, such as HBase on one cluster.

    It may take several minutes for the cluster creation process to complete. Usually around 15.

Clean up resources

After you complete the article, you may want to delete the cluster. With HDInsight, your data is stored in Azure Storage, so you can safely delete a cluster when it isn't in use. You're also charged for an HDInsight cluster, even when it's not in use. Since the charges for the cluster are many times more than the charges for storage, it makes economic sense to delete clusters when they aren't in use.

Enter all or some of the following commands to remove resources:

# Remove cluster
az hdinsight delete \
    --name $clusterName \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName

# Remove storage container
az storage container delete \
    --account-name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT \
    --name $AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER

# Remove storage account
az storage account delete \
    --name $AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName

# Remove resource group
az group delete \
    --name $resourceGroupName

Troubleshoot

If you run into issues with creating HDInsight clusters, see access control requirements.

Next steps

Now that you've successfully created an HDInsight cluster using the Azure CLI, use the following to learn how to work with your cluster:

Apache Hadoop clusters

Apache HBase clusters