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How to create a Hortonworks Sandbox...

 

 

The easiest ...and cheapest...and almost fastest way to create your own Hadoop playground (sandbox) is to use the Hortonworks Sandbox virtual machine. This allows you to host the environment locally and skip all the cloud service fees. There is no charge for either the Oracle VBox VM host or the Hortonworks Sandbox virtual machine.

 

Other HUGE advantages to this approach are the comprehensive Hortonworks documentation and tutorials, and the browser based interface. This allows you to warm up and practice in the UI then, when ready, switch to the command line interface to really learn to work in Pig, Hive, and HBase. Open source projects typically have somewhat poor interfaces...this one is an exception.

 

So...here we go...

Step 1...Read the Hortonworks prerequisites then download the virtual machine from this link. Choose the (Oracle) VirtualBox version

 

Step 2...Download the Oracle VirtualBox VM host from this link. Choose the version appropriate for your host computer

 

Step 3...Install the VirtualBox software

 

Step 4...Create a directory (preferably with a short path) for the Sandbox virtual machine

 

Step 5...Copy the Hortonworks Sandbox virtual machine file into the new directory.

 

Step 6...Start the VirtualBox application

 

Step 7...Import the virtual machine file by clicking File > Import Appliance > Open appliance. Navigate to the folder where you copied the Hortonworks_Sandbox_2.1.ova file and select it. Click Open. The interface should look like this...

Step 8...Click Next which takes you to the Appliance Settings. VBox read the file meta and now gives you a chance to edit if desired. To edit, double click on an item and set its value as desired. The interface should look like this...

Step 9...Getting very close! Click Import. A progress popup appears to indicate status....looks like this...

             When the import is complete it will look like this...

Step 10...Click on the new virtual machine so it turns blue then click Start. A new command window will open and display the VM startup status. When it is complete it will look like this...

                This is your Hortonworks Sandbox session command window where you can...later...interact with Pig, Hive, etc as script.

 

Step 11...Open a browser (note that some versions of IE don't work...may need FireFox) and enter the IP address http://127.0.0.1:8000. Note...the address with the 8888 port takes you to the Hortonworks Sandbox registration page. The 8000 port should open the  browser based interface and should look like this for the 2.2 Sandbox Preview...

 

 Enter "hue" for the Username and "1111" for the Password.

 

The following screen should look like this...

 

Congratulations!!! Your Sandbox is ready and you are now ready to proceed with the Hortonworks tutorials at this link.

 

Last Step...To shut the VM down go to the Oracle VM Manager, right click on the VM name, click on Close, and ...assuming you want to pick up where you left off...choose Save State. The VM will shut down and the UI will indidate "Saved" under the VM name.

 

The green toolbar across the top gives you access to all the modules. Links to the demo data files are in the tutorials. Once you have a handle on uploading and importing files you should try some of your own just for grins.

 

Once you get good at using the UI there are command line tutorials at this link. The tutorials are not nearly as extensive as the UI but they will give you an idea of how to use the interface and some of the syntax. As the Sandbox command window indicates...enter the key sequence indicated to log into the hadoop shell. The user name is "root" and the password is "hadoop".

 

Have fun and please let me know how this works for you!!!!

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