Nowadays, usability is one of the keys success
for any product, nobody likes a product that’s complex, hard to interact with
and have a big learning curve, no matter how good and amazing the product might
be.
Thinking about that, VMware, provides two
interfaces to interact with Big Data Extension, the Graphical User Interface
(GUI) and Command Line Interface (CLI).
Each one has it’s own merits and fits the needs
of all users kind, let’s explore them a little bit.
The GUI is the most intuitive and easy to use of
them, based on the already know vSphere Web Interface it takes almost no time
to learn how to operate it, being the recommend tool for the majority of Big
Data Users.
Once BDE plug-in is register, it will show up on
the vSphere Web Client like any other feature.
From there you can manage all features of BDE
as, adding/removing resources, configuring additional Application Managers and
the most important on: creating/deleting and managing Hadoop Clusters.
The cluster creation is intuitive, just click “Add
New Cluster” and the Wizard will guide you through it.
In the other hand we have CLI, which is the most
powerful and flexible tool to manage BDE, recommended for Big Data Hard Users. It
allows the same functionalities of the GUI but also allows the creation of more
advanced, customized and complex clusters topologies based on JSON
configuration files, extending the functionalities provided by the GUI.
To start with, you will need to download the CLI
from the BDE server, from the address: http://”bde_server”/cli
Just download the zip file and extract it to
your local drive.
To initiate the CLI run the following command:
java –jar serengeti-cli-x.x.x.jar
obs: you must have java already installed.
Once started you will need to connect to your
BDE server, run:
connect --host “bde_server":8443
To learn the commands and syntaxes available you
can just run help, but I strongly recommend you to read the vSphere Big DataExtensions Command-Line Interface Guide for full understanding of all features.
I’ll show you how on a future post, keep watching.
Here's the link for the post using vRA as a Interface for Hadoop as a Service Offering.
