There is a Driver class that is executed by the HBase jar can be used to invoke frequently accessed utilities. For example,

HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar

... will return...

An example program must be given as the first argument.
Valid program names are:
  completebulkload: Complete a bulk data load.
  copytable: Export a table from local cluster to peer cluster
  export: Write table data to HDFS.
  import: Import data written by Export.
  importtsv: Import data in TSV format.
  rowcounter: Count rows in HBase table
  verifyrep: Compare the data from tables in two different clusters. WARNING: It doesn't work for incrementColumnValues'd cells since the timestamp is chan

... for allowable program names.

To run hbck against your HBase cluster run

$ ./bin/hbase hbck

At the end of the commands output it prints OK or INCONSISTENCY. If your cluster reports inconsistencies, pass -details to see more detail emitted. If inconsistencies, run hbck a few times because the inconsistency may be transient (e.g. cluster is starting up or a region is splitting). Passing -fix may correct the inconsistency (This latter is an experimental feature).

For more information, see Appendix B, hbck In Depth.

See Section 9.7.5.2.2, “HFile Tool”.

See Section C.1, “CompressionTest Tool”.

CopyTable is a utility that can copy part or of all of a table, either to the same cluster or another cluster. The usage is as follows:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CopyTable [--starttime=X] [--endtime=Y] [--new.name=NEW] [--peer.adr=ADR] tablename

Options:

Args:

Example of copying 'TestTable' to a cluster that uses replication for a 1 hour window:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CopyTable
--starttime=1265875194289 --endtime=1265878794289
--peer.adr=server1,server2,server3:2181:/hbase TestTable

See Jonathan Hsieh's Online HBase Backups with CopyTable blog post for more on CopyTable.

Export is a utility that will dump the contents of table to HDFS in a sequence file. Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.Export <tablename> <outputdir> [<versions> [<starttime> [<endtime>]]]

Note: caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

Import is a utility that will load data that has been exported back into HBase. Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.Import <tablename> <inputdir>

ImportTsv is a utility that will load data in TSV format into HBase. It has two distinct usages: loading data from TSV format in HDFS into HBase via Puts, and preparing StoreFiles to be loaded via the completebulkload.

To load data via Puts (i.e., non-bulk loading):

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.ImportTsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c <tablename> <hdfs-inputdir>

To generate StoreFiles for bulk-loading:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.ImportTsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=hdfs://storefile-outputdir <tablename> <hdfs-data-inputdir>

These generated StoreFiles can be loaded into HBase via Section 14.1.10, “CompleteBulkLoad”.

Usage: importtsv -Dimporttsv.columns=a,b,c <tablename> <inputdir>

Imports the given input directory of TSV data into the specified table.

The column names of the TSV data must be specified using the -Dimporttsv.columns
option. This option takes the form of comma-separated column names, where each
column name is either a simple column family, or a columnfamily:qualifier. The special
column name HBASE_ROW_KEY is used to designate that this column should be used
as the row key for each imported record. You must specify exactly one column
to be the row key, and you must specify a column name for every column that exists in the
input data.

By default importtsv will load data directly into HBase. To instead generate
HFiles of data to prepare for a bulk data load, pass the option:
  -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=/path/for/output
  Note: the target table will be created with default column family descriptors if it does not already exist.

Other options that may be specified with -D include:
  -Dimporttsv.skip.bad.lines=false - fail if encountering an invalid line
  '-Dimporttsv.separator=|' - eg separate on pipes instead of tabs
  -Dimporttsv.timestamp=currentTimeAsLong - use the specified timestamp for the import
  -Dimporttsv.mapper.class=my.Mapper - A user-defined Mapper to use instead of org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.TsvImporterMapper

row1	c1	c2
row2	c1	c2
row3	c1	c2
row4	c1	c2
row5	c1	c2
row6	c1	c2
row7	c1	c2
row8	c1	c2
row9	c1	c2
row10	c1	c2

 HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar importtsv -Dimporttsv.columns=HBASE_ROW_KEY,d:c1,d:c2 -Dimporttsv.bulk.output=hdfs://storefileoutput datatsv hdfs://inputfile
 

The completebulkload utility will move generated StoreFiles into an HBase table. This utility is often used in conjunction with output from Section 14.1.9, “ImportTsv”.

There are two ways to invoke this utility, with explicit classname and via the driver:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.LoadIncrementalHFiles <hdfs://storefileoutput> <tablename>

.. and via the Driver..

HADOOP_CLASSPATH=`${HBASE_HOME}/bin/hbase classpath` ${HADOOP_HOME}/bin/hadoop jar ${HBASE_HOME}/hbase-VERSION.jar completebulkload <hdfs://storefileoutput> <tablename>

For more information about bulk-loading HFiles into HBase, see Section 9.8, “Bulk Loading”.

WALPlayer is a utility to replay WAL files into HBase.

The WAL can be replayed for a set of tables or all tables, and a timerange can be provided (in milliseconds). The WAL is filtered to this set of tables. The output can optionally be mapped to another set of tables.

WALPlayer can also generate HFiles for later bulk importing, in that case only a single table and no mapping can be specified.

Invoke via:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.WALPlayer [options] <wal inputdir> <tables> [<tableMappings>]>

For example:

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.WALPlayer /backuplogdir oldTable1,oldTable2 newTable1,newTable2

WALPlayer, by default, runs as a mapreduce job. To NOT run WALPlayer as a mapreduce job on your cluster, force it to run all in the local process by adding the flags -Dmapred.job.tracker=local on the command line.

RowCounter is a mapreduce job to count all the rows of a table. This is a good utility to use as a sanity check to ensure that HBase can read all the blocks of a table if there are any concerns of metadata inconsistency. It will run the mapreduce all in a single process but it will run faster if you have a MapReduce cluster in place for it to exploit.

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.RowCounter <tablename> [<column1> <column2>...]

Note: caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.

HBase ships another diagnostic mapreduce job called CellCounter. Like RowCounter, it gathers more fine-grained statistics about your table. The statistics gathered by RowCounter are more fine-grained and include:

The program allows you to limit the scope of the run. Provide a row regex or prefix to limit the rows to analyze. Use hbase.mapreduce.scan.column.family to specify scanning a single column family.

$ bin/hbase org.apache.hadoop.hbase.mapreduce.CellCounter <tablename> <outputDir> [regex or prefix]

Note: just like RowCounter, caching for the input Scan is configured via hbase.client.scanner.caching in the job configuration.