This guide describes setup of a standalone HBase instance that uses the local filesystem. It leads you through creating a table, inserting rows via the HBase shell, and then cleaning up and shutting down your standalone HBase instance. The below exercise should take no more than ten minutes (not including download time).
Before we proceed, make sure you are good on the below loopback prerequisite.
HBase expects the loopback IP address to be 127.0.0.1. Ubuntu and some other distributions, for example, will default to 127.0.1.1 and this will cause problems for you.
/etc/hosts should look something like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 ubuntu.ubuntu-domain ubuntu
Choose a download site from this list of Apache Download
Mirrors. Click on the suggested top link. This will take you to a
mirror of HBase Releases. Click on the folder named
stable and then download the file that ends in
.tar.gz to your local filesystem; e.g.
hbase-0.94.2.tar.gz.
Decompress and untar your download and then change into the unpacked directory.
$ tar xfz hbase-0.94.27.tar.gz $ cd hbase-0.94.27
At this point, you are ready to start HBase. But before starting
it, edit conf/hbase-site.xml, the file you write
your site-specific configurations into. Set
hbase.rootdir, the directory HBase writes data to,
and hbase.zookeeper.property.dataDir, the director
ZooKeeper writes its data too:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="configuration.xsl"?>
<configuration>
<property>
<name>hbase.rootdir</name>
<value>file:///DIRECTORY/hbase</value>
</property>
<property>
<name>hbase.zookeeper.property.dataDir</name>
<value>/DIRECTORY/zookeeper</value>
</property>
</configuration> Replace DIRECTORY in the above with the
path to the directory you would have HBase and ZooKeeper write their data. By default,
hbase.rootdir is set to /tmp/hbase-${user.name}
and similarly so for the default ZooKeeper data location which means you'll lose all
your data whenever your server reboots unless you change it (Most operating systems clear
/tmp on restart).
Now start HBase:
$ ./bin/start-hbase.sh starting Master, logging to logs/hbase-user-master-example.org.out
You should now have a running standalone HBase instance. In
standalone mode, HBase runs all daemons in the the one JVM; i.e. both
the HBase and ZooKeeper daemons. HBase logs can be found in the
logs subdirectory. Check them out especially if
it seems HBase had trouble starting.
All of the above presumes a 1.6 version of Oracle
java is installed on your machine and
available on your path (See Section 2.1.1, “Java”); i.e. when you type
java, you see output that describes the
options the java program takes (HBase requires java 6). If this is not
the case, HBase will not start. Install java, edit
conf/hbase-env.sh, uncommenting the
JAVA_HOME line pointing it to your java install, then,
retry the steps above.
Connect to your running HBase via the shell.
$ ./bin/hbase shell HBase Shell; enter 'help<RETURN>' for list of supported commands. Type "exit<RETURN>" to leave the HBase Shell Version: 0.90.0, r1001068, Fri Sep 24 13:55:42 PDT 2010 hbase(main):001:0>
Type help and then <RETURN> to see a listing of shell commands and options. Browse at least the paragraphs at the end of the help emission for the gist of how variables and command arguments are entered into the HBase shell; in particular note how table names, rows, and columns, etc., must be quoted.
Create a table named test with a single column family named cf.
Verify its creation by listing all tables and then insert some
values.
hbase(main):003:0> create 'test', 'cf' 0 row(s) in 1.2200 seconds hbase(main):003:0> list 'test' .. 1 row(s) in 0.0550 seconds hbase(main):004:0> put 'test', 'row1', 'cf:a', 'value1' 0 row(s) in 0.0560 seconds hbase(main):005:0> put 'test', 'row2', 'cf:b', 'value2' 0 row(s) in 0.0370 seconds hbase(main):006:0> put 'test', 'row3', 'cf:c', 'value3' 0 row(s) in 0.0450 seconds
Above we inserted 3 values, one at a time. The first insert is at
row1, column cf:a with a value of
value1. Columns in HBase are comprised of a column family prefix --
cf in this example -- followed by a colon and then a
column qualifier suffix (a in this case).
Verify the data insert by running a scan of the table as follows
hbase(main):007:0> scan 'test' ROW COLUMN+CELL row1 column=cf:a, timestamp=1288380727188, value=value1 row2 column=cf:b, timestamp=1288380738440, value=value2 row3 column=cf:c, timestamp=1288380747365, value=value3 3 row(s) in 0.0590 seconds
Get a single row
hbase(main):008:0> get 'test', 'row1' COLUMN CELL cf:a timestamp=1288380727188, value=value1 1 row(s) in 0.0400 seconds
Now, disable and drop your table. This will clean up all done above.
hbase(main):012:0> disable 'test' 0 row(s) in 1.0930 seconds hbase(main):013:0> drop 'test' 0 row(s) in 0.0770 seconds
Exit the shell by typing exit.
hbase(main):014:0> exit
Stop your hbase instance by running the stop script.
$ ./bin/stop-hbase.sh stopping hbase...............
The above described standalone setup is good for testing and experiments only. In the next chapter, Chapter 2, Apache HBase (TM) Configuration, we'll go into depth on the different HBase run modes, system requirements running HBase, and critical configurations setting up a distributed HBase deploy.