Pre-work Setup for “Faster time to value with Hadoop on the Cloud” Meetup
Introduction
This demo will take you through the logistics and process involved in setting up your laptop to try Analytics for Hadoop on the Cloud provided by IBM as a free service.
Contents
Pre-work Setup for “Faster time to value with Hadoop on the Cloud” Meetup
Introduction
Demo Overview
Document Notation
Pre-work Setup Instructions
Bluemix.net Account
Download Example Data Files
Download cURL and/or a Firefox plug-in
Download cURL for Windows
Download the Firefox plug-in called Poster
Demo Overview
This demo assumes that you have no experience with Hadoop, the IBM Analytics for Hadoop service, or that you have created your Bluemix.net ID and have already logged in successfully. To be complete, we will start from the very beginning and assume nothing. If you happen to have completed a section for other reasons, please feel free to skip to the next section.
Optionally, the IBM BigInsights Quick Start edition combines the IBM Open Platform with enterprise-grade features including visualization, exploration, and advanced analytics of IBM BigInsights Data Scientist & IBM BigInsights Analyst. If you wish to download the free Virtual Machine option to run IBM BigInsights Quick Start edition locally on your laptop then please visit the following URL: will provide an environment where you have full control and can modify the contents of the offering to fit your needs.
Document Notation
Please note that whenever you see text within “< >” brackets, these are placeholders for you to replace the bracketed content with your particular details. For example, you would replace <password> with your actual password and not include the < > brackets in your text.
Pre-work Setup Instructions
This portion of the document contains the necessary setup and file download instructions. There are three (3) required steps to complete in order to become fully setup for the demo; namely...
- Sign up for a free Bluemix.net account
- Download example data
- Download cURL and/or a Firefox plug-in
The Analytics for Hadoop Service is required and this is provided as a free, 14-day trial under your Bluemix.net account. These instructions will assume you are running Windows 7. If you are running Linux or some other OS, you will have to adjust accordingly.
Bluemix.net Account
If you already have an existing Bluemix.net account and you have available resources to add another service, you can skip to the next setup section. If you do not have a free, Bluemix.net account yet, please follow the steps in this section.
___ Step 1: Navigate in your browser to
___ Step 2: In the upper, right-hand corner, click on the “Sign up” button.
___ Step 3: Provide the required information, create your password, provide your email, provide your security question, provide your security answer, and click the “create account” button to create your Bluemix.net account.
___ Step 4: Ensure you can login and logout of the account properly before you continue.
Download Example Data Files
So that everyone can access the sample data, a single zip file call IBM_sample_data.zip has been placed in the More->Files section of the meetup located at
To download the file, please follow these instructions.
___ Step 5: Create a folder on your host machine that will be easy for you to find. Download the IBM_sample_data.zip and unzip it.
___ Step 6: For my system, I created C:\BigSheets_demo_data and it contains the following after unzipping the IBM_sample_data.zip file …
Download cURL and/or a Firefox plug-in
In order to upload files to the cloud, you will need to use a set of REST API calls. These calls can be performed by running the cURL command or by utilizing a Firefox browser plug-in. If you already have cURL installed, you can skip this section. If not, please choose one (or both) of the setup options below in order to be prepared to upload data to your Hadoop service in the cloud.
Download cURL for Windows
For this option, you will need to download an executable that will allow you to run curl commands from an OS command prompt on your Windows machine. Please following these steps to download and install the program.
___ Step 7: Navigate to and download the cURL that matches your machine type and OS.
___ Step 8: For me, I am running Windows 7 64-bit. So, I clicked on the 7.43.0 link for Win64 as shown below (Please note that the latest version is 7.45.0 and you can use that)
___ Step 9: This downloaded a .cab file. Extract the contents of the .cab file to a location you will remember. For me, I used 7-zip to extract to a folder on my C:\ drive as shown below…
___ Step 10: It will be easier to run curl if you add it to your PATH environment variable. To do this, you will click the Windows Start button and right-click on the Computer icon and select the “Properties” option.
___ Step 11: You will then click the “Advanced system settings” link.
___ Step 12: Then, click the “Environment variables” button.
___ Step 13: In the System variables section, scroll down to find the Variable called Path. Select the line by left-clicking once. Then, click the Edit button.
___ Step 14: Add the location of your CURL.EXE folder to the end of the Path variable. For my machine, I used the following as an example…
___ Step 15: Click the OK button to close the three open windows. You can also close the Control Panel window as well at this time.
___ Step 16: Open a command prompt.
___ Step 17: Navigate to c:\ using the following command…
cd c:\
___ Step 18: Run the following command to ensure your executable is working from any directory.
curl
___ Step 19: If you see output similar to the following example, curl is now installed and working on your machine.
___ Step 20: You can optionally close your command prompt window, if you wish.
Download the Firefox plug-in called Poster
For this option, you will need to download and install a plug-in that runs in your Firefox browser. If you are not using Firefox and do not wish to use Firefox, you can skip this section. Just know, you will have to use the cURL program instead of Poster in order to upload data to your cluster.
___ Step 21: Navigate in your browser to
___ Step 22: Find the Downloads section (under Featured) on the left-hand side and click on poster-3.2.0.xpi to download it.
___ Step 23: The link above will take you to a download page. Click to download the xpi file and make note of where you save the downloaded file.
___ Step 24: If Firefox is not running, start Firefox.
___ Step 25: Within Firefox, click on the “hamburger” in the upper, right-hand corner to find the Add-ons icon. Click the Add-ons icon.
___ Step 26: Click the gear in the upper, right-hand corner to select the “Install from file” option.
___ Step 27: Select the Poster xpi file you previously downloaded. Click Open, then click “Install now” to install it.
___ Step 28: Click the “Restart now” link to restart Firefox.
___ Step 29: Press the Alt key on your keyboard, click the tools menu, and confirm Poster is shown.
___ Step 30: You can click on Poster to launch the plug-in (or use Ctrl+Alt+P as a hot-key sequence to launch the window as well). This will accept REST API calls in the URL box as well as User Auth userid and password information. Your Poster window should look similar to the following…
___ Step 31: Close the Poster window for now. We will use it for a nice UI to upload files to the cluster. You can optionally close Firefox if you would like to as well.