Add a Kudu Master

You can expand your Kudu cluster by adding a new master. Follow these steps to plan, validate the prerequisites, and install a new master.

Prerequisites and Planning

• Schedule a maintenance window of about one hour, as the Kudu cluster may experience brief unavailability.
• The number of masters must always be odd (recommended: three or five) to ensure consensus and fault tolerance.
• Add only one master at a time. If more masters are needed, repeat the process for each.

Pre-Addition Validation

Before adding a new master, verify the current configuration and flags on the existing masters:

kudu master get_flags <existing master comma separated list>

This command allows you to review the current configuration parameters before proceeding with the migration.

Install a New Master

1. In the Ambari UI, navigate to the Kudu service.

2. Add a new Kudu Master role to the designated host (new host).

3. Do not start the service yet.

   1. You can add only one new master server at a time.
   2. If you need to add multiple master servers, complete the full procedure described on this page for one server, and then repeat the procedure for each additional server.