The HBase master is responsible for orchestrating various admin operations in an HBase cluster. Operations such as creating a table, adding a column family, or taking a snapshot, require coordination across multiple nodes in the cluster. The HBase master handles this coordination.
Before we describe the HBase master, we need to understand the role of the META region:
- META is a special region in an HBase cluster. It is the region that keeps the state of all the other regions in the cluster. Specifically, it tracks what the regions are, what the associated key ranges are, the RegionServers they've been assigned to, and other information. The META region is hosted on one of the RegionServers in the cluster. It's the master that ...
