How to submit Spark jobs to EMR cluster from Airflow?

Question

How can I establish a connection between EMR master cluster(created by Terraform) and Airflow. I have Airflow setup under AWS EC2 server with same SG,VPC and Subnet.

I need solutions so that Airflow can talk to EMR and execute Spark submit.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/build-a-concurrent-data-orchestration-pipeline-using-amazon-emr-and-apache-livy/

These blogs have understanding on execution after connection has been established.(Didn't help much)

In airflow I have made a connection using UI for AWS and EMR:-

Below is the code which will list the EMR cluster's which are Active and Terminated, I can also fine tune to get Active Clusters:-

from airflow.contrib.hooks.aws_hook import AwsHook
import boto3
hook = AwsHook(aws_conn_id=‘aws_default’)
    client = hook.get_client_type(‘emr’, ‘eu-central-1’)
    for x in a:
        print(x[‘Status’][‘State’],x[‘Name’])

My question is - How can I update my above code can do Spark-submit actions

Answer 1

While it may not directly address your particular query, broadly, here are some ways you can trigger spark-submit on (remote) EMR via Airflow

1. Use Apache Livy

   • This solution is actually independent of remote server, i.e., EMR
   • Here's an example
   • The downside is that Livy is in early stages and its API appears incomplete and wonky to me

2. Use EmrSteps API

   • Dependent on remote system: EMR
   • Robust, but since it is inherently async, you will also need an EmrStepSensor (alongside EmrAddStepsOperator)
   • On a single EMR cluster, you cannot have more than one steps running simultaneously (although some hacky workarounds exist)

3. Use SSHHook / SSHOperator

   • Again independent of remote system
   • Comparatively easier to get started with
   • If your spark-submit command involves a lot of arguments, building that command (programmatically) can become cumbersome

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EDIT-1

There seems to be another straightforward way

4. Specifying remote master-IP

   • Independent of remote system
   • Needs modifying Global Configurations / Environment Variables
   • See @cricket_007's answer for details

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Useful links

• This one is from @Kaxil Naik himself: Is there a way to submit spark job on different server running master
• Spark job submission using Airflow by submitting batch POST method on Livy and tracking job
• Remote spark-submit to YARN running on EMR