Using the Google Cloud Dataproc WorkflowTemplates API to Automate Spark and Hadoop Workloads on GCP

Introduction

In the previous post, Big Data Analytics with Java and Python, using Cloud Dataproc, Google’s Fully-Managed Spark and Hadoop Service, we explored Google Cloud Dataproc using the Google Cloud Console as well as the Google Cloud SDK and Cloud Dataproc API. We created clusters, then uploaded and ran Spark and PySpark jobs, then deleted clusters, each as discrete tasks. Although each task could be done via the Dataproc API and therefore automatable, they were independent tasks, without awareness of the previous task’s state.

In this brief follow-up post, we will examine the Cloud Dataproc WorkflowTemplates API to more efficiently and effectively automate Spark and Hadoop workloads. According to Google, the Cloud Dataproc WorkflowTemplates API provides a flexible and easy-to-use mechanism for managing and executing Dataproc workflows. A Workflow Template is a reusable workflow configuration. It defines a graph of jobs with information on where to run those jobs. A Workflow is an operation that runs a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of jobs on a cluster. Shown below, we see one of the Workflows that will be demonstrated in this post, displayed in Spark History Server Web UI.