What is the MapReduce application master?

MapReduce Application Master coordinates the tasks running the MapReduce job. It is the main container for requesting, launching and monitoring specific resources. It negotiates resources from the ResourceManager and works with the NodeManager to execute and monitor the granted resources.

For MapReduce program, you do not need map and reduce functions. You can have map-only jobs and reduce-only jobs.

MapReduce Application Master appropriately implements the code in the main().

Here is the life-cycle of MapReduce Application Master(AM):

• Each application running on the Hadoop cluster has its own, dedicated Application Master instance, which runs in a container on a slave node. One Application Master per application.

• Throughout its life (while the application is running), the Application Master sends heartbeat messages to the Resource Manager with its status and the state of the application’s resource needs.

• The Application Master oversees/supervise the full life-cycle of an application, all the way from requesting the needed containers from the Resource Manager to submitting container lease requests to the Node Manager.

• Each application framework that’s written for Hadoop must have its own Application Master implementation. Example: MapReduce application has a specific Application Master that’s designed to execute map tasks and reduce tasks in sequence.