Setting up HortonWorks Sandbox on Windows 8 (or Server 2012 R2)

I wanted to create a virtual Hadoop Big Data environment for some testing and, luckily, HortonWorks have a virtual machine available to download in multiple virtualized environments here.

I wanted to use Hyper-V, but ran into multiple problems (partly because you can’t import legacy VMs into Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 R2). The steps in the PDF on the HortonWorks site do not, unfortunately, work. So here’s the steps to accomplish this (I’m assuming the Hyper-V Windows features are installed):

Click Download for Hyper-Vhere.
While the file is downloading start Hyper-V Manager and click Virtual Switch Manager in the Actions pane.
In the What type of virtual switch do you want to create box, click Internal and click Create Virtual Switch.
Give the switch a name, select Internal network, and click OK (I called it Internal and will use that name going forward, but if you want to use a different name, just replace it whenever it’s used).
Start Control Panel.
Click Network and Sharing Center (or View network status and tasks).
Click vEthernet (Internal).
Click Properties.
Scroll down to, and select, Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4).
Click Properties.
Enter the following settings and click OK:
Click Close and Close again and shutdown Network and Sharing Center and Control Panel.
Hopefully the file download has finished. If not, grab a cup of tea. When the download is complete, unzip the downloaded file to somewhere convenient and then copy the file HDP_2.2_Hyper-V.vhd to your virtual hard disk location.
In Hyper-V Manager, in the Actions pane, click New and click Virtual Machine.
On the Before You Begin page, click Next.
Enter a name for the virtual machine (e.g. HortonWorks Sandbox) and click Next.
Enter a Startup memory value that is at least 4096 (if you can spare more, it will run faster) and click Next.
In Connection, select Internal and click Next.
Select Use an existing virtual hard disk and click Browse.
Browse to the vhd file that you downloaded and extracted earlier, select it, click Open, and click Next.
Click Finish.
Start and connect to the HortonWorks Sandbox virtual machine.
When the Sandbox has booted up, it will give you a website address to initiate your Sandbox session. Go to this website in your browser and register with HortonWorks.
The page will present a link to explore HDP 2.2 Sandbox. This link is not correct. Go to http://192.168.56.101:8000/ and logon with a username of hue and a password of 1111. You can also connect using putty with an ip address of 192.168.56.101 and a port of 22.
To learn about using Big Data and Hadoop, use the tutorials from the web page in the previous step and your new Sandbox virtual machine.