Stacks and Services

Ambari manages a stack as a versioned collection of services. A stack version selects service definitions, packages, configuration, lifecycle scripts, and upgrade metadata. A service is composed of components such as MASTER, SLAVE, and CLIENT, each with lifecycle commands and placement rules.

The current BIGTOP stack demonstrates the model: stack services can inherit shared definitions from common-services, while stack-specific metadata overrides the inherited definition. The stack and service descriptors are metainfo.xml files; their fields define identity, components, commands, configuration dependencies, packages, and supported operating systems.

Metrics are split by purpose. A service metrics.json describes the control-plane metrics that Ambari collects for that service. The current BIGTOP monitoring design separately uses telemetry.json for telemetry-provider configuration; it does not replace Ambari's retained control-plane metrics.json contract. VictoriaMetrics is packaged as the current metrics provider; this page does not describe the retired AMS/Ganglia or Ember workflows.

See Stack and Service Overview, Writing metainfo.xml, and the upgrade guide.