Working with Task Runner
Task Runner is a task agent application that polls AWS Data Pipeline for scheduled tasks and executes them on Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EMR clusters, or other computational resources, reporting status as it does so. Depending on your application, you may choose to:
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Allow AWS Data Pipeline to install and manage one or more Task Runner applications for you. When a pipeline is activated, the default
Ec2InstanceorEmrClusterobject referenced by an activity runsOn field is automatically created. AWS Data Pipeline takes care of installing Task Runner on an EC2 instance or on the master node of an EMR cluster. In this pattern, AWS Data Pipeline can do most of the instance or cluster management for you. -
Run all or parts of a pipeline on resources that you manage. The potential resources include a long-running Amazon EC2 instance, an Amazon EMR cluster, or a physical server. You can install a task runner (which can be either Task Runner or a custom task agent of your own devise) almost anywhere, provided that it can communicate with the AWS Data Pipeline web service. In this pattern, you assume almost complete control over which resources are used and how they are managed, and you must manually install and configure Task Runner. To do so, use the procedures in this section, as described in Executing Work on Existing Resources Using Task Runner.
