Resize a cluster with the console Resize a cluster with the AWS CLI Interrupting a resize Suspended state Considerations

Manually resizing a running cluster

You can add and remove instances from core and task instance groups and instance fleets in a running cluster with the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or the Amazon EMR API. If a cluster uses instance groups, you explicitly change the instance count. If your cluster uses instance fleets, you can change the target units for On-Demand Instances and Spot Instances. The instance fleet then adds and removes instances to meet the new target. For more information, see Instance fleet options. Applications can use newly provisioned Amazon EC2 instances to host nodes as soon as the instances are available. When instances are removed, Amazon EMR shuts down tasks in a way that does not interrupt jobs and safeguards against data loss. For more information, see Terminate at task completion.

Resize a cluster with the console

You can use the Amazon EMR console to resize a running cluster.

Note

We’ve redesigned the Amazon EMR console to make it easier to use. See What's new with the console? to learn about the differences between the old and new console experiences.

New console

To change the instance count for an existing cluster with the new console

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and open the Amazon EMR console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/emr.
Under EMR on EC2 in the left navigation pane, choose Clusters, and select the cluster that you want to update. The cluster must be running; you can't resize a provisioning or terminated cluster.
On the Instances tab on the cluster details page, view the Instance groups panel.
To resize an existing instance group, select the radio button next to the core or task instance group that you want to resize and then choose Resize instance group. Specify the new number of instances for the instance group, then select Resize.

Note
If you choose to reduce the size of a running instance group, Amazon EMR will intelligently select the instances to remove from the group for minimal data loss. For more granular control of your resize action, you can select the ID for the instance group, choose the instances you want to remove, and then use the Terminate option. For more information on intelligent scale-down behavior, see Cluster scale-down.
If you want to cancel the resizing action, you can select the radio button for an instance group with the status Resizing and then choose Stop resize from the list actions.
To add one or more task instance groups to your cluster in response to increasing workload, choose Add task instance group from the list actions. Choose the Amazon EC2 instance type, enter the number of instances for the task group, then select Add task instance group to return to the Instance groups panel for your cluster.

Old console

To change the instance count for an existing cluster with the old console

From the Cluster List page, choose a cluster to resize.
On the Cluster Details page, choose Hardware.
If your cluster uses instance groups, choose Resize in the Instance count column for the instance group that you want to resize, type a new instance count, and then select the green check mark.

–OR–

If your cluster uses instance fleets, choose Resize in the Provisioned capacity column, type new values for On-Demand units and Spot units, and then choose Resize.

When you make a change to the number of nodes, the Status of the instance group updates. When the change you requested is complete, the Status is Running.

Resize a cluster with the AWS CLI

You can use the AWS CLI to resize a running cluster. You can increase or decrease the number of task nodes, and you can increase the number of core nodes in a running cluster. It is also possible to shut down an instance in the core instance group with the AWS CLI or the API. This should be done with caution. Shutting down an instance in the core instance group risks data loss, and the instance is not automatically replaced.

In addition to resizing the core and task groups, you can also add one or more task instance groups to a running cluster with the AWS CLI.

To resize a cluster by changing the instance count with the AWS CLI

You can add instances to the core group or task group, and you can remove instances from the task group with the AWS CLI modify-instance-groups subcommand with the InstanceCount parameter. To add instances to the core or task groups, increase the InstanceCount. To reduce the number of instances in the task group, decrease the InstanceCount. Changing the instance count of the task group to 0 removes all instances but not the instance group.

To increase the number of instances in the task instance group from 3 to 4, type the following command and replace ig-31JXXXXXXBTO with the instance group ID.
```
aws emr modify-instance-groups --instance-groups InstanceGroupId=ig-31JXXXXXXBTO,InstanceCount=4
```
To retrieve the InstanceGroupId, use the describe-cluster subcommand. The output is a JSON object called Cluster that contains the ID of each instance group. To use this command, you need the cluster ID (which you can retrieve with the aws emr list-clusters command or the console). To retrieve the instance group ID, type the following command and replace j-2AXXXXXXGAPLF with the cluster ID.
```
aws emr describe-cluster --cluster-id j-2AXXXXXXGAPLF
```
With the AWS CLI, you can also terminate an instance in the core instance group with the --modify-instance-groups subcommand.

Warning
Specifying EC2InstanceIdsToTerminate must be done with caution. Instances are terminated immediately, regardless of the status of applications running on them, and the instance is not automatically replaced. This is true regardless of the cluster's Scale down behavior configuration. Terminating an instance in this way risks data loss and unpredictable cluster behavior.

To terminate a specific instance you need the instance group ID (returned by the aws emr describe-cluster --cluster-id subcommand) and the instance ID (returned by the aws emr list-instances --cluster-id subcommand), type the following command, replace ig-6RXXXXXX07SA with the instance group ID and replace i-f9XXXXf2 with the instance ID.
```
aws emr modify-instance-groups --instance-groups InstanceGroupId=ig-6RXXXXXX07SA,EC2InstanceIdsToTerminate=i-f9XXXXf2
```
For more information about using Amazon EMR commands in the AWS CLI, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/emr.

To resize a cluster by adding task instance groups with the AWS CLI

With the AWS CLI, you can add from 1–48 task instance groups to a cluster with the --add-instance-groups subcommand. Task instances groups can only be added to a cluster containing a primary instance group and a core instance group. When you use the AWS CLI, you can add up to five task instance groups each time you use the --add-instance-groups subcommand.

To add a single task instance group to a cluster, type the following command and replace j-JXBXXXXXX37R with the cluster ID.


aws emr add-instance-groups --cluster-id j-JXBXXXXXX37R --instance-groups InstanceCount=6,InstanceGroupType=task,InstanceType=m5.xlarge

To add multiple task instance groups to a cluster, type the following command and replace j-JXBXXXXXX37R with the cluster ID. You can add up to five task instance groups in a single command.
```
aws emr add-instance-groups --cluster-id j-JXBXXXXXX37R --instance-groups InstanceCount=6,InstanceGroupType=task,InstanceType=m5.xlarge InstanceCount=10,InstanceGroupType=task,InstanceType=m5.xlarge
```
For more information about using Amazon EMR commands in the AWS CLI, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/emr.

Interrupting a resize

Using Amazon EMR version 4.1.0 or later, you can issue a resize in the midst of an existing resize operation. Additionally, you can stop a previously submitted resize request or submit a new request to override a previous request without waiting for it to finish. You can also stop an existing resize from the console or with the ModifyInstanceGroups API call with the current count as the target count of the cluster.

The following screenshot shows a task instance group that is resizing but can be stopped by choosing Stop.

To interrupt a resize with the AWS CLI

You can use the AWS CLI to stop a resize with the modify-instance-groups subcommand. Assume that you have six instances in your instance group and you want to increase this to 10. You later decide that you would like to cancel this request:

The initial request:


aws emr modify-instance-groups --instance-groups InstanceGroupId=ig-myInstanceGroupId,InstanceCount=10

The second request to stop the first request:


aws emr modify-instance-groups --instance-groups InstanceGroupId=ig-myInstanceGroupId,InstanceCount=6

Note

Because this process is asynchronous, you may see instance counts change with respect to previous API requests before subsequent requests are honored. In the case of shrinking, it is possible that if you have work running on the nodes, the instance group may not shrink until nodes have completed their work.

Suspended state

An instance group goes into a suspended state if it encounters too many errors while trying to start the new cluster nodes. For example, if new nodes fail while performing bootstrap actions, the instance group goes into a SUSPENDED state, rather than continuously provisioning new nodes. After you resolve the underlying issue, reset the desired number of nodes on the cluster's instance group, and then the instance group resumes allocating nodes. Modifying an instance group instructs Amazon EMR to attempt to provision nodes again. No running nodes are restarted or terminated.

In the AWS CLI, the list-instances subcommand returns all instances and their states as does the describe-cluster subcommand. If Amazon EMR detects a fault with an instance group, it changes the group's state to SUSPENDED.

To reset a cluster in a SUSPENDED state with the AWS CLI

Type the describe-cluster subcommand with the --cluster-id parameter to view the state of the instances in your cluster.

To view information on all instances and instance groups in a cluster, type the following command and replace j-3KVXXXXXXY7UG with the cluster ID.


aws emr describe-cluster --cluster-id j-3KVXXXXXXY7UG

The output displays information about your instance groups and the state of the instances:


{
    "Cluster": {
        "Status": {
            "Timeline": {
                "ReadyDateTime": 1413187781.245,
                "CreationDateTime": 1413187405.356
            },
            "State": "WAITING",
            "StateChangeReason": {
                "Message": "Waiting after step completed"
            }
        },
        "Ec2InstanceAttributes": {
            "Ec2AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2b"
        },
        "Name": "Development Cluster",
        "Tags": [],
        "TerminationProtected": false,
        "RunningAmiVersion": "3.2.1",
        "NormalizedInstanceHours": 16,
        "InstanceGroups": [
            {
                "RequestedInstanceCount": 1,
                "Status": {
                    "Timeline": {
                        "ReadyDateTime": 1413187775.749,
                        "CreationDateTime": 1413187405.357
                    },
                    "State": "RUNNING",
                    "StateChangeReason": {
                        "Message": ""
                    }
                },
                "Name": "MASTER",
                "InstanceGroupType": "MASTER",
                "InstanceType": "m5.xlarge",
                "Id": "ig-3ETXXXXXXFYV8",
                "Market": "ON_DEMAND",
                "RunningInstanceCount": 1
            },
            {
                "RequestedInstanceCount": 1,
                "Status": {
                    "Timeline": {
                        "ReadyDateTime": 1413187781.301,
                        "CreationDateTime": 1413187405.357
                    },
                    "State": "RUNNING",
                    "StateChangeReason": {
                        "Message": ""
                    }
                },
                "Name": "CORE",
                "InstanceGroupType": "CORE",
                "InstanceType": "m5.xlarge",
                "Id": "ig-3SUXXXXXXQ9ZM",
                "Market": "ON_DEMAND",
                "RunningInstanceCount": 1
            }
...
}

To view information about a particular instance group, type the list-instances subcommand with the --cluster-id and --instance-group-types parameters. You can view information for the primary, core, or task groups.


aws emr list-instances --cluster-id j-3KVXXXXXXY7UG --instance-group-types "CORE"

Use the modify-instance-groups subcommand with the --instance-groups parameter to reset a cluster in the SUSPENDED state. The instance group id is returned by the describe-cluster subcommand.


aws emr modify-instance-groups --instance-groups InstanceGroupId=ig-3SUXXXXXXQ9ZM,InstanceCount=3

Considerations when reducing cluster size

If you choose to reduce the size of a running cluster, consider the following Amazon EMR behavior and best practices:

To reduce impact on jobs that are in progress, Amazon EMR intelligently selects the instances to remove. For more information on cluster scale-down behavior, see Terminate at task completion in the Amazon EMR Management Guide.
When you scale down the size of a cluster, Amazon EMR copies the data from the instances that it removes to the instances that remain. Ensure that there is sufficient storage capacity for this data in the instances that remain in the group.
Amazon EMR attempts to decommission HDFS on instances in the group. Before you reduce the size of a cluster, we recommend that you minimize HDFS write I/O.
For the most granular control when you reduce the size of a cluster, you can view the cluster in the console and navigate to the Instances tab. Select the ID for the instance group that you want to resize. Then use the Terminate option for the specific instances that you want to remove.

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Document Conventions

Automatic scaling with a custom policy

Provisioning timeouts