Migrating Cloudera CDP to Apache Ambari & Bigtop

Many financial institutions, especially those dealing with mission-critical, high-volume pipelines like stock market feeds, real-time trading, and regulatory reporting, have long depended on Cloudera CDP as their data backbone. Key tools such as Cloudera NiFi, HDFS, Hive, and HBase often form the foundation for these data-driven financial platforms. However, rising subscription costs, regulatory demands for infrastructure transparency, and the growing risk of vendor lock-in are now pushing finance companies to reconsider their technology stack.

A frequent question: Can we move to a fully open-source environment without sacrificing security, compliance, or performance?  The answer is: Yes, you can.

With Apache Ambari and Bigtop, you can run the same trusted Apache stack—including NiFi, HDFS, Hive, and HBase—while:

• Gaining full control over your infrastructure
• Eliminating licensing fees
• Meeting strict financial security and regulatory requirements
  Benefiting from a flexible, community-driven ecosystem
  

Why Choose Apache Ambari and Bigtop for Finance?

Apache Ambari

It provides a robust solution for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Hadoop clusters in financial environments. It offers:

• Centralized security and cluster management
• Real-time dashboards to monitor data pipelines handling sensitive financial transactions
  

Apache Bigtop

An open-source project that simplifies building, packaging, and deploying the latest Hadoop ecosystem components. It supports:

• Rapid patching of security vulnerabilities
• Seamless updates are critical for regulatory compliance

Together, Ambari and Bigtop provide a reliable, secure alternative to Cloudera CDP, enabling finance teams to:

• Run scalable Hadoop clusters
• Maintain full control over upgrades, security configurations, and governance
• Avoid expensive per-node licensing fees
  

 Step-By-Step Migration Process for Financial Organizations

• Assess Your Current CDP Financial Workloads

Start by auditing your existing Cloudera CDP environment:

• List all NiFi flows supporting critical financial transactions, real-time feeds, and regulatory reporting.
• Map HDFS structures that store trade logs, transaction histories, and sensitive customer data.
• Document Hive schemas are used for compliance reporting, fraud detection, and financial dashboards.
• Record HBase tables supporting real-time account management and risk analysis.
  

Consideration: Identify any Cloudera-only features, such as proprietary processors, encryption mechanisms, or compliance tools that may need an open-source alternative.

• Provision Your New Open-Source Cluster

Set up your modern open-source Hadoop ecosystem using Apache Ambari and Bigtop. Use Apache Ambari to deploy:

• HDFS: For secure, distributed storage of financial data.
• Hive: For complex, SQL-based financial analytics.
• HBase: For low-latency transaction processing and risk analysis.
• YARN: For resource management and workload prioritization.

Use Apache Bigtop to:

• Build, package, and deploy the latest open-source Hadoop components that match your financial workloads and regulatory needs.
• Migrate NiFi Flows

The good news is that NiFi flows can usually be migrated smoothly.

• Export your flows from Cloudera NiFi.
• Import them into Apache NiFi OSS (open-source version).
• Replace any Cloudera-specific processors with open-source equivalents.
• Conduct end-to-end testing to ensure that workflows supporting critical financial operations remain intact and performant.

• Transfer Data and Metadata

The next step is to move your data from Cloudera to the new cluster.

• Use DistCp (Distributed Copy) or secure replication tools to migrate HDFS data.
  
• Rebuild Hive schemas, partitions, and indexing strategies used in financial reporting and analytics.
• Migrate HBase tables using HBase snapshots or export-import utilities to reduce downtime and minimize risk.

 Post-transfer, rigorously validate that financial data, partitions, and metadata are fully consistent between the old and new environments.

•  Optimize Hive Queries with Apache Tez

You can achieve excellent query performance by using Apache Tez in the open-source setup.

• Configure Apache Tez as the execution engine for Hive.
• Run test queries that support regulatory reporting, fraud detection, and portfolio management.
• Optimize Tez configurations for high-speed, high-accuracy query processing.

Apache Tez is a proven replacement that can deliver excellent performance in a fully open-source stack.

• Reconfigure and Validate Security

Security and compliance are non-negotiable for finance:

• Reconfigure Kerberos authentication and role-based access control lists (ACLs) to meet strict internal and external security mandates.
• Migrate from Cloudera Ranger to Apache Ranger OSS for fine-grained access control, audit trails, and policy enforcement.
• Validate security policies across NiFi, Hive, HDFS, and HBase to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive financial data.
  

Thoroughly test and document security controls to ensure continued compliance with SOX, PCI-DSS, GDPR, and financial regulatory frameworks.

• Parallel Run and Cutover

To minimize business risk:

• Run Cloudera CDP and your new Apache Ambari/Bigtop clusters in parallel.
• Validate that transaction pipelines, reporting outputs, and risk models deliver consistent, accurate results across both environments.
• Monitor end-to-end financial workflows for stability and performance.
  

Once fully validated:

1. Cut over consumers, trading systems, and reporting platforms to the new endpoints.
2. Communicate the cutover plan to all stakeholders, from data consumers to regulatory teams.
   

• Decommission Cloudera CDP

After a successful cutover:

• Archive Cloudera configurations, security policies, and backup data for reference and audit purposes.
• Decommission CDP nodes and release infrastructure resources.
• Continue proactive monitoring with Ambari dashboards, security alerts, and log audits to ensure platform stability.

Before & After Architecture Diagrams

Previous Architecture — Cloudera CDP

New Architecture — Apache Ambari & Bigtop

Quick Migration Checklist

ROI — 3-Node NiFi + 3-Node Hadoop Cluster

“Result: Immediate cost savings by eliminating per-node subscription fees — and the larger your cluster, the greater your return on investment (ROI).”

Conclusion

Migrating from Cloudera CDP to an open-source stack with Apache Ambari and Bigtop is not merely a cost-saving initiative—it is a strategic move that empowers organizations with complete infrastructure control, eliminates the constraints of vendor lock-in, and provides the flexibility to meet evolving security and compliance requirements. This migration also enables optimized performance for real-time financial processing, ensuring that critical workloads operate efficiently and reliably. 

With careful planning and thorough validation, financial institutions can seamlessly retain the trusted Apache components—NiFi, HDFS, Hive, and HBase—while creating a scalable, high-performing, and cost-effective data environment that supports long-term growth and innovation.

Ksolves has successfully guided financial organizations through this journey, delivering seamless migrations with minimal downtime, robust security, and long-term operational efficiency.

If you are also looking for assistance with NiFi workflows, security setup, or detailed migration planning, our experts are here to help you build a high-performing, open-source data platform tailored to your business.

Ready to modernize your data stack? Let’s start your migration journey today with Ksolves Experts.