This topic describes the preparations you need to make before you create an E-MapReduce (EMR) cluster.

Register an Alibaba Cloud account

To create an EMR cluster, you must have an Alibaba Cloud account. This account is used to uniquely identify your identity in the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem. You can use this account to create EMR clusters and activate Alibaba Cloud services, such as Object Storage Service (OSS) and ApsaraDB for RDS.

For more information about how to register an Alibaba Cloud account, see Sign up with Alibaba Cloud.

Assign default system roles to the EMR service account

After you activate the EMR service, you must assign default system roles AliyunEMRDefaultRole and AliyunEmrEcsDefaultRole to the EMR service account. For more information, see Role authorization.

Grant permissions to RAM users

If you log on to the EMR console as a RAM user and use the features in the console, you must log on to the RAM console by using your Alibaba Cloud account and grant required permissions to the RAM user. For more information, see Grant permissions to a RAM user.

(Optional) Activate Alibaba Cloud OSS

To facilitate data storage and reduce storage costs, we recommend that you activate Alibaba Cloud OSS and store data such as job and operational logs in OSS buckets. For more information about how to activate Alibaba Cloud OSS, see Activate OSS. Create OSS buckets in the same region as the EMR cluster that you want to create. For more information, see Create buckets.

(Optional) Create an AccessKey pair

You must create at least one AccessKey pair to use EMR. Follow these steps to create an AccessKey pair:

  1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud official website.

  2. Click Console in the upper-right corner.
  3. On the console management page that appears, move the pointer over your account picture and click AccessKey.
    Notice If the following dialog box appears, click Continue to manage AccessKey.
  4. On the Security Management page that appears, click Create AccessKey.
  5. An AccessKey pair is created.

(Optional) Create instances with advanced configurations

If you want to create instances with eight or more cores for a pay-as-you-go cluster, log on to your Alibaba Cloud account and submit a ticket. For more information about how to submit a ticket, see New Ticket.