what is the easiest way to get started with hadoop on ec2 preferably mapr

Question

I want to get a small working mapr hadoop instance up on ec2 so i can play around with it and begin to learn more about it.

How would I proceed?

The mapr site (1) mentions starting with vmplayer (2).

So, does one install vmplayer on an ec2 AMI and than install mapr or are there AMI's available with vmplayer already installed and/or with vmplayer+mapr already installed?

(1) http://mapr.com/download (2) https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads

Answer 1

This question is also answered at http://answers.mapr.com/questions/2257/what-is-the-easiest-way-for-a-hadoop-newbie-to-get-started-with-mapr-on-one-ec2-box

The gist of it is that with EC2, the easiest route is to simply install the Ubuntu or Redhat packages or use Whirr.

Also, a single node cluster is kind of sad. Having at least two nodes makes the heat map sooo much more interesting.