Apache DolphinScheduler

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, open the EC2 service, and choose Launch instance. Under Application and OS Images, choose AWS Marketplace AMIs and search for Apache DolphinScheduler. Select the SecureAnyCloud listing and choose Select, then choose Continue on the subscription summary.

Pick an instance type of m5.large or larger. The standalone server runs the master, worker, API and alert services together in one JVM, so it benefits from at least two vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory.

Choose your EC2 key pair under Key pair (login). Under Network settings, select your VPC and subnet, and either create or select a security group that allows inbound port 22 from your management network and inbound port 80 from the network you will reach the web interface from. Leave the root volume at the default size or larger.

Choose Launch instance. First-boot initialization brings up the standalone server and rotates the administrator password. It takes approximately two to three minutes after the instance state becomes Running and the status checks pass.

The following command launches an instance from the SecureAnyCloud Apache DolphinScheduler Marketplace AMI into an existing subnet and security group. Replace <ami-id> with the AMI ID shown on the Marketplace listing. Replace <key-name> with your EC2 key pair name, <subnet-id> with your subnet ID, and <security-group-id> with a security group that opens ports 22 and 80, as described above.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id <ami-id> \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name <key-name> \
  --subnet-id <subnet-id> \
  --security-group-ids <security-group-id> \
  --block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/sda1","Ebs":{"VolumeSize":20,"VolumeType":"gp3"}}]' \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=apache-dolphinscheduler-01}]'

On success, the command prints a JSON document. Note the instance ID. When the instance is running, retrieve its public address with aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <instance-id> --query "Reservations[].Instances[].PublicIpAddress" --output text.

Connect over SSH with the key pair you selected and the public IP address from Step 2. The SSH login user depends on the operating system of the AMI variant you launched:

AMI variant SSH login user

Apache DolphinScheduler on Ubuntu 24.04 ubuntu

The first-boot service rotates the administrator password before it writes the credentials file, so the file always contains the current password when you log in for the first time. Read the file:

sudo cat /root/apache-dolphinscheduler-credentials.txt

The plain text file contains the DolphinScheduler URL, the administrator username admin, and the per-instance administrator password. Copy these values somewhere secure, such as a password manager or encrypted vault. Do not commit them to source control.

From the same SSH session, confirm that the deployment is healthy. The nginx health endpoint needs no authentication:

curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1/health

It prints ok. For a deeper check, the DolphinScheduler actuator health endpoint reports the status of every bundled service:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1/dolphinscheduler/actuator/health

A JSON document with "status":"UP" for the alert, api, db, master and worker components confirms that the full standalone stack is registered and healthy.

Open a web browser and go to http://<public-ip>/. The root path redirects to the DolphinScheduler sign-in form. To use English, select en_US with the language switch in the top right corner.

Enter the administrator username admin and the administrator password from /root/apache-dolphinscheduler-credentials.txt, then choose Login. After your first successful sign-in, DolphinScheduler shows the home dashboard with task state and workflow state statistics.

Workflows in DolphinScheduler live inside projects. Open the Project menu in the top navigation, choose Project List, and choose Create Project. Give the project a name and an optional description, then save it. The new project appears in the list with its owner, workflow definition count and timestamps.

Select the project name to open it. Inside a project, you manage workflow definitions, workflow instances, workflow timings and task instances from the left navigation.

Inside your project, open Workflow, then Workflow Definition, and choose Create Workflow. The visual canvas opens with a palette of task types down the left, including SHELL, SQL, PYTHON, SPARK, FLINK, HTTP and more.

Drag a SHELL task onto the canvas and give it a name. In the script field, enter a simple command such as echo "hello from DolphinScheduler". Save the task, then save the workflow with a name.

To run the workflow, set it online with the release control, then choose Run in the workflow definition list. Watch its progress under Workflow Instance. Open Task Instance to read the task log and confirm that the shell command executed.

The Monitor menu shows the health of every bundled component. Under Service Manage, the Master and Worker pages report a Normal status with a recent heartbeat time, together with CPU, memory, disk and thread pool gauges. The Alert Server and DB pages report on the alerting service and the metadata database.

You can confirm the same health from the command line at any time:

sudo systemctl status dolphinscheduler.service nginx.service --no-pager

Both units report active (running). The standalone server registers its master and worker in the embedded registry, which is what the Monitor pages read.

The deployed image contains the following components:

Component Purpose

Apache DolphinScheduler 3.4.2 Distributed visual workflow and DAG scheduler (standalone server)

Master service Schedules workflows and dispatches tasks to workers

Worker service Executes task instances

API server Serves the web interface and the REST API

Alert server Delivers workflow and task alerts

Embedded H2 database Metadata store on the dedicated data volume

Java 17 runtime The JVM the standalone server runs on

nginx Reverse proxy on port 80 in front of the loopback listener, with an unauthenticated health endpoint

The DolphinScheduler process runs under a dedicated, unprivileged dolphinscheduler system user. The standalone server binds to 127.0.0.1:12345 and is reached only through nginx.

Path Purpose

/opt/dolphinscheduler/ Application home: the standalone server distribution and its configuration

/opt/dolphinscheduler/standalone-server/conf/ application.yaml and common.properties for the standalone server

/var/lib/dolphinscheduler/ Data volume: the H2 metadata database, the workflow repository and execution logs

/var/lib/dolphinscheduler/h2/ The embedded H2 database file

/var/lib/dolphinscheduler/work/ The task working and resource upload directory

/etc/systemd/system/dolphinscheduler.service systemd unit for the standalone server

/root/apache-dolphinscheduler-credentials.txt Per instance administrator password, generated on first boot, root only

The image keeps the scheduler state on a dedicated EBS volume mounted at /var/lib/dolphinscheduler, so you can resize or snapshot it independently of the operating system disk.

systemd starts the standalone server and nginx at boot. Check their status:

sudo systemctl status dolphinscheduler.service nginx.service --no-pager

To restart the standalone server, for example after you edit application.yaml, run:

sudo systemctl restart dolphinscheduler.service

To read the recent logs of the standalone server, run:

sudo journalctl -u dolphinscheduler.service -n 50 --no-pager

The JVM takes a short time to become healthy after a restart. Poll the actuator health endpoint until it reports UP before you sign in again.

The DolphinScheduler REST API is served under the same /dolphinscheduler path as the web interface. Authenticate by posting the administrator credentials to the login endpoint. It returns a session cookie and a token, and you then call the API with that session.

The following commands sign in and read the actuator health through the API path:

PW=$(sudo grep '^DOLPHINSCHEDULER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=' /root/apache-dolphinscheduler-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
curl -s -c /tmp/ds_cookies http://127.0.0.1/dolphinscheduler/login \
  --data-urlencode 'userName=admin' \
  --data-urlencode "userPassword=${PW}" | head -c 200 echo ""
curl -s http://127.0.0.1/dolphinscheduler/actuator/health

The login response contains "code":0 together with a sessionId and token, and the health call reports every component UP. The full REST API reference is published in the Apache DolphinScheduler documentation at https://dolphinscheduler.apache.org/.

The per-instance administrator password generated on first boot is strong and unique, but you can set your own. Sign in to the web interface, open the admin menu in the top right corner, choose User Information, and update the password there.

You can also create additional named users under Security, so that team members do not share the administrator account. Assign each user an appropriate tenant and role.

nginx already fronts DolphinScheduler on plain HTTP on port 80. For any deployment beyond a trusted management network, terminate TLS at nginx so that session cookies and tokens cannot be intercepted:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d dolphinscheduler.your-domain.example \
  --non-interactive --agree-tos -m you@your-domain.example --redirect

certbot edits the existing nginx server block to add the certificate and an HTTP to HTTPS redirect. After you enable TLS, restrict the instance security group so that port 80 and port 443 are reachable only from your network or an upstream load balancer.

DolphinScheduler keeps its state on the data volume at /var/lib/dolphinscheduler. A backup of that directory captures the metadata database, the workflow repository and run history together. For a consistent copy of the H2 file, stop the service briefly. Or take an EBS snapshot of the data volume for point-in-time recovery:

sudo systemctl stop dolphinscheduler.service
sudo tar -czf /var/backups/dolphinscheduler-$(date +%F).tgz -C /var/lib dolphinscheduler
sudo systemctl start dolphinscheduler.service

Ship the archive to an Amazon S3 bucket or another object store. Because the scheduler state is on its own EBS volume, aws ec2 create-snapshot against that volume is the simplest point-in-time backup.

For kernel and package updates, Ubuntu's unattended-upgrades applies security patches automatically. To move to a newer DolphinScheduler release, follow the upstream upgrade notes. The metadata lives on the data volume, so you can attach a new image to the same data volume to preserve history.

The standalone server is ideal for a single-node deployment. For larger, highly available deployments, move to the DolphinScheduler cluster mode:

• Replace the embedded H2 database with an external Amazon RDS for MySQL or PostgreSQL metadata database.
• Run ZooKeeper (or another supported registry) so that multiple masters and workers can coordinate.
• Run the master, worker, API and alert services as separate processes across a fleet of instances.
• Put the API servers behind an Application Load Balancer for high availability of the web interface and REST API.

Each of these is documented in the official Apache DolphinScheduler documentation at https://dolphinscheduler.apache.org/, under the deployment and cluster sections.