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Royles
Silver ⭐️⭐️
Silver ⭐️⭐️
Mar 28, 2022 3:48 AM UTC

CCUs, Nodes and Cores

  • Oct 5, 2026 8:35 AM UTC
  • 4 replies
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I often get asked about how Cloudera counts a node, core or CCU and wanted to bring together some resources to help answer these questions.

The first resource to consider is our pricing and licensing FAQ/ Updates. Please review this as it is regularly maintained as we receive inbound suggestions and provide clarifications.

 

Pricing update

We also provide a formal policy on metric which is captured here, this represents the formal definition of CCU, Nodes and cores. Cloudera Licensed Metrics 

 

Cloudera Compute Unit (CCU)
The link above defines in some detail what variable compute and storage is and the use of the CCU term. I will not duplicate those details here. CCU is simply a unit of measure and I will defer to the updated document as the unit of measure definition can change as pricing policies change.

 

Nodes

Generally, we determine the number of nodes based on the count returned in Cloudera Manager.
Under Administration > License, the number of nodes is listed and all nodes counted need to be covered by the license.

4 replies

vishnugupta
Silver ⭐️
Oct 4, 2023 12:56 PM UTC

Is there a license cost implication if we upgrade the hardware on CM host node to a larger sized machine ? I mean , move from 1 to 2 CPUs ?

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Royles
Silver ⭐️⭐️
RoylesAuthor
Silver ⭐️⭐️
Oct 4, 2023 9:08 PM UTC

Possibly.

Adding an additional CPU, may have license cost implications.

A node (such as your CM host) can have upto 16 CCUs.  
A CCU is the total number of CPU cores / 6.

So if the cores are reported across all installed CPUs in a node as 96 or less then no core based variable cost would be incurred.

Note:  Generally you take the total cores / memory across the whole cluster as part of the calculation so this provides some flexibility when adding a CPU to a single server.

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moekraft
Silver ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jul 15, 2026 9:36 PM UTC

What is meant by "total capacity usage of the product?"

This is stated in the Pricing FAQs and Updates for Cloudera Base on premises:

"The monetization updates to Cloudera Base on premises and Cloudera Streaming more accurately and fairly price based on total capacity usage of the product."

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VidyaSargur
Community Manager
Community Manager
Jul 23, 2026 7:33 AM UTC

@moekraft For specific pricing and capacity questions like this, your best option is to contact your Cloudera Account Manager directly, as they can give you an accurate answer tailored to your contract and hardware setup.

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Regards, Vidya Sargur, Community Manager Was your question answered? Make sure to mark the answer as the accepted solution. If you find a reply useful, say thanks by clicking on the thumbs up button.