To connect from NIFI to HDFS , all the HDFS processors in NIFI require local/updated copy of hdfs-site.xml & core-site.xml on nifi host and those files needs to be called under processor config property "Hadoop Configuration Resources" , using these two files configs nifi *hdfs processors will understand hdfs cluster details, its security config and based on that further property will be used such as Kerberos authentication.