I am not able to create a table in HBase with cloudera VM, version is 5.x.   following is what I get   hbase(main):004:0> create 'htest', 'cf' ERROR: Can't get master address from ZooKeeper; znode data == null Here is some help for this command: Creates a table. Pass a table name, and a set of column family specifications (at least one), and, optionally, table configuration. Column specification can be a simple string (name), or a dictionary (dictionaries are described below in main help output), necessarily including NAME attribute. Examples: Create a table with namespace=ns1 and table qualifier=t1 hbase> create 'ns1:t1', {NAME => 'f1', VERSIONS => 5} Create a table with namespace=default and table qualifier=t1 hbase> create 't1', {NAME => 'f1'}, {NAME => 'f2'}, {NAME => 'f3'} hbase> # The above in shorthand would be the following: hbase> create 't1', 'f1', 'f2', 'f3' hbase> create 't1', {NAME => 'f1', VERSIONS => 1, TTL => 2592000, BLOCKCACHE => true} hbase> create 't1', {NAME => 'f1', CONFIGURATION => {'hbase.hstore.blockingStoreFiles' => '10'}} Table configuration options can be put at the end. Examples: hbase> create 'ns1:t1', 'f1', SPLITS => ['10', '20', '30', '40'] hbase> create 't1', 'f1', SPLITS => ['10', '20', '30', '40'] hbase> create 't1', 'f1', SPLITS_FILE => 'splits.txt', OWNER => 'johndoe' hbase> create 't1', {NAME => 'f1', VERSIONS => 5}, METADATA => { 'mykey' => 'myvalue' } hbase> # Optionally pre-split the table into NUMREGIONS, using hbase> # SPLITALGO ("HexStringSplit", "UniformSplit" or classname) hbase> create 't1', 'f1', {NUMREGIONS => 15, SPLITALGO => 'HexStringSplit'} hbase> create 't1', 'f1', {NUMREGIONS => 15, SPLITALGO => 'HexStringSplit', REGION_REPLICATION => 2, CONFIGURATION => {'hbase.hregion.scan.loadColumnFamiliesOnDemand' => 'true'}} You can also keep around a reference to the created table: hbase> t1 = create 't1', 'f1' Which gives you a reference to the table named 't1', on which you can then call methods.   ... View more