You get this error if you drop the backup table in hbase namespace. Check if you have the namespace and table: hbase(main):001:0> list_namespace
NAMESPACE
default
hbase
3 row(s) in 0.0220 seconds
hbase(main):002:0> list_namespace_tables 'hbase'
TABLE
acl
backup
meta
namespace
4 row(s) in 0.0280 seconds
If you have a backup of any table then you can run restore of that table and hbase will recreate the backup table: [hbase@sandbox ~]$ hadoop dfs -ls /user/hbase/backup
Found 2 items
drwxr-xr-x - hbase hdfs 0 2017-02-11 17:43 /user/hbase/backup/backup_1486835033442
drwxr-xr-x - hbase hdfs 0 2017-02-11 18:09 /user/hbase/backup/backup_1486836579046
[hbase@sandbox ~]$ hbase restore hdfs://sandbox.hortonworks.com:8020/user/hbase/backup/ backup_1486836579046 iemployee -overwrite
[...]2017-02-11 18:44:50,038 INFO [main] impl.RestoreClientImpl: Restore for [iemployee] are successful!
Or you can explicitly issue the create command. (describe 'hbase:backup' gives this definition but have to change TTL from 'FOREVER' to '2147483647'): create 'hbase:backup', {NAME => 'meta', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING => 'NONE', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', REPLICATION_SCOPE => '0', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', VERSIONS => '1', TTL => '2147483647', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', IN_MEMORY => 'false', BLOCKCACHE => 'true'}, {NAME => 'session', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING => 'NONE', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', REPLICATION_SCOPE => '0', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', VERSIONS => '1', TTL => '2147483647', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', IN_MEMORY => 'false', BLOCKCACHE => 'true'}
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