Apache NiFi quick-start notes

Russell Bateman
January 2017
last update:



  1. Download nifi-0.4.1-bin.tar.gz from Apache NiFi Downloads and explode locally. Sometimes the tarball doesn't work; in this case, use nifi-0.4.1-bin.zip instead. (The version changes every few months; adjust accordingly. Much of what you see Googling for help using NiFi will for some time continue to be for 0.x until 1.x examples begin to overwhelm. I personally just use the latest except that in production for my company, work must lag a bit behind.)

  2. (Don't download the source and build it unless you need/want to...)

  3. Presuming you don't have anything else running on port 8080, there are no settings to modify. If you do not wish to use this port to run NiFI, modify nifi.web.http.port=8080 in ${NIFI_ROOT}/conf/nifi.properties accordingly.

  4. Start NiFi: ${NIFI_ROOT}/bin/nifi.sh start.

  5. Launch http://localhost:8080/nifi/ in a browser. You'll see

  6. If there is trouble, check out ${NIFI_ROOT}/logs/nifi-bootstrap.log or, less likely, ${NIFI_ROOT}/logs/nifi-app.log.

  7. At this point, check out a tutorial on creating a simple flow. Videos might be a good place. There's also a whole selection of starter videos for NiFi 0.x.

Update, February 2017: what's the real delta between 0.x and 1.x? Not too much until you get down into gritty detail, something you won't do when just acquainting yourself.