# Centralizing HDFS metadata

Available in...

* Big Data
* Big Data Platform
* Cloud Big Data
* Cloud Big Data Platform
* Cloud Data Fabric
* Data Fabric
* Qlik Talend Cloud Enterprise Edition
* Qlik Talend Cloud Premium Edition
* Real-Time Big Data Platform

If you often need to use a file schema from HDFS, the Hadoop Distributed File System, then you may want to centralize the connection information to the HDFS and the schema details in the Metadata folder in the Repository tree view.

Prerequisites:

* Launch the Hadoop distribution you need to use and ensure that you have the correct access permission to that distribution and its HDFS.

* Create the connection to that Hadoop distribution from the Hadoop cluster node. For further information, see [Centralizing a Hadoop connection](https://help.qlik.com/talend/en-US/studio-user-guide/8.0/centralizing-hadoop-connection).

### In this section

* [Creating a connection to HDFS](https://help.qlik.com/talend/en-US/studio-user-guide/8.0-R2026-09/creating-connection-to-hdfs)
* [Retrieving a file schema](https://help.qlik.com/talend/en-US/studio-user-guide/8.0-R2026-09/retrieving-file-schema)