Optimized creation of distributed storage and distributed processing clusters on demand

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to:

• install a cluster on the data processing system, wherein the cluster comprises a master node and a managed node having distributed software installed thereon;
• store state of cluster on external volumes;
• remove references specific to the cluster from the state of the cluster stored on the external volumes;
• take a snapshot of the state of the cluster stored on the external volumes to form a set of volume templates;
• take a snapshot of images of the master node and the managed node to form a set of node type images;
• and
• responsive to receiving a request to create a specified cluster, create a new set of nodes on the data processing system based on the set of node type images, clone the set of volume templates to form a new set of volumes in the data processing system, mount the new set of volumes to the new set of nodes, and recreate configurations based on details in the request,
• wherein cloning the set of volume templates comprises allocating fixed space to each volume, setting a space quota for logs, data, and metadata, and creating a file system from a sparse file to serve as the volumes.