The Metadata Access Service is a user-managed service that allows the Developer tool to access Hadoop connection information to import and preview metadata.
The Metadata Access Service contains information about the Service Principal Name (SPN) and keytab information if the Hadoop cluster uses Kerberos authentication. You can create one or more Metadata Access Services on a node. Based on your license, the Metadata Access Service can be highly available.
HBase, HDFS, Hive, and MapR-DB connections use the Metadata Access Service when you import an object from a Hadoop cluster. Google Cloud Storage connection uses Metadata Access Service to import metadata from files in Google Cloud Storage. Create and configure a Metadata Access Service before you create Google Cloud Storage, HBase, HDFS, Hive, and MapR-DB connections.