What is the purpose of the ./sbin/start-master.sh command?

The purpose of the ./sbin/start-master.sh command is to start the Spark master service. In a Spark architecture, the master acts as the resource manager, controlling the distribution and scheduling of data processing tasks across the worker nodes in a cluster. When you execute this command, it initializes the necessary services for Spark to manage cluster resources effectively, enabling it to allocate tasks to worker nodes based on the resources available.

Starting the Spark master is a critical step in setting up a Spark cluster. Once the master is running, it can accept connections from worker nodes and manage their task execution, job scheduling, and resource allocation. This is foundational for leveraging Spark’s capabilities in distributed data processing and is essential for any distributed data analytics or processing workloads you wish to perform with Spark.

The other options, while related to the Spark environment, do not accurately describe the function of this specific command. Initiating a Spark job or configuring the Spark context refers to different commands and contexts within Spark's functionality, while creating a new Spark cluster implies a more extensive setup and configuration process than merely starting the master service.