Ambari looks nice from the outside but it's some kind of zombie that is full of os-specific stuff, opaque puppet stuff, python, java and even brings nagios and ganglia to the party. If it works it's probably fine, have fun debugging that stuff through.

We are happy with https://github.com/saltstack-formulas/hadoop-formula and PXE booting an image.

You can configure all aspects out of a single pillar file.

Still full of warts but at least you have full control.