A mechanism is provided in a data processing system for creating clusters on demand. The mechanism installs a cluster on the data processing system. The cluster comprises a master node and a managed node having distributed software installed thereon. The mechanism stores state of cluster on external volumes and removes references specific to the cluster from the state of the cluster stored on the external volumes. The mechanism takes a snapshot of the state of the cluster stored on the external volumes to form a set of volume templates and takes a snapshot of images of the master node and the managed node to form a set of node type images. Responsive to receiving a request to create a specified cluster, the mechanism creates a new set of nodes on the data processing system based on the set of node type images, clones the set of volume templates to form a new set of volumes in the data processing system, mounts the new set of volumes to the new set of nodes, and recreates configurations based on details in the request.