# Plan, configure and launch Amazon EMR clusters This section explains configuration options and instructions for planning, configuring, and launching clusters using Amazon EMR. Before you launch a cluster, you make choices about your system based on the data that you're processing and your requirements for cost, speed, capacity, availability, security, and manageability. Your choices include: + What region to run a cluster in, where and how to store data, and how to output results. See [Configure Amazon EMR cluster location and data storage](emr-cluster-location-data-storage.md). + Whether you are running Amazon EMR clusters on Outposts or Local Zones. See [EMR clusters on AWS Outposts](emr-plan-outposts.md) or [EMR clusters on AWS Local Zones](emr-plan-localzones.md). + Whether a cluster is long-running or transient, and what software it runs. See [Configuring an Amazon EMR cluster to continue or terminate after step execution](emr-plan-longrunning-transient.md) and [Configure applications when you launch your Amazon EMR cluster](emr-plan-software.md). + Whether a cluster has a single primary node or three primary nodes. See [Plan and configure primary nodes in your Amazon EMR cluster](emr-plan-ha.md). + The hardware and networking options that optimize cost, performance, and availability for your application. See [Configure Amazon EMR cluster hardware and networking](emr-plan-instances.md). + How to set up clusters so you can manage them more easily, and monitor activity, performance, and health. See [Configure Amazon EMR cluster logging and debugging](emr-plan-debugging.md) and [Tag and categorize Amazon EMR cluster resources](emr-plan-tags.md). + How to authenticate and authorize access to cluster resources, and how to encrypt data. See [Security in Amazon EMR](emr-security.md). + How to integrate with other software and services. See [Drivers and third-party application integration on Amazon EMR](emr-plan-third-party.md).