public static FileSystem getHDFS(final Configuration conf) {
        final FileSystem hdfs;

        try {
            // Will return a cached instance keyed on the passed conf object
            hdfs = FileSystem.get(conf);
        } catch (final IOException e) {
            final String msg = "Error getting HDFS FileSystem object for " + conf.get("fs.defaultFS");
            LOGGER.error(msg, e);
            throw new RuntimeException(msg, e);
        }
        return hdfs;

    }
Creates an output stream for a file on an Hadoop Distributed File System
<p>
TODO Need to add in proper security so it can connect to a secured
(kerberos?) cluster
stroom-pipeline/src/main/java/stroom/pipeline/writer/HDFSFileAppender.java