@Override
  public Configuration getConf() {
    return this.conf;
  }
HBase version of Hadoop's Configured class that doesn't initialize the configuration via
{@link #setConf(Configuration)} in the constructor, but only sets the configuration through the
{@link #setConf(Configuration)} method
hbase-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/BaseConfigurable.java