I have a post on installing Polybase:
Java gets updated due to security vulnerabilities approximately once every three days, so I won’t link to any particular version. You only need to get the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), not the Java Development Kit (JDK). Anyhow, once you have that installed, you can safely install SQL Server.
In the Polybase configuration section, you have the option of making this a standalone Polybase instance or enlisting it as part of a scale-out group. In my case, I want to leave this as a standalone Polybase machine. The reason that I want to leave it as a standalone machine is that I do not have this machine on a Windows domain, and you need domain accounts for Polybase scaleout to work correctly. Later in the series, we’ll give multi-node Polybase a shot.
This is the easiest installation scenario, but it’s a start.