The Application Master is responsible for the execution of a single application. It asks for containers from the Resource Scheduler (Resource Manager) and executes specific programs (e.g., the main of a Java class) on the obtained containers. The Application Master knows the application logic and thus it is framework-specific. The MapReduce framework provides its own implementation of an Application Master.
The Resource Manager is a single point of failure in YARN. Using Application Masters, YARN is spreading over the cluster the metadata related to running applications. This reduces the load of the Resource Manager and makes it fast recoverable.
Through below image, you can easily relate the working of application master and application manager.
Application manager is responsible for maintaining a list of submitted application.After application is submitted by the client, application manager firstly validates whether application requirement of resources for its application master can be satisfied or not.If enough resources are available then it forwards the application to scheduler otherwise application will be rejected.It also make sure that no other application is submitted with same application id.
