diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/Pipeline.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/Pipeline.scala
index b76dc5f93193..0a0140803073 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/Pipeline.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/Pipeline.scala
@@ -30,7 +30,9 @@ import org.apache.spark.SparkContext
 import org.apache.spark.annotation.{DeveloperApi, Since}
 import org.apache.spark.internal.Logging
 import org.apache.spark.ml.param.{Param, ParamMap, Params}
+import org.apache.spark.ml.param.shared.HasCheckpointInterval
 import org.apache.spark.ml.util._
+import org.apache.spark.mllib.impl.PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer
 import org.apache.spark.sql.{DataFrame, Dataset}
 import org.apache.spark.sql.types.StructType
 
@@ -94,11 +96,19 @@ abstract class PipelineStage extends Params with Logging {
  */
 @Since("1.2.0")
 class Pipeline @Since("1.4.0") (
-  @Since("1.4.0") override val uid: String) extends Estimator[PipelineModel] with MLWritable {
+    @Since("1.4.0") override val uid: String)
+  extends Estimator[PipelineModel] with MLWritable with HasCheckpointInterval {
 
   @Since("1.4.0")
   def this() = this(Identifiable.randomUID("pipeline"))
 
+  /** @group setParam */
+  @Since("2.2.0")
+  def setCheckpointInterval(value: Int): this.type = {
+    set(checkpointInterval, value)
+    this
+  }
+
   /**
    * param for pipeline stages
    * @group param
@@ -144,10 +154,17 @@ class Pipeline @Since("1.4.0") (
         case _ =>
       }
     }
+    val checkpointer = if (isDefined(checkpointInterval)) {
+      Some(new PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer(
+        getCheckpointInterval, dataset.sparkSession.sparkContext))
+    } else {
+      None
+    }
     var curDataset = dataset
     val transformers = ListBuffer.empty[Transformer]
     theStages.view.zipWithIndex.foreach { case (stage, index) =>
       if (index <= indexOfLastEstimator) {
+        checkpointer.foreach(_.update(curDataset))
         val transformer = stage match {
           case estimator: Estimator[_] =>
             estimator.fit(curDataset)
@@ -166,7 +183,11 @@ class Pipeline @Since("1.4.0") (
       }
     }
 
-    new PipelineModel(uid, transformers.toArray).setParent(this)
+    val pipelineModel = new PipelineModel(uid, transformers.toArray).setParent(this)
+    if (isDefined(checkpointInterval)) {
+      pipelineModel.setCheckpointInterval(getCheckpointInterval)
+    }
+    pipelineModel
   }
 
   @Since("1.4.0")
@@ -292,17 +313,34 @@ object Pipeline extends MLReadable[Pipeline] {
 class PipelineModel private[ml] (
     @Since("1.4.0") override val uid: String,
     @Since("1.4.0") val stages: Array[Transformer])
-  extends Model[PipelineModel] with MLWritable with Logging {
+  extends Model[PipelineModel] with MLWritable with HasCheckpointInterval with Logging {
 
   /** A Java/Python-friendly auxiliary constructor. */
   private[ml] def this(uid: String, stages: ju.List[Transformer]) = {
     this(uid, stages.asScala.toArray)
   }
 
+  /** @group setParam */
+  @Since("2.2.0")
+  def setCheckpointInterval(value: Int): this.type = {
+    set(checkpointInterval, value)
+    this
+  }
+
   @Since("2.0.0")
   override def transform(dataset: Dataset[_]): DataFrame = {
     transformSchema(dataset.schema, logging = true)
-    stages.foldLeft(dataset.toDF)((cur, transformer) => transformer.transform(cur))
+    val checkpointer = if (isDefined(checkpointInterval)) {
+      Some(new PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer(
+        getCheckpointInterval, dataset.sparkSession.sparkContext))
+    } else {
+      None
+    }
+    stages.foldLeft(dataset.toDF)((cur, transformer) => {
+      val newDF = transformer.transform(cur)
+      checkpointer.foreach(_.update(newDF))
+      newDF
+    })
   }
 
   @Since("1.2.0")
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer.scala
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..f15af24cdfcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer.scala
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+/*
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+
+package org.apache.spark.mllib.impl
+
+import org.apache.spark.SparkContext
+import org.apache.spark.sql.Dataset
+import org.apache.spark.storage.StorageLevel
+
+
+/**
+ * This class helps with persisting and checkpointing Datasets.
+ * Specifically, it automatically handles persisting and (optionally) checkpointing, as well as
+ * unpersisting and removing checkpoint files.
+ *
+ * Users should call update() when a new Dataset has been created and before the Dataset has been
+ * materialized. Because we call Dataset.checkout() with eager as true, it means it always performs
+ * a RDD.count() after calling RDD.checkpoint() on the underlying RDD of the Dataset, so different
+ * than [[PeriodicRDDCheckpointer]], after updating [[PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer]], users do not
+ * need to materialize the Dataset to ensure that persisting and checkpointing actually occur.
+ *
+ * When update() is called, this does the following:
+ *  - Persist new Dataset (if not yet persisted), and put in queue of persisted Datasets.
+ *  - Unpersist Datasets from queue until there are at most 3 persisted Datasets.
+ *  - If using checkpointing and the checkpoint interval has been reached,
+ *     - Checkpoint the new Dataset, and put in a queue of checkpointed Datasets.
+ *     - Remove older checkpoints.
+ *
+ * WARNINGS:
+ *  - This class should NOT be copied (since copies may conflict on which Datasets should be
+ *    checkpointed).
+ *  - This class removes checkpoint files once later other Datasets have been checkpointed.
+ *    However, references to the RDDs of the older Datasets will still return isCheckpointed = true.
+ *
+ * Example usage:
+ * {{{
+ *  val (ds1, ds2, ds3, ...) = ...
+ *  val cp = new PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer(2, sc)
+ *  cp.update(ds1)
+ *  // persisted: rdd1
+ *  cp.update(ds2)
+ *  // persisted: ds1, ds2
+ *  // checkpointed: ds2
+ *  cp.update(ds3)
+ *  // persisted: ds1, ds2, ds3
+ *  // checkpointed: ds2
+ *  cp.update(ds4)
+ *  // persisted: ds2, ds3, ds4
+ *  // checkpointed: ds4
+ *  cp.update(ds5)
+ *  // persisted: ds3, ds4, ds5
+ *  // checkpointed: ds4
+ * }}}
+ *
+ * @param checkpointInterval  Datasets will be checkpointed at this interval
+ *
+ * TODO: Move this out of MLlib?
+ */
+private[spark] class PeriodicDatasetCheckpointer(
+    checkpointInterval: Int,
+    sc: SparkContext)
+  extends PeriodicCheckpointer[Dataset[_]](checkpointInterval, sc) {
+
+  override protected def checkpoint(data: Dataset[_]): Unit = data.checkpoint(eager = true)
+
+  override protected def isCheckpointed(data: Dataset[_]): Boolean = data.isCheckpoint
+
+  override protected def persist(data: Dataset[_]): Unit = {
+    if (data.storageLevel == StorageLevel.NONE) {
+      data.persist()
+    }
+  }
+
+  override protected def unpersist(data: Dataset[_]): Unit = data.unpersist()
+
+  override protected def getCheckpointFiles(data: Dataset[_]): Iterable[String] = {
+    data.queryExecution.toRdd.getCheckpointFile.map(x => x)
+  }
+}
diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicRDDCheckpointer.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicRDDCheckpointer.scala
index 145dc22b7428..386b95bd975e 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicRDDCheckpointer.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/impl/PeriodicRDDCheckpointer.scala
@@ -49,6 +49,7 @@ import org.apache.spark.storage.StorageLevel
  * {{{
  *  val (rdd1, rdd2, rdd3, ...) = ...
  *  val cp = new PeriodicRDDCheckpointer(2, sc)
+ *  cp.update(rdd1)
  *  rdd1.count();
  *  // persisted: rdd1
  *  cp.update(rdd2)
diff --git a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/PipelineSuite.scala b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/PipelineSuite.scala
index dafc6c200f95..1480269ff2ec 100644
--- a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/PipelineSuite.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/PipelineSuite.scala
@@ -26,13 +26,14 @@ import org.scalatest.mock.MockitoSugar.mock
 
 import org.apache.spark.SparkFunSuite
 import org.apache.spark.ml.Pipeline.SharedReadWrite
-import org.apache.spark.ml.feature.{HashingTF, MinMaxScaler}
+import org.apache.spark.ml.feature.{HashingTF, MinMaxScaler, OneHotEncoder, StringIndexer}
 import org.apache.spark.ml.linalg.Vectors
 import org.apache.spark.ml.param.{IntParam, ParamMap}
 import org.apache.spark.ml.util._
 import org.apache.spark.mllib.util.MLlibTestSparkContext
 import org.apache.spark.sql.{DataFrame, Dataset}
 import org.apache.spark.sql.types.StructType
+import org.apache.spark.util.Utils
 
 class PipelineSuite extends SparkFunSuite with MLlibTestSparkContext with DefaultReadWriteTest {
 
@@ -227,6 +228,53 @@ class PipelineSuite extends SparkFunSuite with MLlibTestSparkContext with Defaul
     val steps = stages0 ++ stages1
     val p = new Pipeline().setStages(steps)
   }
+
+  test("Pipeline checkpoint interval") {
+    def fitPipeline(doCheckpoint: Boolean): Dataset[_] = {
+      val optTempDir = if (doCheckpoint) {
+        Some(Utils.createTempDir())
+      } else {
+        None
+      }
+
+      optTempDir.foreach { tempDir =>
+        val path = tempDir.toURI.toString
+        sc.setCheckpointDir(path)
+      }
+
+      val df = (1 to 5).foldLeft(Seq((1, "foo"), (2, "bar"), (3, "baz")).toDF("id", "x0"))(
+        (df, i) => df.withColumn(s"x$i", $"x0"))
+      val indexers = df.columns.tail.map(c => new StringIndexer()
+        .setInputCol(c)
+        .setOutputCol(s"${c}_indexed")
+        .setHandleInvalid("skip"))
+
+      val encoders = indexers.map(indexer => new OneHotEncoder()
+        .setInputCol(indexer.getOutputCol)
+        .setOutputCol(s"${indexer.getOutputCol}_encoded")
+        .setDropLast(true))
+
+      val stages: Array[PipelineStage] = indexers ++ encoders
+      val pipeline = new Pipeline().setStages(stages)
+      if (doCheckpoint) {
+        pipeline.setCheckpointInterval(2)
+      }
+
+      val outputDF = pipeline.fit(df).transform(df)
+
+      optTempDir.foreach { tempDir =>
+        sc.checkpointDir = None
+        Utils.deleteRecursively(tempDir)
+      }
+      outputDF
+    }
+    val outputWithoutCheckpoint = fitPipeline(false).collect()
+    val outputWithCheckpoint = fitPipeline(true).collect()
+    assert(outputWithoutCheckpoint.length == outputWithCheckpoint.length)
+    outputWithoutCheckpoint.zip(outputWithCheckpoint).foreach { case (noCheckout, checkout) =>
+      assert(noCheckout === checkout)
+    }
+  }
 }
 
 
diff --git a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/Dataset.scala b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/Dataset.scala
index 391c34f1285e..2cf8784f057f 100644
--- a/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/Dataset.scala
+++ b/sql/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/Dataset.scala
@@ -493,6 +493,10 @@ class Dataset[T] private[sql](
   @InterfaceStability.Evolving
   def isStreaming: Boolean = logicalPlan.isStreaming
 
+  @Experimental
+  @InterfaceStability.Evolving
+  def isCheckpoint: Boolean = queryExecution.toRdd.isCheckpointed
+
   /**
    * Eagerly checkpoint a Dataset and return the new Dataset. Checkpointing can be used to truncate
    * the logical plan of this Dataset, which is especially useful in iterative algorithms where the