Hadoop for Dummies

Welcome to Hadoop For Dummies! Today, organizations in every industry are being showered with imposing quantities of new information. Along with traditional
sources, many more data channels and categories now exist. Collectively, these vastly larger information volumes and new assets are known as Big Data. Enterprises are using technologies such as MapReduce and Hadoop to extract value from Big Data. The results of these efforts are truly mission-critical in size and scope. Properly deploying these vital solutions requires careful planning and evaluation when selecting a supporting infrastructure. In this book, we provide you with a solid understanding of key Big Data concepts and trends, as well as related architectures, such as MapReduce and Hadoop. We also present some suggestions about how to implement high-performance Hadoop.

Although taking anything for granted is usually unwise, we do have some expectations of the readers of this book. First, we surmise that you have some familiarity with the colossal amounts of information (also called Big Data) now available to the modern enterprise. You also understand what’s generating this information as well as how it’s being used. Examples of today’s data sources consist of traditional enterprise software applications along with many new channels and categories such as weblogs, sensors, mobile devices, images, audio, and so on. Relational databases, data warehouses, and sophisticated business intelligence tools are among the most common consumers of all this information. Next, we infer that you are either in technical or line-ofbusiness
management (with a title such as a chief information officer, director of IT, operations executive, and so on), or that you have hands-on experience with Big Data through an architect, database administrator, or business analyst role.  Finally, regardless of your specific title, we assume that you’re interested in making the most of the mountains of information that are now available to your organization. We also figure that you want to do all of this in the most scalable, high-performance, and secure manner possible.