Azure

Azure: Delete HDInsight Cluster, yet Retain Data

Azure

Storage cluster (HDFS) in Hadoop is also the Processing cluster (MapReduce). Azure provides two different options to store data:

Option 1: Use HDInsight cluster to store data as well as to process MapReduce requests. For e.g. a Hive database hosted in an HDInsight cluster which also executes HiveQL MapReduce queries. In this instance data is stored in the cluster’s HDFS.

Option 2: Use HDInsight cluster to only process MapReduce requests whereas data is stored in Azure blob storage. For e.g. the Hive data is stored in Azure storage while the HDInsight cluster executes HiveQL MapReduce queries. Here the metadata of Hive database is stored in the cluster whereas the actual data is stored in Azure storage. The HDInsight cluster is co-located in the same datacentre as the Azure storage and connected by high speed network.

There are several advantage of using Azure storage (Option 2). Continue Reading

HDInsight: Analysing Twitter Hashtags using Hive

Twitter

Hive implements MapReduce using HiveQL. The built-in capabilities of HiveQL abstracts the implementation of mappers and reducers with a simple yet powerful SQL like query language. To demonstrate the inbuilt capabilities of HiveQL, I will be analysing hashtags from a twitter feed on Azure HDInsight platform.

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