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Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1 Beta Supports 'Big Data' on Windows
Hortonworks has released a beta of its Data Platform 1.1 for Hadoop workloads on Windows.
The platform, which is used for managing "big data" workloads on Windows systems, previously was available in October with previews of Microsoft's HDInsight Server for Windows and the Windows Azure HDInsight Service. "HDInsight" is Microsoft's branding for its technologies that work with the Hadoop open source Apache project, which is a framework for processing large amounts of data across clusters, including both structured and unstructured data.
Hortonworks, a key contributor to the Apache Hadoop project, sells Hadoop solutions and is one Microsoft's main partners in helping to enable Windows to work such big data implementations. The Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1 product is described as the "first and only Apache Hadoop distribution for both Windows and Linux," according to an announcement. The user experience is identical across both Windows and Linux, the company claims, and it's interoperable across both systems.
Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1 also supports both Windows and Windows Azure deployments of Hadoop.
"Applications built on HDP for Windows should just work on Microsoft’s HDInsight server and the Azure HDInsight service," according to Herain Oberoi, director of product marketing at Microsoft Server and Tools Business, in a blog post.
Companies such as Yahoo and Google have pioneered mining these sorts of big data workloads using MapReduce technology. Queries are run across hundreds of terabytes of data, often tapping unstructured sources, such as user clickstream data from the Web. Microsoft has been promoting the use of some its familiar business intelligence tools for use with Hadoop deployments in order to glean insights. Those tools include PowerPivot for Excel and Power View for SharePoint Services.
Open source Hadoop is still being developed, although a vendor community has already formed around it, according to a report by The Enterprise Strategy Group. The ESG report, "Hadoop Distribution Options for Big Data," found rising interest among organizations for purchasing commercial distributions of the MapReduce framework. Some aspects of Hadoop are still undergoing maturity, such as ease-of-use capabilities and high availability, according to the report.
In addition to Hortonworks and Microsoft, vendors offering MapReduce capabilities include Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, Dell, EMC and IBM, among others. Their offerings differ in how closely they adhere to open source Apache Hadoop, according to the report. Hortonworks claims its product is a "100 percent" open source Apache Hadoop implementation.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.