Hadoop

Hadoop was originally conceived on the basis of Google's MapReduce, in which an application is broken down into numerous small parts. Any of these parts (also called fragments or blocks) can be run on any node in the cluster. Hadoop makes it possible to run applications on systems with thousands of nodes involving thousands of terabytes. A distributed file system (DFS) facilitates rapid data transfer rates among nodes and allows the system to continue operating uninterrupted in case of a node failure. The risk of catastrophic system failure is low, even if a significant number of nodes become inoperative.

The Hadoop framework is used by major players including Google, Yahoo and IBM, largely for applications involving search engines and advertising. The preferred operating systems are Windows and Linux but Hadoop can also work with BSD and OS X. Hadoop was originally the name of a stuffed toy elephant belonging to a child of the framework's creator, Doug Cutting.

Learn More About IT:
Visit the Hadoop Core Web site.
The Apache Software Foundation answers frequently asked questions about Hadoop.
Tim O'Reilly discusses Yahoo's support of Hadoop.

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