Large Data virtualization: VMware is virtualizing Hadoop

VMware has released Plug-ins to control Hadoop deployments on the vsphere, bringing more convenience to businesses on large data platforms.

VMware today released a beta test version of the vsphere large data Extensions BDE. Users will be able to use VMware's widely known infrastructure management platform to control the Hadoop cluster they build. Plug-ins still need a Hadoop platform as the ground floor, where vendors based on Apache Hadoop are available, such as Hortonworks, MAPR, Cloudera, and VMware partner pivotal. BDE enables you to manage versions of Hadoop that are released by different vendors on top of vsphere. Michael Matchett, senior analyst at Taneja Group, said that "VMware is helping private companies achieve large data Services".

Prior to this, VMware has implemented the above features through Serengeti Open source projects that optimize the efficiency of Hadoop operations on the vsphere platform. This is significant for large data projects, especially for companies deploying Hadoop clusters, Matchett said. Running a Hadoop node on a virtualized server, rather than on a physical server, can have many advantages, like virtual servers, including more efficient use of hardware resources and superior management flexibility. "Running Hadoop on a virtualized platform will lead the enterprise because it can mix the load and share the infrastructure across multiple clients." Matchett said.

Driven by VMware, other companies are also starting to virtualize Hadoop clusters. Amazon offers elastic Map Reduce (EMR) services, a common cloud service similar to Hadoop. VMware's positioning focuses more on private cloud and deployment based on customer requirements.

Increased support for Vsphere may herald further action by VMware. For example, VMware may expand the platform at the public cloud launch in the second half of the year to provide a more convenient hadoop migration via vsphere. Other companies, especially Microsoft, may be able to launch support for various versions of Hadoop in management software, such as Hyper-V at Windows Systems Center.

VMware announces that customers using Vsphere 5.1 can register for the beta version of BDE this week and the new features mentioned above are part of the beta version. The product is expected to be officially online by the end of this year. In addition, VMware announces that the Serengeti project will support the latest open source code in Apache Hadoop, including the yarn feature (a resource manager). Industry insiders believe this could open the door to building new applications on the Hadoop platform.

Reprint Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/062613-vmware-hadoop-271300.html

Original Author: Brandon Butler

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