He will Yahoo! Hadoop expands from 20 nodes to 42,000 nodes

Eric Baldeschwieler, 47 years old, has a deep background in computer technology. After acquiring a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics (computer science) at Carnegie Mellon University (Carnegie Mellon University), Eric also obtained a master's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. The technology leader of the Inktomi company Web Services engine (Inktomi is the second search engine to appear earlier, Amazon.com,ebay,hotbot,msn,overture,walmart.com,looksmart,excite,hotbot is his client, and through these top-level portals and target sites, Inktomi provides more than half of the world's Internet users with the latest , the most relevant search results), as Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo in 2003, Eric also turned to Yahoo and eventually passed 2 years of effort to become Yahoo's web search chief designer in 2005. More legendary, Eric, in 2006, resolutely invested in the embrace of the Yahoo Apache Hadoop Project, developing its 20-node prototype into 42,000-node services. Then, when Yahoo decided to fully support the Apache Hadoop project and set up a new company Hortonworks in July 2011, Eric deserved to be the first CTO. As a senior technical person, Eric, the CTO, feels he faces many challenges. But he is very optimistic about the future of Hadoop, "If you make a little contribution, Hadoop will do wonders." Eric will come to HBTC 2012 and deliver a keynote speech on the experience sharing of Hadoop technology.

From playing games to doing Hadoop

Eric Baldeschwieler on the elephant.

Q: Since when did you become interested in technology? How did you come to the path of Hadoop?

Eric Baldeschwieler: Time always has its own trajectory. For me, the later work experience is a supplement to the middle School study. At that time, in school, we all through the early microcomputer to play the game. Then, at my father's Caltech lab, I learned some automated experiments. It was very interesting and contributed to the choice of my first job after I left school. That is, I worked for Steve Crane, one of my father's partners (on postdoctoral projects). He was co-founder of Cubico and later joined the digital f/x enterprise. From him, I learned the art of electronics. Together we do three-dimensional rendering in the lab system of the California Institute of Technology and three-dimensional graphics processing to realize the post-production digital video production.

So, playing games in college, summer work in my father's laboratory makes me naturally fill in the computer when I choose my major in college. Luckily, I had the opportunity to work with Eric Brewer (Inktomi co-founder) at graduate School. Joining Inktomi was a crucial decision I made. There, I got so many exciting resources from Silicon Valley. It was not until 2003 that Inktomi was bought by Yahoo. I moved to Yahoo and slowly sat down to the web search chief designer's post (2005). And since then, I've been focusing on big data issues, and I was officially involved in the Apache Hadoop project group in 2006.

What I've always wanted to do is to understand how computer work works in large data areas. For example, in the 80 's, when the PC is not fast, you need to have a thorough understanding of its principles to better play video and play games. The same is true in the search field, to answer as many questions as possible, to use as much data as possible, to achieve the highest possible speed, understand IT system architecture and operation is necessary.

Q: Who is your most admired leader?

Eric Baldeschwieler: I've had the privilege of working with a lot of great technical people. Steve Crane is my first boss, is also a good friend and mentor, we have done a lot of things, from him, I learned a very important lesson, that is no matter what to do, such as switching in different jobs, need to have different technology accumulation. And in Inktomi, another founder, Paul Gauthier, I learned pragmatism. As a learned man, a truly technical top expert, he told me that computers are becoming more powerful, and that the best solutions are often the simplest and most straightforward. Sometimes you can take a "hammer" to solve your problem (don't be afraid to solve it with the simplest solution).

There is also a Yahoo CTO Raymie Stata, from him, I learned is a spirit-optimistic. This is important, and this is the value of Hortonworks. We have been "incomparable" with the prospect of Hortonworks, and we have received a lot of support and trust from him. In addition, I most appreciate his idea: open source is not 0 and games, as long as you actively participate in the community to contribute to a great reward. There is too much competition and cooperation, you need to find a partner (even if his goal is only in some way consistent with you), but your cooperation will create a lot of value.

The open source community's partners are pragmatic and passionate, and I'm fortunate to have a group of like-minded friends who can invent interesting solutions to difficult problems.

Q: What is the biggest challenge as CTO?

Eric Baldeschwieler: The biggest challenge, I think, is to achieve a pragmatic balance between short-term and long-term goals. Short-term is to find customers, create income, have business opportunities, long-term is beyond this goal, such as research and development of better programs, to obtain more technical upgrading, so that enterprises live longer and so on. Hortonworks has a large number of technical projects, but there are many challenges ahead. And before I took part in Hadoop, my work in Inktomi and Yahoo was more about trying to figure out how to crawl pages and build search projects by building the base community, but there was the problem of balancing short-term goals with long-term planning by managing a large team and project.

On the other hand, for me personally, there is an interesting challenge to doing business outside of technology. Especially now that technology has been able to cause business change, now that technology is changing faster, corporate budgets are more limited, and all companies are looking for new opportunities, this creates more exciting opportunities for technology, especially open source markets, but there are uncertainties, such as finance.

So you can be ambitious, but you have to be pragmatic.

Q: HBTC 2012 which attracts you most?

Eric Baldeschwieler: As CTO of Hortonworks, my job is not linear. Most of the time is the online management technology team, working with smart colleagues to design the next generation technology framework. Haha, in my opinion, as CTO, if there is no direct leadership of the team, then you may not have a little personal space. In addition, I like to participate in foreign technical seminars, such as the recent I will attend in Beijing, China, HBTC 2012, in such a technical meeting, not only can share a lot of technical views, but also learn more. It's exciting to think that when technicians from different countries are grappling with the same problem, our discussion may produce really clever answers.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)