InsightaaS: As chief strategist for VMware’s SAS BU, Chuck Hollis has a clear bias towards virtualization. However, after 18 years at EMC – during which time he launched the excellent Chuck’s Blog — he also has both a technologically-informed view of Big Data and a knack for analyzing and discussing advanced technology. In this post, Hollis looks at the “how” and “why” of virtualizing the Hadoop Big Data analytics platform. .
The story of the industry’s adoption of virtualization has a recurring theme: workloads once thought entirely unsuitable for virtualization make obvious sense in hindsight.
Virtualize my test and dev environment? It’ll never fly. Virtualize a database? Heresy! Virtualize desktops? Ridiculous. Virtualize a large enterprise app like SAP? Foolish.
But all are best practices now, with substantial benefits and advantages that were largely predictable upon later reflection.
And here comes Hadoop — the open source Giant Swiss Army Knife of big data analytics. Whether it’s that first project, or a larger set of shared services, the number of IT shops who either are running it — or plan to soon — is growing nicely.
The first round of early adopters went physical — as there were no reasonable virtualization alternatives. But for those that are building out their first environment (or their newest environment), many are seriously considering going virtual.
And, once again, the benefits are obvious in hindsight…
Read the entire post: http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2013/10/virtual-hadoop-gaining-traction.html#more
