Saving compressed data in HDFS

In this recipe, we are going to take a look at how to store and process compressed data in HDFS.

Getting ready

To perform this recipe, you should already have a running Hadoop.

How to do it...

It's always good to use compression while storing data in HDFS. HDFS supports various types of compression algorithms such as LZO, BIZ2, Snappy, GZIP, and so on. Every algorithm has its own pros and cons when you consider the time taken to compress and decompress and the space efficiency. These days people prefer Snappy compression as it aims to achieve a very high speed and a reasonable amount of compression.

We can easily store and process any number of files in HDFS. To store compressed data, we don't need to specifically make any changes to the Hadoop cluster. You can simply copy the compressed data in the same way it's in HDFS. Here is an example of this:

hadoop fs -mkdir /compressed
hadoop fs –put file.bz2 /compressed

Now, we'll run a sample program to take a look at how Hadoop automatically uncompresses the file and processes it:

hadoop jar /usr/local/hadoop/share/hadoop/mapreduce/hadoop-mapreduce-examples-2.7.0.jar wordcount /compressed /compressed_out

Once the job is complete, you can verify the output.

How it works...

Hadoop explores native libraries to find the support needed for various codecs and their implementations. Native libraries are specific to the platform that you run Hadoop on. You don't need to make any configuration changes to enable compression algorithms. As mentioned earlier, Hadoop supports various compression algorithms that are already familiar to the computer world. Based on your needs and requirements (more space or more time), you can choose your compression algorithm.

Take a look at http://comphadoop.weebly.com/ for more information on this.

Tip

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