How to make MapReduce work with HDFS - mongodb

This might sound like some stupid question.
I might write a MR code that can take input and output as HDFS locations and then I really don't need to worry about the parallel computing power of hadoop/MR. (Please correct me if I am wrong here).
However if my input is not an HDFS location say I am taking a MongoDB data as input - mongodb://localhost:27017/mongo_hadoop.messages and running my mappers and reducers and storing the data back to mongodb, how will HDFS come into picture. I mean how can I be sure that the 1 GB or any sized big file is first being distributed on HDFS and then parallel computing is being done on it?
Is it that this direct URI will not distribute the data and I need to take the BSON file instead, load it up on HDFS and then give the HDFS path as Input to MR or the framework is smart enough to do this by itself?
I am sorry if the above question is too stupid or not making any sense at all. I am really new to big data but very much excited to dive into this domain.
Thanks.

You are describing DBInputFormat. This is an input format that reads the split from an external database. HDFS only gets involved in setting up the job, but not in actual input. There is also an DBOutputFormat. With an input like DBInputFormat the splits are logical, eg. key ranges.
Read Database Access with Apache Hadoop for a detailed explanation.

Sorry,I am not sure about MongoDb.
If you just wanted to know,how splitting is happening if we are using the data source is a table,then this is my answer when MapRed working with HBase.
we will use TableInputFormat to use an Hbase table in MapRed job.
From the http://hbase.apache.org/book.html#hbase.mapreduce.classpath
7.7. Map-Task Splitting
7.7.1. The Default HBase MapReduce Splitter
When TableInputFormat is used to source an HBase table in a MapReduce job, its splitter will make a map task for each region of the table. Thus, if there are 100 regions in the table, there will be 100 map-tasks for the job - regardless of how many column families are selected in the Scan.
7.7.2. Custom Splitters
For those interested in implementing custom splitters, see the method getSplits in TableInputFormatBase. That is where the logic for map-task assignment resides.

This is a good question, not stupid.
1.
"mongodb://localhost:27017/mongo_hadoop.messages and running my mappers and reducers and storing the data back to mongodb, how will HDFS come into picture. "
Under this situation, u needn't consider hdfs. U needn't do anything related with hdf. Just like write a multiple-thread application with each thread write data to mongodb.
In fact, hdfs is independent to map-reduce, and map-reduce is also independent to hdfs. So, u can use them separately or together as your wish.
2.
if u want to input/output db to map-reduce, u show consider DBInputFormat, but that's another question.
Now, hadoop DBInputFormat only support JDBC. I'm not sure whether some mongodb version of DBInputFormat. Maybe U can search it or implement it by yourself.

Related

Is it possible to generate DataFrame rows from the context of a Spark Worker?

The fundamental problem is attempting to use spark to generate data but then work with the data internally. I.e., I have a program that does a thing, and it generates "rows" of data - can I leverage Spark to parallelize that work across the worker nodes, and have them each contribute back to the underlying store?
The reason I want to use Spark is that seems to be a very popular framework, and I know this request is a little outside of the defined range of functions Spark should offer. However, the alternatives of MapReduce or Storm are dreadfully old and there isn't much support anymore.
I have a feeling there has to be a way to do this, has anyone tried to utilize Spark in this way?
To be honest, I don't think adopting Spark just because it's popular is the right decision. Also, it's not obvious from the question why this problem would require a framework for distributed data processing (that comes along with a significant coordination overhead).
The key consideration should be how you are going to process the generated data in the next step. If it's all about dumping it immediately into a data store I would really discourage using Spark, especially if you don't have the necessary infrastructure (Spark cluster) at hand.
Instead, write a simple program that generates the data. Then run it on a modern resource scheduler such as Kubernetes and scale it out and run as many instances of it as necessary.
If you absolutely want to use Spark for this (and unnecessarily burn resources), it's not difficult. Create a distributed "seed" dataset / stream and simply flatMap that. Using flatMap you can generate as many new rows for each seed input row as you like (obviously limited by the available memory).

Apache spark streaming - cache dataset for joining

I'm considering using Apache Spark streaming for some real-time work but I'm not sure how to cache a dataset for use in a join/lookup.
The main input will be json records coming from Kafka that contain an Id, I want to translate that id into a name using a lookup dataset. The lookup dataset resides in Mongo Db but I want to be able to cache it inside the spark process as the dataset changes very rarely (once every couple of hours) so I don't want to hit mongo for every input record or reload all the records in every spark batch but I need to be able to update the data held in spark periodically (e.g. every 2 hours).
What is the best way to do this?
Thanks.
I've thought long and hard about this myself. In particular I've wondered is it possible to actually implement a database DB in Spark of sorts.
Well the answer is kind of yes. First you want a program that first caches the main data set into memory, then every couple of hours does an optimized join-with-tiny to update the main data set. Now apparently Spark will have a method that does a join-with-tiny (maybe it's already out in 1.0.0 - my stack is stuck on 0.9.0 until CDH 5.1.0 is out).
Anyway, you can manually implement a join-with-tiny, by taking the periodic bi-hourly dataset and turning it into a HashMap then broadcasting it as a broadcast variable. What this means is that the HashMap will be copied, but only once per node (compare this with just referencing the Map - it would be copied once per task - a much greater cost). Then you take your main dataset and add on the new records using the broadcasted map. You can then periodically (nightly) save to hdfs or something.
So here is some scruffy pseudo code to elucidate:
var mainDataSet: RDD[KeyType, DataType] = sc.textFile("/path/to/main/dataset")
.map(parseJsonAndGetTheKey).cache()
everyTwoHoursDo {
val newData: Map[KeyType, DataType] = sc.textFile("/path/to/last/two/hours")
.map(parseJsonAndGetTheKey).toarray().toMap
broadcast(newData)
val mainDataSetNew =
mainDataSet.map((key, oldValue) => (key,
newData.get(key).map(newDataValue =>
update(oldValue, newDataValue))
.getOrElse(oldValue)))
.cache()
mainDataSetNew.someAction() // to force execution
mainDataSet.unpersist()
mainDataSet = mainDataSetNew
}
I've also thought that you could be very clever and use a custom partioner with your own custom index, and then use a custom way of updating the partitions so that each partition itself holds a submap. Then you can skip updating partitions that you know won't hold any keys that occur in the newData, and also optimize the updating process.
I personally think this is a really cool idea, and the nice thing is your dataset is already ready in memory for some analysis / machine learning. The down side is your kinda reinventing the wheel a bit. It might be a better idea to look at using Cassandra as Datastax is partnering with Databricks (people who make Spark) and might end up supporting some kind of thing like this out of box.
Further reading:
http://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/programming-guide.html#broadcast-variables
http://www.datastax.com/2014/06/datastax-unveils-dse-45-the-future-of-the-distributed-database-management-system
Here is a fairly simple work-flow:
For each batch of data:
Convert the batch of JSON data to a DataFrame (b_df).
Read the lookup dataset from MongoDB as a DataFrame (m_df). Then cache, m_df.cache()
Join the data using b_df.join(m_df, "join_field")
Perform your required aggregation and then write to a data source.

Is Cassandra good for storing files?

I'm developing a php platform that will make huge use of images, documents and any file format that will come in my mind so i was wondering if Cassandra is a good choice for my needs.
If not, can you tell me how should i store files? I'd like to keep using cassandra because it's fault-tolerant and uses auto-replication among nodes.
Thanks for help.
From the cassandra wiki,
Cassandra's public API is based on Thrift, which offers no streaming abilities
any value written or fetched has to fit in memory. This is inherent to Thrift's
design and is therefore unlikely to change. So adding large object support to
Cassandra would need a special API that manually split the large objects up
into pieces. A potential approach is described in http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-265.
As a workaround in the meantime, you can manually split files into chunks of whatever
size you are comfortable with -- at least one person is using 64MB -- and making a file correspond
to a row, with the chunks as column values.
So if your files are < 10MB you should be fine, just make sure to limit the file size, or break large files up into chunks.
You should be OK with files of 10MB. In fact, DataStax Brisk puts a filesystem on top of Cassandra if I'm not mistaken: http://www.datastax.com/products/enterprise.
(I'm not associated with them in any way- this isn't an ad)
As fresh information, Netflix provides utilities for their cassandra client called astyanax for storing files as handled object stores. Description and examples can be found here. It can be a good starting point to write some tests using astyanax and evaluate Cassandra as a file storage.

realtime querying/aggregating millions of records - hadoop? hbase? cassandra?

I have a solution that can be parallelized, but I don't (yet) have experience with hadoop/nosql, and I'm not sure which solution is best for my needs. In theory, if I had unlimited CPUs, my results should return back instantaneously. So, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Here's what I have:
1000s of datasets
dataset keys:
all datasets have the same keys
1 million keys (this may later be 10 or 20 million)
dataset columns:
each dataset has the same columns
10 to 20 columns
most columns are numerical values for which we need to aggregate on (avg, stddev, and use R to calculate statistics)
a few columns are "type_id" columns, since in a particular query we may
want to only include certain type_ids
web application
user can choose which datasets they are interested in (anywhere from 15 to 1000)
application needs to present: key, and aggregated results (avg, stddev) of each column
updates of data:
an entire dataset can be added, dropped, or replaced/updated
would be cool to be able to add columns. But, if required, can just replace the entire dataset.
never add rows/keys to a dataset - so don't need a system with lots of fast writes
infrastructure:
currently two machines with 24 cores each
eventually, want ability to also run this on amazon
I can't precompute my aggregated values, but since each key is independent, this should be easily scalable. Currently, I have this data in a postgres database, where each dataset is in its own partition.
partitions are nice, since can easily add/drop/replace partitions
database is nice for filtering based on type_id
databases aren't easy for writing parallel queries
databases are good for structured data, and my data is not structured
As a proof of concept I tried out hadoop:
created a tab separated file per dataset for a particular type_id
uploaded to hdfs
map: retrieved a value/column for each key
reduce: computed average and standard deviation
From my crude proof-of-concept, I can see this will scale nicely, but I can see hadoop/hdfs has latency I've read that that it's generally not used for real time querying (even though I'm ok with returning results back to users in 5 seconds).
Any suggestion on how I should approach this? I was thinking of trying HBase next to get a feel for that. Should I instead look at Hive? Cassandra? Voldemort?
thanks!
Hive or Pig don't seem like they would help you. Essentially each of them compiles down to one or more map/reduce jobs, so the response cannot be within 5 seconds
HBase may work, although your infrastructure is a bit small for optimal performance. I don't understand why you can't pre-compute summary statistics for each column. You should look up computing running averages so that you don't have to do heavy weight reduces.
check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
stddev(X) = sqrt(E[X^2]- (E[X])^2)
this implies that you can get the stddev of AB by doing
sqrt(E[AB^2]-(E[AB])^2). E[AB^2] is (sum(A^2) + sum(B^2))/(|A|+|B|)
Since your data seems to be pretty much homogeneous, I would definitely take a look at Google BigQuery - You can ingest and analyze the data without a MapReduce step (on your part), and the RESTful API will help you create a web application based on your queries. In fact, depending on how you want to design your application, you could create a fairly 'real time' application.
It is serious problem without immidiate good solution in the open source space. In commercial space MPP databases like greenplum/netezza should do.
Ideally you would need google's Dremel (engine behind BigQuery). We are developing open source clone, but it will take some time...
Regardless of the engine used I think solution should include holding the whole dataset in memory - it should give an idea what size of cluster you need.
If I understand you correctly and you only need to aggregate on single columns at a time
You can store your data differently for better results
in HBase that would look something like
table per data column in today's setup and another single table for the filtering fields (type_ids)
row for each key in today's setup - you may want to think how to incorporate your filter fields into the key for efficient filtering - otherwise you'd have to do a two phase read (
column for each table in today's setup (i.e. few thousands of columns)
HBase doesn't mind if you add new columns and is sparse in the sense that it doesn't store data for columns that don't exist.
When you read a row you'd get all the relevant value which you can do avg. etc. quite easily
You might want to use a plain old database for this. It doesn't sound like you have a transactional system. As a result you can probably use just one or two large tables. SQL has problems when you need to join over large data. But since your data set doesn't sound like you need to join, you should be fine. You can have the indexes setup to find the data set and the either do in SQL or in app math.

Storing millions of log files - Approx 25 TB a year

As part of my work we get approx 25TB worth log files annually, currently it been saved over an NFS based filesystem. Some are archived as in zipped/tar.gz while others reside in pure text format.
I am looking for alternatives of using an NFS based system. I looked at MongoDB, CouchDB. The fact that they are document oriented database seems to make it the right fit. However the log files content needs to be changed to JSON to be store into the DB. Something I am not willing to do. I need to retain the log files content as is.
As for usage we intend to put a small REST API and allow people to get file listing, latest files, and ability to get the file.
The proposed solutions/ideas need to be some form of distributed database or filesystem at application level where one can store log files and can scale horizontally effectively by adding more machines.
Ankur
Since you dont want queriying features, You can use apache hadoop.
I belive HDFS and HBase will be nice fit for this.
You can see lot of huge storage stories inside Hadoop powered by page
Take a look at Vertica, a columnar database supporting parallel processing and fast queries. Comcast used it to analyze about 15GB/day of SNMP data, running at an average rate of 46,000 samples per second, using five quad core HP Proliant servers. I heard some Comcast operations folks rave about Vertica a few weeks ago; they still really like it. It has some nice data compression techniques and "k-safety redundancy", so they could dispense with a SAN.
Update: One of the main advantages of a scalable analytics database approach is that you can do some pretty sophisticated, quasi-real time querying of the log. This might be really valuable for your ops team.
Have you tried looking at gluster? It is scalable, provides replication and many other features. It also gives you standard file operations so no need to implement another API layer.
http://www.gluster.org/
I would strongly disrecommend using a key/value or document based store for this data (mongo, cassandra, etc.). Use a file system. This is because the files are so large, and the access pattern is going to be linear scan. One thing problem that you will run into is retention. Most of the "NoSQL" storage systems use logical delete, which means that you have to compact your database to remove deleted rows. You'll also have a problem if your individual log records are small and you have to index each one of them - your index will be very large.
Put your data in HDFS with 2-3 way replication in 64 MB chunks in the same format that it's in now.
If you are to choose a document database:
On CouchDB you can use the _attachement API to attach the file as is to a document, the document itself could contain only metadata (like timestamp, locality and etc) for indexing. Then you will have a REST API for the documents and the attachments.
A similar approach is possible with Mongo's GridFs, but you would build the API yourself.
Also HDFS is a very nice choice.