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ONE MILLION: Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) Ships Millionth Server
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The team at Dell (the company I work for) celebrated a huge milestone last week…
The Data Center Solutions group (aka DCS) officially shipped their millionth cloud server!
As the director of DCS marketing, Drew Schulke, pointed out, DCS’s influence is all around you – “If you used a search engine, updated your status via social media, or generated a map on the internet to get from ‘point A’ to ‘point B’ today, there is a good chance that a DCS server made that possible.” (You can read Drew’s entire blog here.)
As many of you know, I lead a team of product managers and strategists on the Dell Revolutionary Cloud and Big Data team, who focus on areas such as OpenStack and Hadoop, who deliver the Dell Crowbar software framework, and lead the Crowbar open source community.
So what does DCS have to do with our OpenStack / Hadoop / Crowbar team?
Actually quite a bit.
DCS set out to meet the needs of the hyperscale customer, and as it turns out, most of those customers are looking at cutting edge technology trends like OpenStack, Hadoop, and open source toolsets.
In fact, our solutions feature PowerEdge C servers, the density optimized server line that was born out of the work done by DCS, and are being run by our solutions customers on a regular basis as they stand up cloud and big data environments.
So by pulling together integrated HW+SW+Services solutions around OpenStack and Hadoop, leveraging innovative Dell IP like Crowbar and the unique advancements coming out of the DCS group, we’re able to make our customers even more successful – which is what its all about.
Win-win-win!
It’s a great milestone for the innovative DCS team – join me in celebrating this momentus milestone!
Until next time,
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
More info:
NOW HIRING: Dell’s Revolutionary Cloud and Big Data Team Expands
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We’re growing!
The Revolutionary Cloud and Big Data Team at Dell (the company I work for) is looking to expand our team of rockstars, so we’re putting the word out. Specifically we’re looking for architects, engineers, developers, and I’m looking to hire a few more senior product managers to join my team of subject matter experts.
Just for context, we’re the team that has taken to market the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution, the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution, and the Dell Crowbar software framework and open source project.
And if you’re a rockstar in any of those spaces, we’d like to talk to you.
SPOILER ALERT – If you’re interested in talking to us about a technical spot on our team, you can email us your info and resume at OpenStack@Dell.com or Hadoop@Dell.com.
What is this team about?
A few years ago, the Dell Data Center Solutions team came into being with a mission of servicing the biggest hyperscale environments in the world, which included many of the market’s top cloud providers. It has succeeded in its mission in dominating the density optimized space (check out more on that here), and in fact, just shipped it’s ONE MILLIONTH SERVER.
An extension of DCS’s mission soon became clear – as many customers were looking to accelerate into spaces like cloud and big data, providing them integrated solutions would ease their implementation of these technologies. And so our Revolutionary Cloud and Big Data Solutions team was born – to deliver integrated solutions based on cutting edge technologies like OpenStack and Hadoop (and more), as well as innovative Dell projects like Crowbar, in an effort to enable customers to grow and thrive in their businesses with our products, innovation, and expertise.
Who are we?
The team at Dell is made up of a number of people, like myself, that you’d recognize from OpenStack and Hadoop circles – folks like Rob Hirschfeld, Greg Althaus, Kamesh Pemmaraju, and others. We all come from a variety of backgrounds – some from big companies in the technology spaces and many from startups – we happen to have quite a few entreprenuers on our team! And we try to service our customers in the best way possible – agile development processes, open source friendly, community oriented, etc.
What are we trying to do?
Our mission is to develop and deliver HW+SW+Services solutions to market that will enable our customers to be successful. Clear and simple.
Here’s a sampling of what our team has done over the course of our existence:
- The first hardware solutions vendor to support OpenStack
- Released the first HW+SW+Services OpenStack solution to market – the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution
- Launch of open source project “Crowbar” to fill the void of an automated bare metal OpenStack provisioner
- Released HW+SW+Services Apache Hadoop solution to market – the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution
- Launch of the Emerging Solutions Ecosystem Partner Program to enable our customers by incorporating some of our best in breed partner technologies into our solutions, which includes Datameer, Pentaho, enStratus, Mirantis, and Canonical, with more to come
- Launch of the Emerging Solutions Platform Partner Program to enable our customers by delivering solutions focused on specific workloads and target markets
In addition, we’re big believers in the community – we regularly hold hackfests to help move these communities forward, lead community meetups in Austin and Boston working with other key vendors that co-sponsor with us (you may be surprised), are regularly active in IRC, skype discussions, conference breakout sessions, and more.
It’s a fast-paced, customer focused, ever evolving group and its a great place to deliver tanglible, difference making solutions to customers.
It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s DEFINITELY for the mover and shaker.
Who we want to hear from
We’re looking to expand in a number of areas, but specifically we’re looking for technical talent
- Developers / QA
- Technical Product Managers and Strategists
- Architects and Technical Leads
If I’ve piqued your interest, drop me a note and your resume at OpenStack@Dell.com.
Look forward to hearing from cloud / big data / open source rockstars.
Until next time,
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
HADOOP WEBINAR: “New Business Insights with Hadoop Analytics”
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Hadoop World last week was a blast, so hopefully, you’re still on a Hadoop high and checking out all the new ideas coming from Dell (the company I work for), and others in the space.
And to keep the good times going, Dell is joining forces with our partner, Datameer, to host a webinar deep diving into Hadoop analytics.
Jeff Stacey, Dell’s Senior Product Manager of Big Data Solution (which includes our Dell Apache Hadoop Solution), will be co-hosting this webinar with Datameer as they dig into real-world examples and use cases of how companies are taking advantage of hardware and software advances to analyze data with Hadoop. They’ll take a look at numerous data sources that are being leveraged, and how this wealth of data is already providing critical new insights in industries ranging from financial services to new media.
Here’s all you need to know:
- Date: Wed, Nov 7, 2012
- Time: 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern
- What: Dell + Datameer webainar – “New Business Insights with Hadoop Analytics”
- Register here: LINK
Come check out how analytic use cases spanning marketing, internet security, asset risk management, product usage and IT infrastructure are already driving competitive advantages and operational efficiencies.
If you’d like to learn more about how Dell is making our customers successful with Hadoop via the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution, visit www.Dell.com/Hadoop or drop us a line at Hadoop@Dell.com.
See you at the webinar!
Until next time
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
Highlights from the 2012 Hadoop World
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Had a great time at last week’s Hadoop World, so wanted to write up a few of my thoughts from the event.
- This year’s Hadoop World was the best attended to date – I believe I heard the attendee number to be at 2500 vs 1400 last year! It’s great to see this kind of growth among the community considering there were only 500 attendees just four years ago.
- In some similarities to what I’m seeing in the OpenStack community, this conference seemed to boast more from the “user” ranks as opposed to just developers as in the recent past. It speaks volumes to the general adoption that Hadoop is seeing in the market.
- Dell, the company I work for, and our Ecosystem Partner Datameer hosted a networking event for a number of folks at Hadoop World at the prestigious Circo NYC restaurant – great food and a great time with some innovative Hadoop implementers. Got to really get indepth how real people are implementing Hadoop in their enviornments today. Appreciate those that took the time out to attend, and for those who missed out, see you next time!
- Cloudera announced their beta project called “Impala”, which allows users to perform real-time queries of their data, a feature that a number of Hadoop users have been anticipating. According to Cloudera, Impala can process queries up to 30 times faster than Hive / MapReduce – very cool, and I look forward to checking it out.
- Finally, Dell made an announcement about our donation of “Zinc”, an ARM-based server concept to the Apache Software Foundation, with support from our partner, Calxeda, where we see ARM infrastructures as an interesting technology for Hadoop environments. The donation includes hosting and technical support for the Apache community. and we’re hosting the server concept at an Austin-based co-location. The Apache Hadoop project has actually performed more than a dozen builds within the first 24 hours of the servers’ deployment. (You can check out the full press release here to learn more.)
All in all, Hadoop World is another hit! It was a great event overall and I look forward to next year’s conference.
To learn more about the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution and more about what Dell is doing in this space, visit us at www.Dell.com/Hadoop.
And if you want to chat about how Dell can help you with your Hadoop initiative, drop me an email at Hadoop@Dell.com.
Until next time,
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
Dell @ Hadoop World 2012: Experts, Solutions, and Networking Event
- Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2012
- Time: 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. EST
- Place: Circo NYC, 120 W. 55th Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 265-3636, circonyc.com
- Circo: offers upscale Italian fare built upon a foundation of signature Tuscan recipes from the kitchen of Maccioni matriarch Egidiana and prepared by Executive Chef Michael Galata. The menu is served in a lively, sophisticated setting reminiscent of the old-style European circus tents which inspired the restaurant’s name.
If you’re interested in joining us, be sure to RSVP with Dianna Doan (ddoan@datameer.com) ASAP. There are only a few spots left, so be sure to RSVP now.
I’ll be there, so I hope to see you too.
Looking forward to a great week!
Until next time,
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
THIS JUST IN: Dell Announces ARM Server Ecosystem and Acceleration Programs
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If you’ve followed some of the technology advances in the processor space, you’ve no doubt heard of the ARM architecture. We’ve seen ARM processors in a number of client devices, but they’ve not been widely adopted for server use due to additional feature needs, performance, and limited software ecosystem.
Well, today, Dell (the company I work for) announced some of the work we are doing behind ARM and ARM-based servers.
ARM, which stands for “advanced RISC machine,” is a 32-bit RISC instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. In the server context, it can allow systems to be deployed at the chip level to reduce space, power consumption and cost.
Dell has been testing with ARM since 2010, and has been working with customers to understand how they could benefit from the ARM architecture, as well as what their expectations were regarding ARM-based servers.
Dell “Copper” ARM-based server
Today, we announced development of “Copper”, an ARM-based microserver, optimized for the current maturity of the ARM server market, which is primarily focused on test / dev and ARM-based technology to test and optimize code. And for this predominant use case, the Copper server is a great fit in terms of size and costwith its lightweight design, low-power-consumption and excellent density.
Dell’s Copper server is specifically designed for this market, with a small acquisition size and price, lower power consumption, and ease of use, and if you’ve followed our open source solution to date, you know that enabling open source development is important to us.
Enabling customers and the ecosystem
Testing to date has found compelling performance per dollar and performance per watt advantages for workloads like LAMP stack based web front ends and Hadoop applications. In that vein, we’ve partnered with TACC, the Texas Advanced Computing Center to help work through workloads, use cases, etc. We are also working with key open source partners like Canonical and Cloudera to help drive this space as well.
And for those who follow our Cloud and Big Data solutions (like the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solutions, the Dell Cloudera Hadoop Solution, and Crowbar), you’ll be happy to know what our team intends to enable ARM in Crowbar as well. It has proven to be a great tool in deploying our solutions on bare metal and managing the overall solutions that we see a great fit for it in the ARM use case.
We’re obviously very excited about this announcement, so I’d welcome you to check out the links on the ARM / Copper announcement at the end of this blog and in the video below.
Until next time,
JBGeorge
@jbgeorge
More info:
- Learn more about what Dell is doing with ARM and the new “Copper Server” – www.Dell.com/ARMserver
- Learn more about ARM (Wikipedia)
- Learn more about Dell and Hadoop – www.Dell.com/Hadoop
- Learn more about Dell Crowbar – www.Dell.com/Crowbar
Highlights from the Open Source Business Conference 2012
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Last week I had the pleasure to head (back) to San Francisco to spend a few days with other open source believers at this year’s Open Source Business Conference. I was there on behalf of Dell, the company I work for.
Here are some of my thoughts from the sessions / keynotes I sat in on this past week.
- Jim Whitehurst of Red Hat spoke at a keynote and highlighted how the innovation that will be built on IaaS is where the revolution will reside, and that the role vendors will play in this new open source friendly enterprise will focus more on support and services.
- There was a great open source panel with personnel from Yahoo, Warner Music, Blackduck, Acquia, and NorthBridge that talked through real use cases at Yahoo and Warner, plus feedback on their annual open source survey which talked through the rise of open source adoption in the enterprise, how quality and cost is driving that, and how many companies are viewing open source software as a starting point for projects now, rather than an alternative option.
- HP’s Biri Singh talked through their cloud strategy including their tiered strategy of Iaas + ecosystem + marketplace. Turns out they’re using quite a bit of open source as they are building out their public cloud with focus on web services at scale.
- A panel on “Amazon vs the world”, panelists from Canonical , Eucalyptus, and Citrix talked about open private cloud with the backdrop of Amazon’s dominance as a public cloud provider. AWS API compatibility came up a lot, as well as the need to productize open source technologies more. Some opportunities that were highlighted included the need to have vendors who know more than just software, but also the “wiring” of actual working systems, and the importance of staying open as we are just starting to see adoption by the enterprise.
- CloudScaling hosted a great session on why open cloud is winning – how internet companies drove cloud technologies and how they were built with open source, the differences between the “Enterprise IT cloud” and the “Next Gen IT cloud”, and how “no lock-in” + flexibility + scale are the key tenets of open cloud.
Obviously there was a lot more at the event that I was not able to get to – You can check out a few of the presentation slides at https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/31601/50199/?&
If you were out there last week, be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts.
I enjoyed the few days out there – looking forward to the next open source event – likely in San Fran again. 🙂
Until next time,
JBGeorge
@jbgeorge
Play Ball! Hadoop Players Sponsor Big Data Event in Chicago
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What does data analytics have to do with baseball????
Well actually, quite a bit. Moneyball anyone?
(If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. A true story adaption about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s using intense number crunching to build a solid baseball team in a smaller market, competing with bigger markets – and bigger salaries.)
The Technology
Last week, I had the pleasure of representing Dell (the company I work for), as we joined Intel, Cloudera, and Clarity to meet with a number of customers at the Ivy League Baseball Club across from Wrigley Field, right before the Cubs – Cardinals game. It was great to talk to customers who were using Hadoop, as well as those that were just learning about the technology.
The presentation delivered by all four companies focused on the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution, a powerful packaged solution that features
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A reference architecture featuring Intel technology
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A set of software which includes Cloudera’s CDH distribution (with option to upgrade to Cloudera Enterprise), along with Dell’s innovative Crowbar software framework to enable easy provisioing and management
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Services provided by a combination of Dell, Cloudera, and Clarity, to provide our customers with deployment, support, and consulting services
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The Experience
Even more impactful than the presentation was the more 1:1 time after the presentation, where many users and newbies shared stories, experiences, best practices, etc. Got to hear about a lot of the struggles around “going it alone”, and enthusiasm that Dell and our partners were delivering a solution that would make that a bit simpler.
Here’s a sampling of some of the topics that came up.
Why should I care about big data / hadoop?
Here’s the thing: you have data. It’s in your sales tracking system, from your website traffic, from your social media outlets, in your customer support databases, and more. And not only do you have data, you have A LOT of data. But here’s the power of data. Your company has strategic objectives, customer strategies, and product plans. Data gives you insight into how to best spend your resources, where to focus your product development, where your customers are buying your products, and what problems they are encountering. This enables your business to make intelligent decisions to better satisfy your customers.
I already have a data warehousing solution – what’s the benefit of hadoop?
Many analytics solutions today require data to be in a format that adheres to the standards of a relational database (aka structured data). This is fine for data that conforms to this format. However, a lot of the new data that is available to us is not formatted in that manner – this is referred to as unstructured data. Unstructured data includes data types, such as audio, video, graphics, log files, etc. Hadoop as a technology handles unstructured data very well, allowing for analysis of those types of data. Additionally, a number of the traditional enterprise level analytics solutions are building hadoop connectors to allow for hadoop processed data to be utilized by the enterprise tool set. Finally, as data scales, using an open source based technology like Hadoop makes things very cost efficient.
How does the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution help me with hadoop?
Before this solution was made available, many of our Dell customers came to us asking, “If Dell was going to build a hadoop solution, how would you design it?” And this was how we started down the path of hadoop. What we discovered was many customers had pockets of hadoop projects in their companies, but progress was at a crawl. Many of the issues were around infrastructure design, deployment, and overall general help around the technology. And that is the basis for the Dell Apache Hadoop Solution – making hadoop accessible, quick, and simple to deploy from bare metal and get to a functional hadoop cluster asap. We’ve enabled many of these customers to go from a science experiment to a productive Hadoop instance very quickly, and provide them the consulting and education they need to maximize its benefit.
You can learn more about what Dell is doing with Hadoop at www.Dell.com/Hadoop or you can drop me an email at Hadoop@Dell.com.
The Game
For those of you not interested in sports, you can now tune your TV’s off – about to talk baseball for a bit.
As far as the game went, it was a doozy. I have ties to Chicago, so I was rooting for the Cubs. 
- The Cubs were up 1-0 most of the game until the top of the 8th when Cardinal Matt Holliday knocked out a 2 run homer
- Trailing in the bottom of the 9th, Cubs first baseman Bryan Lahair hit a homer to tie it up 2-2, and take us into extra innings
- Here’s where the fireworks really began!
- Bottom of the 10th
- Cubs LF Tony Campana gets on base with a single
- Campana then tries to steal 2nd and barely makes it
- Cardinals coach Matt Matheny did not agree and made a federal case out of it with the 2nd base umpire
- And out goes Matheny – ejected!
- Cardinals walked Lahair
- With two men on base, Cubs LF Alfonso Soriano gets a single and drives Campana home for the 3-2 win!
- Prior to this, the Cardinals had beaten the Cubs in the LAST THIRTEEN SERIES between the two clubs. With this win, that streak has been broken.
Great game, great crowd, great partners! Thanks to everyone who came out. I look forward to the next one. 🙂
Until next time,
JBGeorge
@jbgeorge
2012: A year of Cloud Coalescence (whatever that means)
This post is a collaboration between three Dell Cloud activists: Rob Hirschfeld (@zehicle), Joseph B George (@jbgeorge) and Stephen Spector (@SpectoratDell).
We’re not making predictions for the “whole” Cloud market, this is a relatively narrow perspective based on technologies that on our daily radar. These views are strictly our own and based on publicly available data. They do not reflect plans, commitments, or internal data from our 
employer (Dell).
The major 2012 theme is cloud coalescence. However, Rob worries that we’ll see slower adoption due to lack of engineers and confusing names/concepts.
Here are our twelve items for 2012:
- Open sourcecontinues to be a disruptive technology delivery model. It’s not “free” software – there’s an emerging IT culture that is doing business differently, including a number of large enterprises. The stable of sleeping giant vendors are waking up to this in 2012 but full engagement will take time.
- Linux. It is the cloud operating system and had a great 2012. It seems silly pointing this out since it seems obvious, but it’s the foundation for open source acceleration.
- Tight market for engineering and product development talent will get tighter. The catch-22 of this is that potential mentors are busy breaking new ground and writing code, making it hard for new experts to be developed.
- On track, OpenStack moves into its awkward adolescence. It is still gangly and rebelling against authority, but coming into its own. Expect to see a groundswell of installations and an expected wave of issues and challenges that will drive the community. By the “F” release, expect to see OpenStack cement itself as a serious, stable contender with notable public deployments and a significant international private deployment foot print.
- We’ll start seeing OpenStack Quantum (networking) in near-production pilots by year end.OpenStack Quantum is the glue that holds the big players in OpenStack Nova together. The potential for next generation cloud networking based on open standards is huge, but it will emerge without a killer app (OpenStack Nova in this case) pushing it forward. The OpenStack community will pull together to keep Quantum on track.
- Hadoop will cross into mainstream awareness as the need for big data analysis grows exponentially along with the data. Hadoop is on fire in select circles and completely obscure in others. The challenge for Hadoop is there are not enough engineers who know how to operate it. We suspect that lack of expertise will throttle demand until we get more proprietary tools to simplify analysis. We also predict a lot of very rich entrepreneurs and VCs emerging from this market segment.
- DevOps will enter mainstream IT discussions. Marketers from major IT brands will struggle and fail to find a better name for the movement. Our prediction is that by 2015, it will just be the way that “IT” is done and the name won’t matter.
- KVM continues to gain believers as the open source hypervisor. In 2011, I would not have believed this prediction but KVM making great strides and getting a lot of love from the OpenStack community, though Xen is also a key open source technology as well. I believe that Libvirt compatibility between LXE & KVM will further accelerate both virtualization approaches.
Big Data and NoSQL will continue to converge. While NoSQL enthusiasm as a universal replacement for structured databases appears to be deflating, real applications will win.
- Java will continue to encounter turbulenceas a software platform under Oracle’s overly heady handed management.
- PaaS continues to be a confusing term. Cloud players will struggle with a definition but I don’t think a common definition will surface in 2012. I think the big news will be convergence between DevOps and PaaS; however, that will be under the radar since most of the market is still getting educated on both of those concepts.
- Hybrid cloud will continue to make strides but will not truly emerge in 2012 – we’ll try to develop this technology, and expose gaps that will get us there ultimately (see PaaS and Quantum above)
Thoughts? We’d love to hear your comments.
Rob, JBG, and Stephen
You can follow Rob at www.RobHirschfeld.com or @zehicle on Twitter.
You can follow Joseph at www.JBGeorge.net or @jbgeorge on Twitter.
You can follow Stephen at http://en.community.dell.com/members/dell_2d00_stephen-sp/blogs/default.aspx or @SpectoratDell on Twitter.
THIS JUST IN: Dell Open Sources Hadoop Barclamps for Crowbar
Have you been plugged into what Dell is doing in the open source big data space, specifically around Hadoop?
A few months ago, Dell (the company I work for) announced the Dell | Cloudera Hadoop Solution to provide our customers with superfast data mining, processing and analysis, and featured the Dell-developed Crowbar software framework to deploy / manage it.
To make it even cooler, we went ahead and open sourced Crowbar (Apache 2).
And earlier this month, at Hadoop World, we announced our intent to open source a few Hadoop barclamps (Crowbar modules that perform a specific function like configure BIOS).
Well, that day has arrived – the Hadoop barclamps are now open sourced.
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The details
Specifically, the newly open sourced barclamps help with the following Hadoop projects:
- Cloudera CDH / Enterprise enables Hadoop administrators to first deploy CDH then easily move to Cloudera Enterprise if/when the business needs warrant.
- Zookeeper allows Apache Hadoop administrators to track and coordinate distributed applications.
- Apache Pig provides a compiler that produces sequences of Map-Reduce programs.
- Flume provides an agent for collecting data and putting into the Hadoop environment.
- Sqoop allows rapid connection to external data sources including relational databases. E.g., data can be moved from Oracle to Hadoop and back again for different types of analysis.
Videos
Our team has put together a number of videos to help provide you more detail on what these new barclamps can do – check them out.
- Hadoop Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eilF16KqRmg
- Install Crowbar: http://youtu.be/WAUKMlawrPw
- Basic Build: http://youtu.be/FsOBaAiDgYs
- Advanced Build: http://youtu.be/qvsfXPH5k5Q
Get those barclamps!
Ready to get the barclamps? Head over to https://github.com/dellcloudedge/barclamp-hadoop to download them.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Dell innovation happening in the Hadoop space, visit us at www.Dell.com/Hadoop or email us at Hadoop@Dell.com
Until next time,
JBGeorge
@jbgeorge
The JBGeorge Tech Blog 