The JBGeorge Tech Blog

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Big news!

Today, Dell (the company I work for) has announced a solution offering in conjunction with Cloudera, called the Dell | Cloudera Solution for Apache Hadoop!  It’s a fully deployable Hadoop solution made up of Dell PowerEdge C hardware, Dell and Cloudera software, and Dell and Cloudera services – the complete package.

(Note that this is the second solution that my team has put out in the last two weeks – if you missed last week’s OpenStack announcement, you can get more info here.)

But on to the star of today’s show!

We’d often hear from our customers that they were experimenting with Hadoop on Dell hardware to analyze sales data, marketing information, etc in order to better serve their own customers.  And pretty soon, we were being asked, “What’s Dell’s point of view?  What recommendations do you have for distributions, architecture, and implementation?”

Well, here’s the answer.  The Dell | Cloudera Solution for Apache Hadoop.
  

What’s Under the Hood

• Hardware – similar to OpenStack, the reference architecture that this solution is built on is the innovative Dell PowerEdge C server line.  Based out of Dell’s well known Data Center Solutions team (aka DCS), PowerEdge C server technology was born out of learnings from custom engagements with some of the biggest cloud and hyperscale environments in the world.  What we discovered is that, despite custom requirements and specs, there was some commonality among the requests.  Concepts like density, power efficiency, etc were at the top of the list when it came to these environments.
    
  So we took what was common and built a line of servers that was ideal for cloud and hyperscale environments, which became the Dell PowerEdge C server family.  And it is an ideal platform for our Hadoop solution, as all the tenets of scale apply when building out an optimal Hadoop instance.
    
• Software – Our partners, Cloudera, who are among the most established Hadoop vendors in the market, will be providing their distributions of the Hadoop software, as well as their CDH management tools, which are top notch.  In addition, Dell will be providing our Crowbar software framework and a specific Cloudera barclamp as part of the solution.  (As a refresher, we announced availability of Crowbar last week as part of our OpenStack announcement, which helps speed deployment CONSIDERABLY.  In the case of the Dell Cloudera Solution for Apache Hadoop, it can speed bare metal deployment of a Hadoop cluster from days or weeks to less than one day!)
    
• Services – Dell and Cloudera are partnering to enable our customers to get going on a validated instance of Hadoop, and offer a variety of services from support of the entire stack of hardware and software, as well as training on the technologies that will enable our customers on Hadoop. 
    

Now’s the time to get started on Hadoop, and the Dell | Cloudera Solution for Apache Hadoop can get you there.

Find out more about this new solution at www.Dell.com/Hadoop or get in touch with us at Hadoop@Dell.com.
     

More info:

• The Dell Cloudera solution website – http://www.Dell.com/Hadoop
• Barton George’s blog – http://bartongeorge.net/2011/08/04/introducing-the-dell-cloudera-solution-for-hadoop-harnessing-the-power-of-big-data/
• Rob Hirschfeld’s blog – http://www.RobHirschfeld.com/2011/08/04/dell-cloudera-hadoop
• My recent blog about Crowbar – https://jbgeorge.net/2011/08/01/the-dell-crowbar-software-framework-who-what-when-where-and-how/
• Email us for more info at Hadoop@Dell.com
    

Until next time,

JBG
@jbgeorge