[ Thanks to Paul
Shread for this link. ]
“Hadoop is an open-source software framework that
facilitates the storage and analysis of large volumes of data.
Managed by the Apache Software Foundation, Hadoop boasts a list of
contributors that reads like a who’s who of high-tech luminaries.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Amazon are some of its pioneering
users.“So what’s all the fuss about? For one thing, it operates on
commodity hardware. Instead of having to buy pricey storage arrays
from the likes of EMC, those with large quantities of data can
deploy it on cheap x86 servers.“”In striving to store petabytes of data, Hadoop favors storage
vendors that produce relatively small, cheap storage devices, not
the large-scale data storage vendors,” said James Dixon, Chief Geek
at Pentaho, an open-source BI vendor that supports Hadoop.”