Everyday challenges and responsibilities handled by a Hadoop administrator

Hadoop is a present day system architecture that will help business forge business strategies for the future. It revolves around the concept of ‘Big Data’ and has already established a steady presence large corporations handling bulk volumes of business information. A Hadoop administrator is a professional who can plan, manage and oversee the various functions in relating to Hadoop servers and databases.

The everyday routine of a Hadoop administrator revolves around creating, maintaining and managing a Hadoop Cluster. (A Hadoop cluster is a computational cluster that is specifically created to store and handle large volumes of unstructured data that is typical to the Big Data environment.

The task is highly uncertain and adhoc since the individual situations faced by an administrator will change with time and place. There are minimal number of common problems that Hadoop administrators face. However, broadly speaking, the job responsibilities and tasks of a Hadoop admin remains the same at the core.

Enumerating the common responsibilities of a Hadoop administrator:

Below mentioned are some of the most common responsibilities of a Hadoop administrator. They are not definite nor final, but subject to more additions and diversifications. 

• Implement and continuously monitor the Hadoop infrastructure used in the organization

• Plan, devise and execute strategies with systems department for updating and maintaining hardware and software components for Hadoop administration

• Coordinate with data delivery teams to create new Linux users and set up Keberos principals, test and maintain HDFS, MapReduce, Pig, etc. access credentials for new users

• Ensuring cluster maintenance and performance through timely creation or removal of nodes. Various tools like Gangia, Cloudera Manager Enterprise, Nagios, etc. will have to be used to achieve this

• Fine tune the performance of Hadoop clusters and MapReduce routines. Also, ensure proper connectivity and security for all Hadoop clusters

DBA responsibilities and functions to be performed by a Hadoop Administrator:

Since Hadoop is a platform for managing Big Data, it inevitably includes a wide range of DBA tasks. In a way, the tasks performed by a Hadoop Administrator will include the responsibilities of DB Administrator too. It is by far similar, but not exactly the same or identical.

Here are some Database administration responsibilities to be performed by a Hadoop Administrator:

• Data modelling, designing and implementing databases based on standard protocols and procedures

• Installing and updating software for proper working of Hadoop related databases

• Establishing a sound system for data recovery, backup and disaster management

• Ensuring round the clock physical and otherwise safety for data

• Disk space management, DB repair and maintenance and fine tuning for optimal performance

• Inventing or innovating ways to automate manual tasks that occupy time and resources

Why Hadoop administration?

Big Data is no longer a futuristic concept that has promises in the future. It has already evolved into a present day IT management tool that businesses with gigantic data volumes have embraced feverishly. Avendus Capital estimates the Big Data business volumes in India to be around $1.15 billion as of 2015. Adding more muscle to that estimate is Hindu, the English Daily’s prediction that by 2018 India will face an acute shortage of at least 2 lakh data scientists!

Employment possibilities in Big Data management portray a promising future for candidates with Hadoop certification. At present there is an average shortage of 65% in every Big Data related jobs like Data scientist, Big Data visualizer, Architect, research analyst, engineer, etc. The below given chart explains the filled to unfilled jobs ration in Big Data industry vividly:

In other words, Big Data has arrived and IT professionals with Hadoop administrator certification are in high demand. Every corporation with production cluster more than 20-30 nodes will indifferently require at least one full-time professional who has completed Hadoop admin training to manage their databases. 

Essential skills to become a sought after Hadoop admin

To sum it up

As the world is becoming smaller and smaller with better interconnectivity, the volume of data is increasing at exponential rates. It takes the skills and expertise of a certified Hadoop administrator to handle the unstructured databases of an organization to derive meaningful information that can be used for strategy formulation.