Hadoop-elephant-300x248

“The world is one Big Data problem.”-Andrew McAfee

Big data might be known by several names or labels, but it’s undeniable that big data skills are turning into a big deal for IT professionals. The “big data” wave has opened up lots of exciting opportunities for people skilled in open source big data tools like Hadoop, Spark, and Storm. With the big data deluge to persist in future, the demand for open source tools like Hadoop will become mainstream as almost everyone working with big data needs to master these skills. IT professionals can get ahead of their peers in 2024 by investing in big data skills and career development in the big data domain. Hadoop is a technology that is being adopted rapidly not just by IT giants like Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, Alibaba, IBM but even companies like New York Times use Hadoop for image processing. From healthcare to finance, to social media, to travel, to the Olympics, Big Data Hadoop is the buzzword.

Hadoop has proven its worth because of its unique feature set – Cost effectiveness, Flexibility and Scalability. Big Data Hadoop is synonymous to a golden goose for IT professionals. The more proficient you are in big data related technologies like Hadoop and Spark, increased is the probability to command higher pay checks. For people who want to add Hadoop to their skillset in 2024, or hone the basic big data skills that they already have, look at the below resources to jumpstart your hadoop learning and become a successful hadoop developer in 2024. The objective of this article is not to get you ready for hadoop development but to provide a sound knowledge base on the next steps in learning and mastering Hadoop technology.

i) Go through Free Hadoop Tutorials

There are tons of video tutorials available online from Tutorials Point, Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR and DeZyre that give you a quick glimpse of big data, HDFS, MapReduce and other hadoop components making it easy to get started with hadoop for beginners. If you are an ETL developer, Java developer or an analytics professionals then it is very easy to learn hadoop by following these tutorials. Some of these free hadoop tutorials will require you to download and install specific sandbox to learn most efficiently.

You can check some of the free hadoop training resources and tutorials here

ii) Read the Best Hadoop Books

Books are always the best companions when it comes to learning. Nothing can beat the education a book imparts when it comes to learni.ng a concept to its core. Some of the best books for beginners on Big Data, Hadoop and Spark are –

  • Hadoop –The Definitive Guide by Tom White – This is considered as the Bible of Hadoop and is popular among hadoop developers. This hadoop book explains various methods on how to build and maintain reliable, scalable and distributed systems with hadoop. If you are getting started with hadoop, you might find it difficult to understand at first but as you move through different chapters, you will fall in love with the book.
  • Hadoop Operations by Eric Sammer -For beginners who want to learn on how to setup and maintain a hadoop cluster, this is must read hadoop book. This book has all the minute of the details for hadoop cluster setup and also gives understanding of OS level tunings.
  • Hadoop in Practice by Alex Holmes –This book lets you explore the hidden aspects of hadoop framework with 85 examples in Q&A format. One of the best hadoop books for beginners as the concepts are explained in plain simple English. The examples will help you build and deploy specific big data solutions as per requirements. It also introduces various method for integrating Hadoop MapReduce and R programming language.

iii) Instructor-Led Big Data Hadoop Training

The big data technology landscape is changing really fast and learning hadoop through books or tutorials does not keep you updated with the latest enhancements and new features. It is better to settle for instructor-led big data hadoop training courses as they include interactive video content, virtual lab where you get to work on a real hadoop cluster, quizzes and assignments.  There are fairly wide range of hadoop courses online and the content is very professional. The world of Hadoop and Big Data is nerve-racking- hundreds of diverse tools and technologies with mysterious names form the complete hadoop ecosystem. Learning hadoop through an online certification course will not only help you understand what those tools and technologies are but also will give you hands-on experience on using them to solve actual business problems.

Also read:

Top 12 Hadoop Technology Companies

The Biggest Challenge of Hadoop Analytics: It’s all about Query Performance

Relation Between Big Data Hadoop and Cloud Computing

What Is Hadoop, And How Does It Relate To Cloud?

How To Kick Start Your Career With Hadoop And Big Data Training?

13 Reasons Why System/Data Administrators should do Hadoop Training

Top 10 Tips for Hadoop Administration for Starters

iv) Learn Hadoop by working on Big Data Projects

The best way to learn any new technology is to learn by doing. The best way to master hadoop and related technologies in the hadoop ecosystem is to follow a project-based learning approach. Hackerday is a platform that provides you real, deep understanding of hadoop and its related technologies by letting you work with diverse datasets on different big data hadoop projects. Go way beyond Apache Hadoop itself, and dive into all sorts of related big data tools and technologies you may need to integrate with hadoop. Working on these hadoop projects makes it easy to apply hadoop to real-world problems. Plus you also get to build a valuable project portfolio making your skills marketable to employers.

Regardless of whether you begin learning hadoop through online big data and hadoop training courses , free hadoop tutorials , or best hadoop books, ensure you have a strong establishment in what hadoop does and how it does. Industry experts suggest opting for an instructor-led certified big data hadoop training to get the fundamentals clarified and after that you can opt for other learning options like working on real big data hadoop projects, free hadoop tutorials, and reading the best hadoop books to strengthen your knowledge base of big data and hadoop. There’s definitely no shortage of Hadoop material, so you are sure to find something you can munch on to enhance your big data skills and knowledge in this area.

Wishing all the readers of this blog post the best as they transform themselves by learning Hadoop or other related big data technologies.  I hope that this blog will help you along on your ride on the tiny toy elephant in the big data room.  Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments below.