Job Responsibilities of a Hadoop Administrator

Technology is only one face of the coin when dealing with everyday IT operations. There are other major factors which help to keep things in place. Moreover, they also help to orchestrate the operations of a business. System administration is one of the areas which may impact the performance of a business. The job performance relates to system performance either it can enhance or destroy the performance. In the same way, a Hadoop administrator is the key player in the world of big data. Furthermore, he takes care of entire Hadoop administration jobs. This, in turn, helps to keep data processing smooth.

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Spark Developer or Hadoop Admin

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Hadoop Administrator by Definition

A Hadoop Administrator performs Hadoop administration jobs like Hadoop clusters management. Additionally, he takes care of other resources in the entire Hadoop ecosystem. The typical Hadoop administration jobs relate to installation and monitoring of Hadoop clusters. Though, it is not limited to that only. The job of a Hadoop administrator is not visible to rest of the IT groups or even to the end users. Although looking mundane these Hadoop administrator jobs help to continue Hadoop cluster operation. Furthermore, it prevents problems and improves the performance. This is essential for processing petabytes of data. Besides that, an admin job helps to maintain the safety of Hadoop clusters.

Job Responsibilities of a Hadoop Administrator

Hadoop administrator jobs cover various niches in the big data world. Let’s take a pigeonhole view of Hadoop administration jobs. In broader perspective, we can divide a Hadoop administrator job into two categories –

DBA Responsibilities of a Hadoop Administrator

  • Data modeling like designing and implementation of data based on recognized standards.
  • Software installation and its configuration.
  • Backup and recovery operation of Database.
  • Checking database connectivity and its security measurements.
  • Performance monitoring and fine tuning on actual basis.
  • Managing and optimizing disk space for handling data
  • Installing patches and upgrading software as and when needed.
  • Automate manual tasks for faster performance.
  • A Hadoop administrator loads a large volume of data

Data Warehousing Development Responsibilities of Hadoop Administrator

Hadoop administrator jobs cover batch jobs as part of data warehousing. This involves development, testing, and monitoring. Furthermore, performing primary key execution is a part of Hadoop administration jobs.

Day to Day Job Responsibilities of Hadoop Administrator

Core Activities

  • Installing Hadoop in Linux environment.
  • Deployment in a Hadoop cluster and its maintenance.
  • Health check of a Hadoop cluster monitoring whether it is up and running all the time.
  • Analyse the storage data volume and allocating the space in HDFS.
  • Resource management in a cluster environment. This involves new node creation and removal of unused ones.
  • Configuring NameNode to ensure its high availability
  • Implementing and administering Hadoop infrastructure on an ongoing basis.
  • Required hardware and software deployment in Hadoop environment. Furthermore to expanding of existing environments.

Other Activities

  • User creation in Linux for Hadoop and its components in the ecosystem. Moreover, setting up Kerberos principals is a part of Hadoop administration.
  • Performance tuning and running jobs in Hadoop clusters.
  • Capacity planning
  • Monitoring connectivity and security of Hadoop cluster
  • Managing and reviewing log files in Hadoop.
  • Management of HDFS file system and monitoring them.
  • Maintaining HDFS and providing necessary supports.
  • Backup and recovery tasks.
  • Communicating with other development, administrating and business teams. They include infrastructure, application, network, database, and business intelligence teams. Effective communication plays a key role in high quality and availability of data.
  • Coordinating with application teams. Installing the operating system and Hadoop related updates as and when required.
  • Working as a key person for Vendor escalation
  • Troubleshooting

Essential Skills to Perform Hadoop Administrator Jobs

You must have the following skills to achieve a career as Hadoop administrator.

  • General operational excellence. This includes good troubleshooting skills, understanding of system’s capacity and bottlenecks. Furthermore, you also need a basic understanding of memory management areas.
  • Proper knowledge and hands-on experience in Hadoop ecosystem components.
  • Hadoop administration demands one’s deployment skill in Hadoop cluster. Moreover, the job needs adding and removing nodes. It may need tracking of jobs and monitor the important parts of the cluster.
  • Configuring high availability of name-node.
  • Scheduling and taking backups
  • Linux cron is the running platform of Hadoop. Hence, a good hands-on experience of Linux, its commands and scripting are a must.
  • Configuration management and deployment exposure in Open source environment.
  • Knowledge of Core Java is an added advantage in performing the job.

Problems Associated with Hadoop Administrator Jobs

Hadoop administrator jobs associate with few potential problems in day to day operations. Following are some highlights of such problems –

Human: Human error is very common while handling a complex environment like Hadoop. A trivial mistake can make a disaster and Hadoop administrators struggle very often due to this. Hence, setting up proactive and preventive measures in place is an add-on task.

Configuration Issue: Configuration is 80% while you are dealing with Hadoop. Hence, the performance may have to pay a lot due to configuration mistakes.

Hardware: Hadoop deals with the big chunk of data. Whereas, over the period of time, storage system fails to perform as per the expectation. Hence a close monitoring of HDFS prevents to lose data.

Resource Exhaustion: It is a major factor and used as part of Hadoop administrator jobs to measure the task failures. Moreover, it helps to identify users and correct the processes. Repetitive task failures are a drain on capacity.

Conclusion

Hadoop Administration is a rewarding and sought-after career. It opens up plenty of growth opportunities in today’s Big data market. All you need is to up-skill with Hadoop administration. Once you complete it you can take the transition to Hadoop administrator career. Specifically, you must be comfortable with the job responsibilities and challenges listed above. However, if you are already a database administrator in other domain it will be an added advantage for you.

Hence, walk on the Hadoop Administrator career path and try to get a certification in Hadoop to explore the world of Hadoop!

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Whizlabs Big Data Certification courses – Spark Developer Certification (HDPCD) and HDP Certified Administrator (HDPCA) are based on the Hortonworks Data Platform, a market giant of Big Data platforms. Whizlabs recognizes that interacting with data and increasing its comprehensibility is the need of the hour and hence, we are proud to launch our Big Data Certifications. We have created state-of-the-art content that should aid data developers and administrators to gain a competitive edge over others.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

3 thoughts on “Job Responsibilities of a Hadoop Administrator”

  1. Hi, Excellent Content, your blog is very useful and also interesting to read. Keep sharing this type of information.

  2. Hi
    I appreciate everything you have added to my knowledge base. Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer.

    Thanks and Regards
    Elena

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