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Use case 3: Enabling DevTest on existing Hadoop data

Contributors banum-netapp nkarthik
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In this use case, the customer's requirement is to rapidly and efficiently build new Hadoop/Spark clusters based on an existing Hadoop cluster containing a large amount of analytics data for DevTest and reporting purposes in the same data center as well as remote locations.

Scenario

In this scenario, multiple Spark/Hadoop clusters are built from a large Hadoop data lake implementation on-premises as well as at disaster recovery locations.

Requirements and challenges

The main requirements and challenges for this use case include:

  • Create multiple Hadoop clusters for DevTest, QA, or any other purpose that requires access to the same production data. The challenge here is to clone a very large Hadoop cluster multiple times instantaneously and in a very space-efficient manner.

  • Sync the Hadoop data to DevTest and reporting teams for operational efficiency.

  • Distribute the Hadoop data by using the same credentials across production and new clusters.

  • Use scheduled policies to efficiently create QA clusters without affecting the production cluster.

Solution

FlexClone technology is used to answer the requirements just described. FlexClone technology is the read/write copy of a Snapshot copy. It reads the data from parent Snapshot copy data and only consumes additional space for new/modified blocks. It is fast and space-efficient.

First, a Snapshot copy of the existing cluster was created by using a NetApp consistency group.

Snapshot copies within NetApp System Manager or the storage admin prompt. The consistency group Snapshot copies are application-consistent group Snapshot copies, and the FlexClone volume is created based on consistency group Snapshot copies. It is worth mentioning that a FlexClone volume inherits the parent volume's NFS export policy. After the Snapshot copy is created, a new Hadoop cluster must be installed for DevTest and reporting purposes, as shown in the figure below. The cloned NFS volume from the new Hadoop cluster access the the NFS data.

This image shows the Hadoop cluster for DevTest.

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