Big Data is an all-inclusive term that refers to data sets so large and complex that they need to be processed by specially designed hardware and software tools. The data sets are typically of the order of tera or exabytes in size. These data sets are created from a diverse range of sources: sensors that gather climate information, publicly available information such as magazines, newspapers, articles. Other examples where big data is generated include purchase transaction records, web logs, medical records, military surveillance, video and image archives, and large-scale e-commerce.

There is a heightened interest in Big Data. Oceans of digital data are being created from the interaction between individuals, businesses, and government agencies. There are enormous benefits open to organisations providing they effectively identify, access, filter, analyze and select parts of this data.

Big Data demands the storage of a massive amount of data. This makes it a necessity for advanced storage infrastructure; a need to have a storage solution which is designed to scale out on multiple servers.

This is the third article in a series identifying the finest open source software for Big Data. This feature highlights the finest open source file systems designed to cope with the demands imposed by Big Data. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who needs to support high performance data and offer consistent access to a common set of data from multiple servers.

Now, let’s explore the 9 file systems at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.

File Systems HDFS Distributed file system providing high-throughput access Lustre File system for computer clusters CephFS Unified, distributed storage system Alluxio Virtual distributed file system GlusterFS Scale-out NAS file system MooseFS POSIX-compliant distributed file system XtreemFS Object-based, distributed file system for wide area networks Quantcast File System High-performance, fault-tolerant, distributed file system OrangeFS Multi-server scalable parallel file system

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.

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