Hadoop. Hive. Spark. HBase. Pig. Flume. The list goes on. Is this a programming course or a children's television show?
While the names of the many technologies that make up the Hadoop ecosystem are certainly inventive, they represent serious value to ambitious programmers who want to handle Big Data projects.
Apache Hadoop is a software framework that encompasses a variety of technologies designed to solve problems in the Big Data environment. Almost every tier-one global corporation in the tech industry uses Hadoop for managing data: Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook, Adobe, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter, Yahoo!, and more.
Markets and Markets expects the worldwide market for Hadoop technology to grow to $40 billion by 2021. There has never been a better time to learn how to use this software framework.
But extensive Hadoop courses tend to be expensive. Fortunately, comprehensive tutorials that can introduce new programmers to the Hadoop environment are available for free.
What Do I Need to Start Learning Hadoop?
Generally, the only thing you need to begin learning how to work in Hadoop is a fundamental knowledge of Java or Linux. If you want to get started on either one of those before diving into Hadoop, try these useful resources:
If you are familiar with C++ or Python, you also have a good starting point for learning Hadoop. Once you're comfortable with your skills and ready to find out what Hadoop can do for you, any of the following free Hadoop tutorials is a great place to start.
10 Free Hadoop Tutorials for Beginners
Any one of the following free Hadoop tutorials is a great place to start gaining familiarity with the Hadoop environment. Take the opportunity to explore the forefront of Big Data programming using these platforms as your guide.
1. CognitiveClass.AI
CognitiveClass.ai used to call itself Big Data University, and users interested in Hadoop may already be familiar with its previous name. Unlike most free Hadoop tutorials, CognitiveClass.ai offers badges you can add to your portfolio, which function similarly to the certifications that most classes require users pay for.
CognitiveClass.ai offers more than 50 individual courses on subjects and technologies that make up the Hadoop ecosystem. The best place to begin is the Big Data Fundamentals course. After that, you can select between other beginning courses like Hadoop Fundamentals, Spark Fundamentals, or Data Science Fundamentals.
2. Cloudera Essentials
Cloudera Essentials for Apache Hadoop is an online video course distributed in chapter format. It focuses particularly on the needs of data analysts, administrators, and data scientists. Cloudera also offers courses in SQL analytics using a Hadoop technology called HUE, which segues well into the Hadoop environment by allowing businesses to create their own self-service queries.
Cloudera Essentials works best in combination with Udacity's courses, like the Introduction to Hadoop and MapReduce course that teaches students the fundamental principles behind distributed computing and takes less than one month to complete.
3. Coursera
Coursera is an excellent free Hadoop tutorial service because it relies on courses created in partnership with leading universities. In the case of Hadoop, the University of San Diego offers the most comprehensive curriculum, although not all of its courses are free.
While you can use the free courses to learn Hadoop, paying allows you to earn a legitimate diploma, which can be a powerful incentive for anyone who wants to get a job working for a company in thetech industry.
4. edX
Think of edX as a competitor to Coursera – they operate in largely similar ways. Both offer courses from well-known universities, and both have free Hadoop tutorials available from authoritative sources. Both allow users to take courses for free, but charge for official certification upon completion of a course.
One of the ways that edX differentiates itself from Coursera is by offering courses created by high-tech firms and authoritative individual contributors. Essentially, it's not just university professors who are able to teach courses on edX, but also established professionals in the field.
5. Hortonworks
Hortonworks is one of the only entrants on this list that is actually a working tech company supporting enterprise-level organizations' Big Data needs. As such, it has a significant advantage transforming abstract concepts into real-life, here-and-now terms. The company offers a number of paid certification courses but offers fundamental Hadoop tutorials to users for free.
Also, Hortonworks offers courses in a range of technologies crucial to getting the most out of Hadoop. These include Apache Spark, Hive, and Tez.
6. IBM DeveloperWorks
IBM DeveloperWorks offers free courses on Hadoop and Spark distribution in a comprehensive, go-at-your-own-pace way. It describes the function and scope of every component in the Hadoop ecosystem, from well-known elements like MapReduce to specific tools like Sqoop.
IBM is constantly updating its courses, but it also leaves older courses up – presumably for archival or reference purposes. Be sure to look at the date of the courses you plan on taking to make sure you're taking the latest and most relevant one.
7. Udemy
Udemy offers a wide range of free Hadoop courses and premium content for programmers looking to learn how to work in a Hadoop environment. Udemy is a respected global marketplace for online education, featuring over 80,000 individual courses on a broad variety of subjects.
Most of Udemy's Hadoop courses focus on beginner and intermediate subjects. There is a substantial number of courses focused on Hadoop starter courses, including courses focused on supplementary technologies like Spark and Hive.
8. Guru99
Guru99 features a single beginner's guide to Hadoop consisting of 14 individual courses to be taken over the course of one week. At an easygoing rate of two courses per day, Guru99 can help students establish fundamental understanding of the Hadoop ecosystem in the shortest amount of time of any entrant on this list.
As is to be expected of a week-long course, guru99's free Hadoop tutorial is a predictably high-level overview. You are not going to become a Hadoop expert in a week, but you can gain sufficient knowledge to best direct your further ambitions towards a specific area of Big Data.
9. CoreServelets
CoreServelets offers a comprehensive self-paced Hadoop training course that offers slides, source code, and exercises that are completely free and unrestricted. This course assumes the student already has moderate expertise using Java, but CoreServelets also features a Java programming tutorial that caters to people who want to learn Hadoop.
One of CoreServelets' core business activities is customized on-site corporate Hadoop training, so it's clear that the company knows what it's doing when it comes to teaching Hadoop. However, its free tutorial is bound to offer less than the premium service it provides to its paying customers. This free Hadoop tutorial acts as a promotional tool for the full experience.
10. Microsoft Virtual Academy
Microsoft Virtual Academy offers a wide variety of Big Data analytics video training. In particular, it focuses on a technology suite called HDInsight, which is Microsoft's proprietary managed Hadoop distribution service configured to run on Microsoft Azure.
While Microsoft's Virtual Academy offers sufficient coursework for free Hadoop tutorials, dedicated students will want to opt for the Microsoft Professional Program that offers legitimate certificates of Hadoop mastery.
Start Learning Hadoop Today
Big Data is important, and it will continue to become increasingly important as time goes on. Knowledge workers with Big Data-related skills such as Hadoop expertise will command higher salaries and better job prospects as the overall amount of data that companies need to analyze increases with time.
The fact is that for large corporations, cloud-based analytics offer opportunities for significant cost reductions, better business efficiency, and greater customer satisfaction in a way that manual processes simply cannot match.
With the increasing adoption of Big Data comes big career opportunities for IT-oriented professionals in all fields. From politics to manufacturing and even the sports industry, Big Data capabilities are becoming increasingly important to deliver personalized experiences to users across the world. Hadoop is the framework that makes this possible.
Start with any of these free Hadoop tutorials to start taking advantage of the career options this in-demand skill offers. Even users with no previous experience using Java or Linux can jump into Hadoop with only cursory introductions to the fundamentals of each.