Storage

Originally published on Efficiently (Substack) This is a continuation of a previous blog post about efficient data partitioning. In the previous post, I discussed how data layout on disk impacts analytics performance. This post focuses on tactical implementation using open source technologies. Topics I’ll cover: HDFS Blocks + Block Size Block sizes + tradeoffs Background Data organization on disk dramatically affects analytics performance. I previously explored row-oriented, columnar, and hybrid storage models — now let’s connect these concepts to modern data infrastructure. ...

Originally published on Efficiently (Substack) A few years ago, I gave a talk at Spark Summit 2020 about File Formats covering Avro, ORC, and Parquet. I received numerous questions about that topic, responding point-to-point, leaving the knowledge confined to those forums alone. That isn’t helpful for most people. This post aims to fix that. In this series, I’ll outline the primitives of this topic and then explore the hands-on details. Problem In the efficiency space, minimizing “work” is key. Whether work requires compute, network, or storage, “the goal of efficient data usage is to get the most accurate answer in the fastest and cheapest way possible.” ...