Hadoop distributions

Hadoop is an open-source project under the Apache Software Foundation, and most components in the Hadoop ecosystem are also open-sourced. Many companies have taken important components and bundled them together to form a complete distribution package that is easier to use and manage. A Hadoop distribution offers the following benefits:

• Installation: The distribution package provides an easy way to install any component or rpm-like package on clusters. It provides an easy interface too.
• Packaging: It comes with multiple open-source tools that are well configured to work together. Assume that you want to install and configure each component separately on a multi-node cluster and then test whether it's working properly or not. What if we forget some testing scenarios and the cluster behaves unexpectedly? The Hadoop distribution assures us that we won't face such problems and also provides upgrades or installations of new components by using their package library.
• Maintenance: The maintenance of a cluster and its components is also a very challenging task, but it is made very simple in of all these distribution packages. They provide us with a nice GUI interface to monitor the health and status of a component. We can also change the configuration to tune or maintain a component to perform well.
• Support: Most distributions come with 24/7 support. That means that, if you are stuck with any cluster-or distribution-related issue, you don't need to worry much about finding resources to solve the problem. Hadoop Distribution comes with a support package that assures you of technical support and help as and when needed.