Hadoop Interview Questions

1. What is Hadoop framework?

Ans: Hadoop is an open source framework which is written in java by apache software foundation.
This framework is used to write software application which requires to process vast amount of data (It
could handle multi tera bytes of data). It works in-parallel on large clusters which could have 1000 of
computers (Nodes) on the clusters. It also process data very reliably and fault-tolerant manner. See
the below image how does it looks.
2. On What concept the Hadoop framework works?
Ans: It works on MapReduce, and it is devised by the Google.
3. What is MapReduce?
Ans: Map reduces is an algorithm or concept to process Huge amount of data in a faster way. As per
its name you can divide it Map and Reduce.
The main MapReduce job usually splits the input data-set into independent chunks. (Big data sets in
the multiple small datasets)
Reduce Task: And the above output will be the input for the reduce tasks, produces the final result.
Your business logic would be written in the Mapped Task and Reduced Task. Typically both the input
and the output of the job are stored in a file-system (Not database). The framework takes care of
scheduling tasks, monitoring them and re-executes the failed tasks.
4. What is compute and Storage nodes?
Ans: Compute Node: This is the computer or machine where your actual business logic will be
executed.
Storage Node: This is the computer or machine where your file system resides to store the processing
data. In most of the cases compute node and storage node would be the same machine.
5. How does master slave architecture in the Hadoop?
Ans: the MapReduce framework consists of a single master Job Tracker and multiple slaves, each
cluster-node will have one Task Tracker.

The master is responsible for scheduling the jobs' component tasks on the slaves, monitoring
them and re-executing the failed tasks. The slaves execute the tasks as directed by the master.
6. How does a Hadoop application look like or their basic components?
Ans: Minimally a Hadoop application would have following components.

Input location of data

Output location of processed data.

A map task.

A reduced task.

Job configuration

The Hadoop job client then submits the job (jar/executable etc.) and configuration to the Job Tracker
which then assumes the responsibility of distributing the software/configuration to the slaves,
scheduling tasks and monitoring them, providing status and diagnostic information to the job-client.
7. Explain how input and output data format of the Hadoop framework?
Ans: The MapReduce framework operates exclusively on pairs, that is, the framework views the
input to the job as a set of pairs and produces a set of pairs as the output of the job, conceivably of
different types. See the flow mentioned below (input) -> map -> -> combine/sorting -> -> reduce ->
(output)
8. What are the restriction to the key and value class?
Ans: The key and value classes have to be serialized by the framework. To make them serializable
Hadoop provides a Writable interface. As you know from the java itself that the key of the Map
should be comparable, hence the key has to implement one more interface Writable Comparable.
9. Explain the Word Count implementation via Hadoop framework?
Ans: We will count the words in all the input file flow as below
Input
Assume there are two files each having a sentence Hello World Hello World (In file 1) Hello World
Hello World (In file 2)
Mapper: There would be each mapper for the a file
For the given sample input the first map output:
< Hello, 1>

< World, 1>

< Hello, 1>
< World, 1>
The second map output:
< Hello, 1>
< World, 1>
< Hello, 1>
< World, 1>

Combiner/Sorting (This is done for each individual map)

So output looks like this

The output of the first map:
< Hello, 2>
< World, 2>
The output of the second map:
< Hello, 2>
< World, 2>

Reducer:

Output

It sums up the above output and generates the output as below

< Hello, 4>
< World, 4>
Final output would look like
Hello 4 times
World 4 times

10. Which interface needs to be implemented to create Mapper and Reducer for the Hadoop?
Ans: org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.Mapper org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.Reducer
11. What Mapper does?
Ans: Maps are the individual tasks that transform input records into intermediate records. The
transformed intermediate records do not need to be of the same type as the input records. A given
input pair may map to zero or many output pairs.
12. What is the Input Split in map reduce software?
Ans: An Input Split is a logical representation of a unit (A chunk) of input work for a map task; e.g., a
filename and a byte range within that file to process or a row set in a text file.
13. What is the Input Format?
Ans: The Input Format is responsible for enumerate (itemize) the Input Split, and producing a Record
Reader which will turn those logical work units into actual physical input records.
14. Where do you specify the Mapper Implementation?
Ans: Generally mapper implementation is specified in the Job itself.
15. How Mapper is instantiated in a running job?
Ans: The Mapper itself is instantiated in the running job, and will be passed a
Map Context object which it can use to configure itself
16. Which are the methods in the Mapper interface?
Ans: the Mapper contains the run () method, which call its own setup () method only once, it also call
a map () method for each input and finally calls it cleanup () method. All above methods you can
override in your code.
17. What happens if you dont override the Mapper methods and keep them as it is?
Ans: If you do not override any methods (leaving even map as-is), it will act as the identity function,
emitting each input record as a separate output.
18. What is the use of Context object?
Ans: The Context object allows the mapper to interact with the rest of the Hadoop system. It
Includes configuration data for the job, as well as interfaces which allow it to emit output.

19. How can you add the arbitrary key-value pairs in your mapper?
Ans: You can set arbitrary (key, value) pairs of configuration data in your Job, e.g. with
Job.getConfiguration ().set ("myKey", "myVal"), and then retrieve this data in your mapper with
context.getConfiguration ().get ("myKey"). This kind of functionality is typically done in the Mapper's
setup () method.
20. How does Mappers run () method works?
Ans: The Mapper. Run () method then calls map (KeyInType, ValInType, Context) for each key/value
pair in the Input Split for that task
21. Which object can be used to get the progress of a particular job?
Ans: Context
22. What is next step after Mapper or MapTask?
Ans: The output of the Mapper is sorted and Partitions will be created for the output. Number of
partition depends on the number of reducer.
23. How can we control particular key should go in a specific reducer?
Ans: Users can control which keys (and hence records) go to which Reducer by implementing a custom
Partitioner.
24. What is the use of Combiner?
Ans: It is an optional component or class, and can be specify via Job.setCombinerClass (Class Name),
to perform local aggregation of the intermediate outputs, which helps to cut down the amount of
data transferred from the Mapper to the Reducer.
25. How many maps are there in a particular Job?
Ans: the number of maps is usually driven by the total size of the inputs, that is, the total number of
blocks of the input files.
Generally it is around 10-100 maps per-node. Task setup takes awhile, so it is best if the maps take at
least a minute to execute.
Suppose, if you expect 10TB of input data and have a block size of 128MB, you'll end up with 82,000
maps, to control the number of block you can use the mapreduce.job.maps parameter (which only
provides a hint to the framework). Ultimately, the number of tasks is controlled by the number of
splits returned by the InputFormat.getSplits () method (which you can override).

26. What is the Reducer used for?

Ans: Reducer reduces a set of intermediate values which share a key to a (usually smaller) set of
values. The number of reduces for the job is set by theuser via Job.setNumReduceTasks (int).
27. Explain the core methods of the Reducer?
Ans: The API of Reducer is very similar to that of Mapper, there's a run() method that receives a
Context containing the job's configuration as well as interfacing methods that return data from the
reducer itself back to the framework. The run() method calls setup() once, reduce() once for each
key associated with the reduce task, and cleanup() once at the end. Each of these methods can
access the job's configuration data by using Context.getConfiguration ().
As in Mapper, any or all of these methods can be overridden with custom implementations. If none of
these methods are overridden, the default reducer operation is the identity function; values are
passed through without further processing.
The heart of Reducer is its reduce () method. This is called once per key; the second argument is an
Iterable which returns all the values associated with that key.
28. What are the primary phases of the Reducer?
Ans: Shuffle, Sort and Reduce
29. Explain the shuffle?
Ans: Input to the Reducer is the sorted output of the mappers. In this phase the framework fetches
the relevant partition of the output of all the mappers, via HTTP.
30. Explain the Reducers Sort phase?
Ans: The framework groups Reducer inputs by keys (since different mappers may have output the
same key) in this stage. The shuffle and sort phases occur simultaneously; while map-outputs are
being fetched they are merged (It is similar to merge-sort).
31. Explain the Reducers reduce phase?
Ans: In this phase the reduce (MapOutKeyType, Iterable, Context) method is called for each pair in the
grouped inputs. The output of the reduce task is typically written to the File System via Context. write
(ReduceOutKeyType, ReduceOutValType). Applications can use the Context to report progress, set
application-level status messages and update Counters, or just indicate that they are alive. The output
of the Reducer is not sorted.
32. How many Reducers should be configured?
Ans: The right number of reduces seems to be 0.95 or 1.75 multiplied by (<no. of nodes> *
mapreduce.tasktracker.reduce.tasks.maximum).

With 0.95 all of the reduces can launch immediately and start transferring map outputs as the maps
finish. With 1.75 the faster nodes will finish their first round of reduces and launch a second wave of
reduces doing a much better job of load balancing. Increasing the number of reduces increases the
framework overhead, but increases load balancing and lowers the cost of failures.
33. It can be possible that a Job has 0 reducers?
Ans: It is legal to set the number of reduce-tasks to zero if no reduction is desired.
34. What happens if number of reducers are 0?
Ans: In this case the outputs of the map-tasks go directly to the FileSystem, into the output path set
by setOutputPath (Path). The framework does not sort the map-outputs before writing them out to
the FileSystem.
35. How many instances of Job Tracker can run on a Hadoop Cluster?
Ans: Only one
36. What is the Job Tracker and what it performs in a Hadoop Cluster?
Ans: Job Tracker is a daemon service which submits and tracks the MapReduce tasks to the Hadoop
cluster. It runs its own JVM process. And usually it run on a separate machine and each slave node is
configured with job tracker node location. The Job Tracker is single point of failure for the Hadoop
MapReduce service. If it goes down, all running jobs are halted.
Job Tracker in Hadoop performs following actions
Client applications submit jobs to the Job tracker.
The Job Tracker talks to the Name Node to determine the location of the data
The Job Tracker locates Task Tracker nodes with available slots at or near the data
TheJob Tracker submits the work to the chosen Task Tracker nodes.
The Task Tracker nodes are monitored. If they do not submit heartbeat signals often enough, they
are deemed to have failed and the work is scheduled on a different Task Tracker.
A Task Tracker will notify the Job Tracker when a task fails. The Job Tracker decides what to do
then: it may resubmit the job elsewhere, it may mark that specific record as something to avoid, and
it may even blacklist the Task Tracker as unreliable.
When the work is completed, the Job Tracker updates its status.
Client applications can poll the Job Tracker for information.

37. How a task is scheduled by a Job Tracker?

Ans: The Task Trackers send out heartbeat messages to the Job Tracker, usually every few minutes,
to reassure the Job Tracker that it is still alive. These messages also inform the Job Tracker of the
number of available slots, so the Job Tracker can stay up to date with where in the cluster work can be
delegated. When the Job Tracker tries to find somewhere to schedule a task within the
MapReduce operations, it first looks for an empty slot on the same server that hosts the Data Node
containing the data, and if not, it looks for an empty slot on a machine in the same rack.
38. How many instances of Task tracker run on a Hadoop cluster?
Ans: There is one Daemon Task tracker process for each slave node in the Hadoop cluster.
39. What are the two main parts of the Hadoop framework?
Ans: Hadoop consists of two main parts
Hadoop distributed file system, a distributed file system with high throughput,
Hadoop MapReduce, a software framework for processing large data sets.
40. Explain the use of Task Tracker in the Hadoop cluster?
Ans: A Task tracker is a slave node in the cluster which that accepts the tasks from Job Tracker like
Map, Reduce or shuffle operation. Task tracker also runs in its own JVM Process.
Every Task Tracker is configured with a set of slots; these indicate the number of tasks that it can
accept. The Task Tracker starts a separate JVM processes to do the actual work (called as Task
Instance) this is to ensure that process failure does not take down the task tracker.
The Task tracker monitors these task instances, capturing the output and exit codes. When the Task
instances finish, successfully or not, the task tracker notifies the Job Tracker.
The Task Trackers also send out heartbeat messages to the Job Tracker, usually every few minutes,
to reassure the Job Tracker that it is still alive. These messages also inform the Job Tracker of the
number of available slots, so the Job Tracker can stay up to date with where in the cluster work can be
delegated.
41. What do you mean by Task Instance?
Ans: Task instances are the actual MapReduce jobs which run on each slave node. The Task Tracker
starts a separate JVM processes to do the actual work (called as Task Instance) this is to ensure that
process failure does not take down the entire task tracker. Each Task Instance runs on its own JVM
process. There can be multiple processes of task instance running on a slave node. This is based on the
number of slots configured on task tracker. By default a new task instance JVM process is spawned for
a task.

42. How many daemon processes run on a Hadoop cluster?

Ans: Hadoop is comprised of five separate daemons. Each of these daemons runs in its own JVM.
Following 3 Daemons run on Master Nodes.NameNode - This daemon stores and maintains the
metadata for HDFS.
Secondary Name Node - Performs housekeeping functions for the Name Node. Job Tracker - Manages
MapReduce jobs, distributes individual tasks to machines running the Task Tracker. Following 2
Daemons run on each Slave nodes Data Node Stores actual HDFS data blocks.
Task Tracker It is Responsible for instantiating and monitoring individual Map and Reduce tasks.
43. How many maximum JVM can run on a slave node?
Ans: One or Multiple instances of Task Instance can run on each slave node. Each task instance is run
as a separate JVM process. The number of Task instances can be controlled by configuration. Typically
a high end machine is configured to run more task instances.
44. What is NAS?
Ans: It is one kind of file system where data can reside on one centralized machine and all the
cluster member will read write data from that shared database, which would not be as efficient
as HDFS.
45. How HDFA differs with NFS?
Ans: Following are differences between HDFS and NAS
1. In HDFS Data Blocks are distributed across local drives of all machines in a cluster. Whereas in
NAS data is stored on dedicated hardware.
2. HDFS is designed to work with MapReduce System, since computation is moved to data. NAS
is not suitable for MapReduce since data is stored separately from the computations
3. HDFS runs on a cluster of machines and provides redundancy using replication protocol.
Whereas NAS is provided by a single machine therefore does not provide data redundancy.
46. How does a Name Node handle the failure of the data nodes?
Ans: HDFS has master/slave architecture. An HDFS cluster consists of a single Name Node, a master
server that manages the file system namespace and regulates access to files by clients.
In addition, there are a number of DataNodes, usually one per node in the cluster, which manage
storage attached to the nodes that they run on.
The Name Node and Data Node are pieces of software designed to run on commodity machines.
Name Node periodically receives a Heartbeat and a Block report from each of the DataNodes in the
cluster. Receipt of a Heartbeat implies that the Data Node is functioning properly. A Block report

contains a list of all blocks on a Data Node. When Name Node notices that it has not received a
heartbeat message from a data node after a certain amount of time, the data node is marked as dead.
Since blocks will be under replicated the system begins replicating the blocks that were stored on the
dead Data Node. The Name Node orchestrates the replication of data blocks from one Data Node to
another. The replication data transfer happens directly between Data Node and the data never passes
through the Name Node.
47. Can Reducer talk with each other?
Ans: No, Reducer runs in isolation.
48. Where the Mappers Intermediate data will be stored?
Ans: The mapper output (intermediate data) is stored on the Local file system (NOT HDFS) of each
individual mapper nodes. This is typically a temporary directory location which can be setup in config
by the Hadoop administrator. The intermediate data is cleaned up after the Hadoop Job completes.
49. What is the use of Combiners in the Hadoop framework?
Ans: Combiners are used to increase the efficiency of a MapReduce program. They are used to
aggregate intermediate map output locally on individual mapper outputs. Combiners can help you
reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred across to the reducers.
You can use your reducer code as a combiner if the operation performed is commutative and
associative.
The execution of combiner is not guaranteed; Hadoop may or may not execute a combiner. Also, if
required it may execute it more than 1 times. Therefore your MapReduce jobs should not depend on
the combiners execution.
50. What is the Hadoop MapReduce API contract for a key and value Class?
Ans: The Key must implement the org.apache.hadoop.io.WritableComparable interface.
The value must implement the org.apache.hadoop.io.Writable interface.
51. What is Identity Mapper and Identity Reducer in MapReduce?
Ans: org.apache.hadoop.mapred.lib.IdentityMapper: Implements the identity function, mapping
inputs directly to outputs. If MapReduce programmer does not set the Mapper Class using
JobConf.setMapperClass then IdentityMapper.class is used as a default value.
org.apache.hadoop.mapred.lib.IdentityReducer: Performs no reduction, writing all input values
directly to the output. If MapReduce programmer does not set the Reducer Class using
JobConf.setReducerClass then IdentityReducer.class is used as a default value.

52. What is the meaning of speculative execution in Hadoop? Why is it important?

Ans: Speculative execution is a way of coping with individual Machine performance. In large clusters
where hundreds or thousands of machines are involved there may be machines which are not
performing as fast as others.
This may result in delays in a full job due to only one machine not performing well. To avoid this,
speculative execution in Hadoop can run multiple copies of same map or reduce task on different
slave nodes. The results from first node to finish are used
53. When the reducers are started in a MapReduce job?
Ans: In a MapReduce job reducers do not start executing the reduce method until the all Map jobs
have completed. Reducers start copying intermediate key-value pairs from the mappers as soon as
they are available. The programmer defined reduce method is called only after all the mappers have
finished.
If reducers do not start before all mappers finish then why does the progress on MapReduce job
shows something like Map (50%) Reduce (10%)? Why reducers progress percentage is displayed when
mapper is not finished yet?
Reducers start copying intermediate key-value pairs from the mappers as soon as they are available.
The progress calculation also takes in account the processing of data transfer which is done by reduce
process, therefore the reduce progress starts showing up as soon as any intermediate key-value pair
for a mapper is available to be transferred to reducer.
Though the reducer progress is updated still the programmer defined reduce method is called only
after all the mappers have finished.
54. What is HDFS? How it is different from traditional file systems?
Ans: HDFS, the Hadoop Distributed File System, is responsible for storing huge data on the cluster.
This is a distributed file system designed to run on commodity hardware. It has many similarities with
existing distributed file systems. However, the differences from other distributed file systems are
significant.
HDFS is highly fault-tolerant and is designed to be deployed on low-cost hardware.
HDFS provides high throughput access to application data and is suitable for applications that have
large data sets.
HDFS is designed to support very large files. Applications that are compatible with HDFS are those
that deal with large data sets. These applications write their data only once but they read it one or
more times and require these reads to be satisfied at streaming speeds. HDFS supports write-onceread-many semantics on files.

55. What is HDFS Block size? How is it different from traditional file system block size?
Ans: In HDFS data is split into blocks and distributed across multiple nodes in the cluster. Each block is
typically 64Mb or 128Mb in size. Each block is replicated multiple times. Default is to replicate each
block three times. Replicas are stored on different nodes. HDFS utilizes the local file system to store
each HDFS block as a separate file. HDFS Block size cannot be compared with the traditional file
system block size.
57. What is a Name Node? How many instances of Name Node run on a Hadoop Cluster?
Ans: The Name Node is the centerpiece of an HDFS file system. It keeps the directory tree of all files in
the file system, and tracks where across the cluster the file data is kept. It does not store the data of
these files itself. There is only One Name Node process run on any Hadoop cluster. Name Node runs
on its own JVM process. In a typical production cluster its run on a separate machine. The Name
Node is a Single Point of Failure for the HDFS Cluster. When the Name Node goes down, the file
system goes offline.
Client applications talk to the Name Node whenever they wish to locate a file, or when they want to
add/copy/move/delete a file. The Name Node responds the successful requests by returning a list of
relevant Data Node servers where the data lives.
58. What is a Data Node? How many instances of Data Node run on a Hadoop Cluster?
Ans: A Data Node stores data in the Hadoop File System HDFS. There is only One Data Node process
run on any Hadoop slave node. Data Node runs on its own JVM process. On startup, a Data Node
connects to the Name Node. Data Node instances can talk to each other, this is mostly during
replicating data.
59. How the Client communicates with HDFS?
Ans: The Client communication to HDFS happens to be using Hadoop HDFS API. Client applications talk
to the Name Node whenever they wish to locate a file, or when they want to add/copy/move/delete
a file on HDFS. The Name Node responds the successful requests by returning a list of relevant Data
Node servers where the data lives. Client applications can talk directly to a Data Node, once the Name
Node has provided the location of the data.
60. How the HDFS Blocks are replicated?
Ans: HDFS is designed to reliably store very large files across machines in a large cluster. It stores each
file as a sequence of blocks; all blocks in a file except the last block are the same size.
The blocks of a file are replicated for fault tolerance. The block size and replication factor are
configurable per file. An application can specify the number of replicas of a file. The replication factor
can be specified at file creation time and can be changed later. Files in HDFS are writing-once and have
strictly one writer at any time.

The Name Node makes all decisions regarding replication of blocks. HDFS uses rack-aware replica
placement policy. In default configurations there are total 3 copies of a data block on HDFS, 2 copies
are stored on DataNodes on same rack and 3rd copy on a different rack.