Practical Big Data Analytics

Selection of the hardware stack

The choice of hardware often depends on the type of solution that is chosen and where the hardware would be located. The proper choice depends on several key metrics such as the type of data (structured, unstructured, or semi-structured), the size of data (gigabytes versus terabytes versus petabytes), and, to an extent, the frequency with which the data will be updated. The optimal choice requires a formal assessment of these variables and will be discussed later on in the book. At a high-level, we can surmise three broad models of hardware architecture:

• Multinode architecture: This would typically entail multiple nodes (or servers) that are interconnected and work on the principle of multinode or distributed ...