You can find enough theory on internet related to Big Data
but theories won’t give you real hands on experience, for that you need a
platform to practice and implement all your knowledge. Installing Big Data on
personal laptop is not always possible as it need a high-end laptop for faster and
seamless execution of your code. I am pretty sure that you won’t like to get
stuck in the installation and configuration of software rather than focusing on
practice.
I am going to mention few ways or places where you can
practice Big Data for free or with very less price.
VMware or Oracle Virtual Box (Free)
Best way to practice Big Data for free is just install VMware
or Virtual box and download the Cloudera Quickstart image. For Quickstart image
to work properly you need at least 8 GB RAM and a 64-bit processor.
Steps are mentioned below: -
2. Download Cloudera “Quickstart VM” image for virtual box and
unzip it. Download
from here: - https://www.cloudera.com/downloads/quickstart_vms/5-8.html
3. Open Virtual Box and Click “New”. Fill the details as below and
then click next: -
If your laptop has 8 GB RAM then allocate only 5-6 GB to the
Virtual Box, Allocating more than this or less than this may get your laptop
hanged quiet frequently.
Once configured you can start and practice. Quickstart Image
has all the big data software’s stack pre-installed in it. For version of the
software you can check Cloudera website.
Databricks(Free)
You can log in to Databricks https://community.cloud.databricks.com and open an account to get
free trial version of data bricks platform. Here you can do just the basic
hands on as it has limited features.
CloudXLab
This is a cloud based lab to practice Big Data, Spark and all
big data technologies. CloudXLab is good and very cheap. You can access the labs through your
browser or putty. CloudXlab gives you access to all the required UIs like Hue,
Ambari, Spark UI etc. It’s worth spending some bucks to practice big Data.
Monthly subscription price is around $13 (~ Rs 900). Yearly
subscription you will get at a cheaper rate.
The good thing is they provide free subscription for 7 days,
so if you are not satisfied with the performance or quality then you can always
opt out without paying a anything.
BigData Labs
This is also a cloud based lab to practice BigData. It will
provide you same features as CloudXLabs because both have the Hortonworks
Hadoop distribution installed on the cluster. Here also you get all the
required UI access. BigData Labs will cost you around $ 14-15 per month but
they have a free forum where you can discuss your queries.
Conclusion:-
I would suggest best option is to go for the Virtual box
images provided by Cloudera or Hortonworks and they are free and you don’t even
need an internet connection to practice. But if you don’t have an high end
laptop then go for CloudXLabs.
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