Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon EMR VS Apache Kudu

Compare Amazon EMR VS Apache Kudu and see what are their differences

Amazon EMR logo Amazon EMR

Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a web service that makes it easy to quickly process vast amounts of data.

Apache Kudu logo Apache Kudu

Apache Kudu is Hadoop's storage layer to enable fast analytics on fast data.
  • Amazon EMR Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02
  • Apache Kudu Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-26

Amazon EMR features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon EMR makes it easy to provision one, hundreds, or thousands of compute instances in minutes. You can easily scale your cluster up or down based on your needs.
  • Cost-effectiveness
    You only pay for what you use with EMR. There are no upfront fees. You can also leverage EC2 Spot Instances for a more cost-effective solution.
  • Ease of Use
    Amazon EMR has a user-friendly interface and integrates with a wide range of AWS services, making it easy to set up and manage big data frameworks like Apache Hadoop, Spark, etc.
  • Managed Service
    Amazon EMR takes care of the setup, configuration, and tuning of the big data environments, allowing you to focus on your data processing rather than managing infrastructure.
  • Security
    EMR integrates with AWS security features such as IAM for fine-grained access control, encryption options, and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network security.
  • Flexibility
    Supports multiple big data frameworks including Hadoop, Spark, HBase, Presto, and more, facilitating a wide range of use cases.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon EMR

  • Complex Pricing Model
    EMR's pricing can be complex with costs varying based on instance types, storage, and data transfer. Predicting costs may be challenging.
  • Data Transfer Costs
    If your applications require transferring large amounts of data in and out of EMR, the associated costs can be significant.
  • Learning Curve
    Although EMR is easier to manage compared to on-premises solutions, there is still a learning curve associated with mastering the service and optimizing its various settings.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Since EMR is an AWS service, you may find it difficult to migrate to another service or cloud provider without significant re-engineering.
  • Dependency on AWS Ecosystem
    The full potential of EMR is best realized when integrated with other AWS services. This can be limiting if your architecture uses services from multiple cloud providers.

Apache Kudu features and specs

  • Fast Analytics on Fresh Data
    Kudu is designed for fast analytical processing on up-to-date data. It allows for efficient columnar storage which enables quick read and write capabilities suitable for real-time analytics.
  • Hybrid Workloads
    Supports hybrid workloads of both analytical and transactional processing, making it versatile for use cases that require both types of operations.
  • Seamless Integration
    Integrates well with the Apache ecosystem, particularly with Apache Hadoop, Apache Impala, and Apache Spark, enabling a cohesive environment for data processing and management.
  • Fine-grained Updates
    Allows for efficient updates to individual columns and rows, which is useful for applications that require frequent updates alongside analytic capabilities.
  • Schema Evolution
    Supports schema evolution, which allows for adding, dropping, and renaming columns without costly table rewrites.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Kudu

  • Complexity in Installation and Configuration
    The setup and configuration of Kudu can be complex, requiring a good understanding of its architecture and dependencies.
  • Limited SQL Support
    While Kudu is optimized for analytical tasks, its SQL capabilities are limited compared to some traditional RDBMS systems, which might require additional tools for more complex queries.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Although growing, the community and ecosystem around Kudu are smaller compared to more established systems, which may result in less available resources and third-party tools.
  • Memory Intensive
    Kudu can be memory-intensive, which might require more hardware resources compared to other systems, especially as data volumes grow.
  • Write Performance Limitations
    While Kudu offers fast reads, its write performance can be slower compared to systems specifically optimized for high-speed transactional processing.

Analysis of Amazon EMR

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Amazon EMR is generally considered a good option for organizations that need to handle large-scale data processing and analysis. Its integration with the AWS ecosystem, flexibility in resource management, and support for a wide array of big data frameworks make it a strong contender in the cloud-based big data processing market.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) is a robust cloud service provided by AWS for processing and analyzing large datasets quickly and cost-effectively. It simplifies running big data frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark on AWS, offering scalability, flexibility, and integration with other AWS services. EMR is favored for its ability to dynamically allocate resources, thus optimizing both performance and cost for big data processing needs.

Recommended for

    Amazon EMR is recommended for data engineers, data scientists, and IT professionals who need to manage and process large datasets in a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective manner. It is especially suitable for businesses that are already using AWS services and want to leverage a tightly integrated ecosystem. Additionally, it is a good choice for organizations that require rapid and flexible data analysis capabilities provided by frameworks such as Hadoop, Spark, HBase, and Presto.

Amazon EMR videos

Amazon EMR Masterclass

More videos:

  • Review - Deep Dive into What’s New in Amazon EMR - AWS Online Tech Talks
  • Tutorial - How to use Apache Hive and DynamoDB using Amazon EMR

Apache Kudu videos

Apache Kudu and Spark SQL for Fast Analytics on Fast Data (Mike Percy)

More videos:

  • Review - Apache Kudu (Incubating): New Hadoop Storage for Fast Analytics on Fast Data
  • Review - Apache Kudu: Fast Analytics on Fast Data | DataEngConf SF '16

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon EMR and Apache Kudu)
Data Dashboard
92 92%
8% 8
Office & Productivity
0 0%
100% 100
Big Data
100 100%
0% 0
Technical Computing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon EMR seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon EMR mentions (10)

  • 5 Best Practices For Data Integration To Boost ROI And Efficiency
    There are different ways to implement parallel dataflows, such as using parallel data processing frameworks like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Apache Flink, or using cloud-based services like Amazon EMR and Google Cloud Dataflow. It is also possible to use parallel dataflow frameworks to handle big data and distributed computing, like Apache Nifi and Apache Kafka. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What compute service i should use? Advice for a duck-tape kind of guy
    I'm going to guess you want something like EMR. Which can take large data sets segment it across multiple executors and coalesce the data back into a final dataset. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Processing a large text file containing millions of records.
    This is exactly the kind of workload EMR was made for, you can even run it serverless nowadays. Athena might be a viable option as well. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How to use Spark and Pandas to prepare big data
    Apache Spark is one of the most actively developed open-source projects in big data. The following code examples require that you have Spark set up and can execute Python code using the PySpark library. The examples also require that you have your data in Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). All this is set up on AWS EMR (Elastic MapReduce). - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Beginner building a Hadoop cluster
    Check out https://aws.amazon.com/emr/. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

Apache Kudu mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Apache Kudu yet. Tracking of Apache Kudu recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon EMR and Apache Kudu, you can also consider the following products

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Azure Databricks - Azure Databricks is a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache Spark-based big data analytics service designed for data science and data engineering.

Google Cloud Dataflow - Google Cloud Dataflow is a fully-managed cloud service and programming model for batch and streaming big data processing.

MyAnalytics - MyAnalytics, now rebranded to Microsoft Viva Insights, is a customizable suite of tools that integrates with Office 365 to drive employee engagement and increase productivity.

Qubole - Qubole delivers a self-service platform for big aata analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft and Google Clouds.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data - Move to cloud faster with IBM Cloud Paks running on Red Hat OpenShift – fully integrated, open, containerized and secure solutions certified by IBM.