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Azure HDInsight VS Apache Druid

Compare Azure HDInsight VS Apache Druid and see what are their differences

Azure HDInsight logo Azure HDInsight

Azure HDInsight is a managed Apache Hadoop cloud service that lets you run Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Apache Kafka, Apache HBase, and more.

Apache Druid logo Apache Druid

Fast column-oriented distributed data store
  • Azure HDInsight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-26
  • Apache Druid Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-07

Azure HDInsight features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure HDInsight allows for easy scaling of clusters to meet the demands of large data processing tasks, offering flexibility in managing resources.
  • Managed Service
    HDInsight is a fully managed cloud service, which reduces the overhead of managing hardware and infrastructure for big data workloads.
  • Cost-effectiveness
    Pay-as-you-go pricing model helps to minimize costs by only charging for the resources that are actually used.
  • Integration with Azure Ecosystem
    Seamlessly integrates with other Azure services like Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Active Directory, and more, enhancing functionality.
  • Supports Multiple Frameworks
    Supports a range of open-source frameworks, such as Hadoop, Spark, Hive, Kafka, HBase, and Storm, providing flexibility in choosing the right tool for the job.
  • Security Features
    Offers enterprise-grade security features including secure network connectivity, encryption, and integration with Azure Active Directory.

Possible disadvantages of Azure HDInsight

  • Complexity
    The setup and management of data pipelines and clusters can be complex and may require specialized skills in big data technologies.
  • Maintenance
    Despite being a managed service, certain aspects still require user oversight, such as monitoring job performance and managing configurations.
  • Performance Overhead
    There can be some performance overhead and latency issues compared to on-premises deployments, particularly with I/O operations.
  • Cost Uncertainty
    While the pay-as-you-go model is cost-effective, unpredictable workloads can lead to unforeseen expenses.
  • Limited Support for Some Tools
    Some emerging or less common big data tools may not be supported, limiting flexibility for certain niche use cases.

Apache Druid features and specs

  • Real-Time Data Ingestion
    Apache Druid supports real-time data ingestion, which allows users to immediately query and analyze freshly ingested data, making it ideal for applications that require up-to-the-minute insights.
  • High Performance
    Druid is designed to provide fast query performance, especially for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) queries. Its architecture leverages techniques like indexing, compression, and shard-based parallel processing to deliver quick results, even on large data sets.
  • Scalability
    Druid's architecture allows it to scale horizontally, supporting both large amounts of data and numerous concurrent queries. This makes it suitable for systems that need to handle high scalability requirements.
  • Flexible Data Exploration
    It supports complex queries, including group-bys, filters, and aggregations, which are essential for exploratory data analysis. Users can perform a wide range of data slicing and dicing operations.
  • Rich Multi-Tenancy Support
    Druid supports multi-tenancy, enabling different user groups to access and query the database simultaneously without performance degradation, thus accommodating diverse data analytics requirements within the same system.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Druid

  • Complex Setup and Configuration
    Setting up and configuring Apache Druid can be complex and resource-intensive. It requires a good understanding of its architecture and components, which may pose a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Resource Heavy
    Druid can be resource-intensive, often requiring significant CPU, memory, and disk resources, especially when handling large scale data and high query loads. This can result in increased infrastructure costs.
  • Limited Transactional Support
    Druid is not designed for transactional workloads and lacks full ACID compliance. It is optimized for read-heavy analytical queries rather than write-heavy transactional operations.
  • Complexity in Handling Updates
    Updating or deleting existing records in Druid is not straightforward and often involves re-indexing data. This can complicate use cases where mutable data is a common requirement.
  • Limited Tooling and Ecosystem
    Compared to more established databases and analytical engines, Druid's ecosystem and available tooling for development, monitoring, and management might be less extensive, potentially requiring custom solutions.

Azure HDInsight videos

Introduction to Azure HDInsight

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to create Azure HDInsight Cluster| Load data and run queries on an Apache Spark cluster|Power BI

Apache Druid videos

An introduction to Apache Druid

More videos:

  • Review - Building a Real-Time Analytics Stack with Apache Kafka and Apache Druid

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure HDInsight and Apache Druid)
Big Data
50 50%
50% 50
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Data Warehousing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Azure HDInsight and Apache Druid

Azure HDInsight Reviews

16 Top Big Data Analytics Tools You Should Know About
Using Azure HDInsights, we can deploy Hadoop in the cloud without purchasing new hardware or paying other up-front costs.

Apache Druid Reviews

Rockset, ClickHouse, Apache Druid, or Apache Pinot? Which is the best database for customer-facing analytics?
โ€œWhen you're dealing with highly concurrent environments, you really need an architecture thatโ€™s designed for that CPU efficiency to get the most performance out of the smallest hardware footprintโ€”which is another reason why folks like to use Apache Druid,โ€ says David Wang, VP of Product and Corporate Marketing at Imply. (Imply offers Druid as a service.)
Source: embeddable.com
Apache Druid vs. Time-Series Databases
Druid is a real-time analytics database that not only incorporates architecture designs from TSDBs such as time-based partitioning and fast aggregation, but also includes ideas from search systems and data warehouses, making it a great fit for all types of event-driven data. Druid is fundamentally an OLAP engine at heart, albeit one designed for more modern, event-driven...
Source: imply.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Druid 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.

Azure HDInsight mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Azure HDInsight yet. Tracking of Azure HDInsight recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Apache Druid mentions (10)

  • Why You Shouldnโ€™t Invest In Vector Databases?
    Regarding the storage aspect of vector databases, it is noteworthy that indexing techniques take precedence over the choice of underlying storage. In fact, many databases have the capability to incorporate indexing modules directly, enabling efficient vector search. Existing OLAP databases that are designed for real-time analytics and utilizing columnar storage, such as ClickHouse, Apache Pinot, and Apache Druid,... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • How to choose the right type of database
    Apache Druid: Focused on real-time analytics and interactive queries on large datasets. Druid is well-suited for high-performance applications in user-facing analytics, network monitoring, and business intelligence. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Choosing Between a Streaming Database and a Stream Processing Framework in Python
    Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases like Apache Druid, Apache Pinot, and ClickHouse shine in addressing user-initiated analytical queries. You might write a query to analyze historical data to find the most-clicked products over the past month efficiently using OLAP databases. When contrasting with streaming databases, they may not be optimized for incremental computation, leading to challenges in... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Analysing Github Stars - Extracting and analyzing data from Github using Apache NiFiยฎ, Apache Kafkaยฎ and Apache Druidยฎ
    Spencer Kimball (now CEO at CockroachDB) wrote an interesting article on this topic in 2021 where they created spencerkimball/stargazers based on a Python script. So I started thinking: could I create a data pipeline using Nifi and Kafka (two OSS tools often used with Druid) to get the API data into Druid - and then use SQL to do the analytics? The answer was yes! And I have documented the outcome below. Hereโ€™s... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Apache Druidยฎ - an enterprise architect's overview
    Apache Druid is part of the modern data architecture. It uses a special data format designed for analytical workloads, using extreme parallelisation to get data in and get data out. A shared-nothing, microservices architecture helps you to build highly-available, extreme scale analytics features into your applications. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure HDInsight and Apache Druid, you can also consider the following products

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

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

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

Apache Flink - Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.

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

ClickHouse - ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.