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Azure HDInsight VS Databricks

Compare Azure HDInsight VS Databricks 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.

Databricks logo Databricks

Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.โ€ŽWhat is Apache Spark?
  • Azure HDInsight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-26
  • Databricks Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14

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.

Databricks features and specs

  • Unified Data Analytics Platform
    Databricks integrates various data processing and analytics tools, offering a unified environment for data engineering, machine learning, and business analytics. This integration can streamline workflows and reduce the complexity of data management.
  • Scalability
    Databricks leverages Apache Spark and other scalable technologies to handle large datasets and high computational workloads efficiently. This makes it suitable for enterprises with significant data processing needs.
  • Collaborative Environment
    The platform offers collaborative notebooks that allow data scientists, engineers, and analysts to work together in real-time. This enhances productivity and fosters better communication within teams.
  • Performance Optimization
    Databricks includes various performance optimization features such as caching, indexing, and query optimization, which can significantly speed up data processing tasks.
  • Support for Various Data Formats
    The platform supports a wide range of data formats and sources, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, making it versatile and adaptable to different use cases.
  • Integration with Cloud Providers
    Databricks is designed to work seamlessly with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing users to easily integrate it into their existing cloud infrastructure.

Possible disadvantages of Databricks

  • Cost
    Databricks can be expensive, especially for large-scale deployments or high-frequency usage. It may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller organizations or projects with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    While powerful, Databricks can be complex to set up and manage, requiring specialized knowledge in Apache Spark and cloud infrastructure. This might lead to a steeper learning curve for new users.
  • Dependency on Cloud Providers
    Being heavily integrated with cloud providers, Databricks might face issues like vendor lock-in, where switching providers becomes difficult or costly.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Databricks is primarily designed for cloud environments, which means offline or on-premise capabilities are limited, posing challenges for organizations with strict data governance policies.
  • Resource Management
    Efficiently managing and allocating resources can be challenging in Databricks, especially in large multi-user environments. Mismanagement of resources could lead to increased costs and reduced performance.

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

Databricks videos

Introduction to Databricks

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Azure Databricks Tutorial | Data transformations at scale
  • Review - Databricks - Data Movement and Query

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure HDInsight and Databricks)
Big Data
28 28%
72% 72
Data Dashboard
11 11%
89% 89
Big Data Analytics
0 0%
100% 100
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 Databricks

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.

Databricks Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Databricks notebooks are a popular tool for developing code and presenting findings in data science and machine learning. Databricks Notebooks support real-time multilingual coauthoring, automatic versioning, and built-in data visualizations.
Source: lakefs.io
7 best Colab alternatives in 2023
Databricks is a platform built around Apache Spark, an open-source, distributed computing system. The Databricks Community Edition offers a collaborative workspace where users can create Jupyter notebooks. Although it doesn't offer free GPU resources, it's an excellent tool for distributed data processing and big data analytics.
Source: deepnote.com
Top 5 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Jan 11, 2023 The 5 best cloud data warehouse solutions in 2023Google BigQuerySource: https://cloud.google.com/bigqueryBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:SnowflakeBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:Amazon RedshiftSource: https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/Best for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:FireboltSource: https://www.firebolt.io/Best for:Top...
Top 10 AWS ETL Tools and How to Choose the Best One | Visual Flow
Databricks is a simple, fast, and collaborative analytics platform based on Apache Spark with ETL capabilities. It accelerates innovation by bringing together data science and data science businesses. It is a fully managed open-source version of Apache Spark analytics with optimized connectors to storage platforms for the fastest data access.
Source: visual-flow.com
Top Big Data Tools For 2021
Now Azure Databricks achieves 50 times better performance thanks to a highly optimized version of Spark. Databricks also enables real-time co-authoring and automates versioning. Besides, it features runtimes optimized for machine learning that include many popular libraries, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, etc.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Databricks seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 18 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.

Databricks mentions (18)

  • Platform Engineering Abstraction: How to Scale IaC for Enterprise
    Vendors like Confluent, Snowflake, Databricks, and dbt are improving the developer experience with more automation and integrations, but they often operate independently. This fragmentation makes standardizing multi-directional integrations across identity and access management, data governance, security, and cost control even more challenging. Developing a standardized, secure, and scalable solution for... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • dolly-v2-12b
    Dolly-v2-12bis a 12 billion parameter causal language model created by Databricks that is derived from EleutherAIโ€™s Pythia-12b and fine-tuned on a ~15K record instruction corpus generated by Databricks employees and released under a permissive license (CC-BY-SA). Source: over 2 years ago
  • Clickstream data analysis with Databricks and Redpanda
    Global organizations need a way to process the massive amounts of data they produce for real-time decision making. They often utilize event-streaming tools like Redpanda with stream-processing tools like Databricks for this purpose. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • DeWitt Clause, or Can You Benchmark %DATABASE% and Get Away With It
    Databricks, a data lakehouse company founded by the creators of Apache Spark, published a blog post claiming that it set a new data warehousing performance record in 100 TB TPC-DS benchmark. It was also mentioned that Databricks was 2.7x faster and 12x better in terms of price performance compared to Snowflake. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • A Quick Start to Databricks on AWS
    Go to Databricks and click the Try Databricks button. Fill in the form and Select AWS as your desired platform afterward. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiencesโ€”so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

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

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Snowflake - Snowflake is the only data platform built for the cloud for all your data & all your users. Learn more about our purpose-built SQL cloud data warehouse.