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Microsoft Azure HDInsight VS Apache ORC

Compare Microsoft Azure HDInsight VS Apache ORC and see what are their differences

Microsoft Azure HDInsight logo Microsoft Azure HDInsight

Azure HDInsight is an Apache Hadoop distribution powered by the cloud.

Apache ORC logo Apache ORC

Apache ORC is a columnar storage for Hadoop workloads.
  • Microsoft Azure HDInsight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-02
  • Apache ORC Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-18

Microsoft Azure HDInsight features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure HDInsight provides flexible scalability, allowing users to easily scale clusters up or down based on their data processing needs, which helps optimize resource utilization and manage costs.
  • Integration
    It offers seamless integration with other Azure services, such as Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Azure Synapse Analytics, enabling comprehensive data analytics solutions.
  • Open Source Ecosystem
    HDInsight supports a wide range of open-source frameworks, including Hadoop, Spark, and Kafka, allowing organizations to leverage existing investments in open-source technologies.
  • Managed Service
    As a managed service, HDInsight reduces the operational burden on users by handling infrastructure management, monitoring, and maintenance, allowing teams to focus on data processing and analytics.
  • Security
    HDInsight includes robust security features such as Azure Active Directory integration, encryption at rest and in transit, and network isolation, ensuring the protection of sensitive data.

Possible disadvantages of Microsoft Azure HDInsight

  • Cost
    Although it offers a range of features, the cost of running large or complex clusters on HDInsight can be high, particularly for organizations with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    The initial setup and management of HDInsight can be complex, requiring a certain level of expertise to effectively manage clusters and optimize performance.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud-based service, HDInsight relies on consistent internet connectivity to access Azure resources, which can be a limitation in environments with unreliable connectivity.
  • Learning Curve
    Users unfamiliar with Apache technologies or Azureโ€™s ecosystem may face a steep learning curve when using HDInsight, necessitating additional training or expertise.
  • Limited On-Premises Integration
    For organizations with significant on-premises infrastructure, integrating HDInsight with on-prem data sources may present challenges, especially if hybrid solutions are necessary.

Apache ORC features and specs

  • Efficient Compression
    ORC provides highly efficient compression, which reduces the storage footprint of data and enhances performance by decreasing I/O operations.
  • Columnar Storage
    The columnar storage format significantly improves read performance by allowing for selective access to necessary columns while ignoring others.
  • Predicate Pushdown
    ORC supports predicate pushdown, enabling the query engine to skip over non-relevant data, thus enhancing query performance.
  • Type Richness
    ORC supports complex types (like structs and maps), making it suitable for diverse data storage and query needs.
  • Schema Evolution
    It facilitates seamless schema evolution, allowing easier adjustments to the dataset over time without breaking existing queries.
  • Built-in Indexes
    Indexes such as bloom filters and min/max values are built-in, accelerating query processing by enabling quicker data lookup.

Possible disadvantages of Apache ORC

  • Complexity
    The intricacies of its features may introduce additional complexity in implementation and maintenance, potentially increasing the learning curve.
  • Write Performance
    While ORC is optimized for read-heavy workloads, its write performance can be less efficient compared to other formats like Parquet.
  • Compatibility
    ORC may not be as widely supported as other formats, limiting the choice of tools and environments that can leverage its full capabilities.
  • Compression Overhead
    The process of compressing and decompressing data can introduce a computational overhead, affecting performance in some scenarios.

Microsoft Azure HDInsight videos

Part 1 - Introduction to Microsoft Azure HDInsight

Apache ORC videos

No Apache ORC videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Microsoft Azure HDInsight and Apache ORC)
Data Dashboard
72 72%
28% 28
Big Data
60 60%
40% 40
Big Data Infrastructure
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache ORC seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 3 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.

Microsoft Azure HDInsight mentions (0)

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

Apache ORC mentions (3)

  • Java Serialization with Protocol Buffers
    The information can be stored in a database or as files, serialized in a standard format and with a schema agreed with your Data Engineering team. Depending on your information and requirements, it can be as simple as CSV, XML or JSON, or Big Data formats such as Parquet, Avro, ORC, Arrow, or message serialization formats like Protocol Buffers, FlatBuffers, MessagePack, Thrift, or Cap'n Proto. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • AWS EMR Cost Optimization Guide
    Data formatting is another place to make gains. When dealing with huge amounts of data, finding the data you need can take up a significant amount of your compute time. Apache Parquet and Apache ORC are columnar data formats optimized for analytics that pre-aggregate metadata about columns. If your EMR queries column intensive data like sum, max, or count, you can see significant speed improvements by reformatting... - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Apache Hudi - The Streaming Data Lake Platform
    The following stack captures layers of software components that make up Hudi, with each layer depending on and drawing strength from the layer below. Typically, data lake users write data out once using an open file format like Apache Parquet/ORC stored on top of extremely scalable cloud storage or distributed file systems. Hudi provides a self-managing data plane to ingest, transform and manage this data, in a... - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

Alpine Chorus - We have built the World's Most Comprehensive Advanced Analytics Platform for Big Data.

Apache Parquet - Apache Parquet is a columnar storage format available to any project in the Hadoop ecosystem.

SQream - SQream empowers organizations to analyze the full scope of their Massive Data, from terabytes to petabytes, to achieve critical insights which were previously unattainable.

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

Hortonworks - Hadoop-Related

BlueData - BlueData's software platform makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective for organizations to deploy Big Data infrastructure on-premises.