As discussed earlier, Hadoop's performance depends on multiple factors based on well-configured software layers and well-dimensioned hardware resources that utilize its CPU, Memory, hard drive (storage I/O) and network bandwidth efficiently.

Planning the Hadoop cluster remains a complex task that requires minimum knowledge of the Hadoop architecture and may be out the scope of this book. This is what we are trying to make clearer in this section by providing explanations and formulas in order to help you to best estimate your needs. We will introduce a basic guideline that will help you to make your decision while sizing your cluster and answer some How to plan questions about cluster's needs such as the following:

While sizing your Hadoop cluster, you should also consider the data volume that the final users will process on the cluster. The answer to this question will...