Hadoop can be run from a number of different platforms. Hadoop can be installed and run from a single desktop, from a distributed network of systems, or as a cloud-based service. Investigators should be aware of the differences and versed in the various architectures. Hadoop runs in the same manner on all three setups; however, collecting evidence may require different steps depending on how the data is stored. For instance, a cloud-based Hadoop server may require a different collection because of the lack of physical access to the servers.

This section details how to set up and run Hadoop using a free virtual machine instance (LightHadoop) and a cloud-based service (Amazon Web Services). Both LightHadoop and Amazon Web Services are used in the examples throughout this book. They serve as testbed environments to highlight how Big Data forensics is performed against different setups.