BlueData, provider of the leading infrastructure software platform for Big Data, today announced support for Docker. With the BlueData EPICTM platform running on Docker, enterprise IT organizations will be able to quickly and easily deploy Apache Hadoop or Apache Spark in a lightweight container environment. Data scientists and developers can now download BlueData EPIC Lite – a free version of the EPIC platform available immediately – to spin up virtual Hadoop or Spark clusters in Docker containers on their laptop.
BlueData’s mission is to make it easier to deploy Big Data infrastructure on-premises, and support for Docker further advances this objective. Docker is open source technology that allows developers to quickly assemble distributed applications in lightweight software containers, enabling portability across the entire development lifecycle.
Docker containers create new possibilities for Big Data applications by allowing dynamic changes to analytics applications and providing the ability to rapidly move applications to the data to accelerate the analysis. BlueData is integrating the EPIC software platform with Docker to provide the benefits of virtualization for Big Data applications, while delivering the simplicity of containers and the performance of bare-metal servers.
“BlueData continues its innovation in Big Data infrastructure by leveraging the power of Docker to improve performance and accelerate the development lifecycle,” said Nick Stinemates, head of business development & technical alliances for Docker. “BlueData’s integration with Docker provides an enterprise-grade solution for running Hadoop and Spark on containers, enabling organizations to scale linearly and improve operational efficiencies. BlueData’s integration with Docker demonstrates its commitment, joining the rapidly growing list of software providers standardizing on the Docker platform.”
“Container technology is disrupting the IT market, and Docker is seeing rapid enterprise adoption,” said Kumar Sreekanti, co-founder and CEO of BlueData. “Together with Docker, we’re disrupting the Big Data market and leveraging the power of containers for enterprises deploying Hadoop and Spark on-premises.”
BlueData tames the infrastructure complexity that can slow down and stall Big Data deployments. The BlueData EPIC software platform works with all of the major Hadoop distributions as well as Spark. It integrates with the leading analytical applications, so data scientists can use the tools they prefer. It runs with any shared storage environment, eliminating the need to move data. It delivers the agility of Hadoop-as-a-Service in an on-premises deployment model, with the enterprise-grade security and governance that IT teams require.
BlueData is working with Docker as well as Intel and an ecosystem of partners to ensure enterprise-class security, performance, and scalability for Big Data applications running in containers. In collaboration with these partners, BlueData will provide enterprises with an on-premises, multi-tenant solution to run large-scale data processing environments such as Hadoop or Spark on Docker. IT organizations will benefit from greater operational flexibility, agility, and efficiency in their deployment of Big Data analytics.
“Intel works closely with the Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark communities and their ecosystems to drive the foundation for Big Data and analytics in the enterprise,” said Michael Greene, Intel vice president and general manager of System Technologies and Optimization in Intel’s Software and Services Group. “With BlueData’s support for container technology to enable easier deployment of Hadoop and Spark, we believe BlueData can deliver even greater simplicity and agility in a virtualized environment – while providing the security and performance that enterprise IT organizations require for their Big Data infrastructure.”
The initial BlueData software release supporting Docker is available today as a free edition: BlueData EPIC Lite. With EPIC Lite, data scientists and developers can easily create multi-node Hadoop clusters (including key components such as Hive, Hue, Impala, and Pig) or standalone Spark clusters running in Docker. They can point to data in their local files or against existing HDFS and NFS storage. Within a matter of minutes, they can develop and test Big Data analytics in a personal sandbox on their laptop. EPIC Lite is available for download on a developer laptop or as a hosted instance on the Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): www.bluedata.com/free
Docker support for the enterprise edition of the BlueData EPIC software platform will be generally available for production deployments in the fall of 2015. In a separate announcement today, BlueData also introduced the new summer release of the EPIC software platform.
