Introducing Microsoft Azure Hdinsight

Microsoft Azure HDInsight is Microsoft's 100 percent compliant distribution of Apache Hadoop on Microsoft Azure. This means that standard Hadoop concepts and technologies apply, so learning the Hadoop stack helps you learn the HDInsight service. At the time of this writing, HDInsight (version 3.0) uses Hadoop version 2.2 and Hortonworks Data Platform 2.0. In Introducing Microsoft Azure HDInsight, we cover what big data really means, how you can use it to your advantage in your company or organization, and one of the services you can use to do that quickly-specifically, Microsoft's HDInsight service. We start with an overview of big data and Hadoop, but we don't emphasize only concepts in this book-we want you to jump in and get your hands dirty working with HDInsight in a practical way. To help you learn and even implement HDInsight right away, we focus on a specific use case that applies to almost any organization and demonstrate a process that you can follow along with. We also help you learn more. In the last chapter, we look ahead at the future of HDInsight and give you recommendations for self-learning so that you can dive deeper into important concepts and round out your education on working with big data.

About the Author :
Avkash Chauhan is a Cloud Solution architect on the Windows Azure team at Microsoft and is involved in developing and supporting Microsoft's Hadoop-based services for Windows and Azure. Valentine Fontama is a Principal Data Scientist in the Data and Decision Sciences Group (DDSG) at Microsoft, where he leads external consulting engagements that deliver world-class Advanced Analytics solutions to Microsoft s customers. Val has over 18 years of experience in data science and business. Following a PhD in Artificial Neural Networks, he applied data mining in the environmental science and credit industries. Before Microsoft, Val was a New Technology Consultant at Equifax in London where he pioneered the application of data mining to risk assessment and marketing in the consumer credit industry. He is currently an Affiliate Professor of Data Science at the University of Washington. In his prior role at Microsoft, Val was a Senior Product Marketing Manager responsible for big data and predictive analytics in cloud and enterprise marketing. In this role, he led product management for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning; HDInsight, the first Hadoop service from Microsoft; Parallel Data Warehouse, Microsoft s first data warehouse appliance; and three releases of Fast Track Data Warehouse. He also played a key role in defining Microsoft s strategy and positioning for in-memory computing.Val holds an M.B.A. in Strategic Management and Marketing from Wharton Business School, a Ph.D. in Neural Networks, a M.Sc. in Computing, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Electronics (with First Class Honors). He co-authored the book Introducing Microsoft Azure HDInsight, and has published 11 academic papers with 152 citations by over 227 authors. Michele Hart is a Technical Writer at Microsoft and is involved in developing and supporting Microsoft's Hadoop-based services for Windows and Azure.