Use Hortonworks Hadoop Now you can rely on a more stable core

Starting with the Hortonworks Data Platform 2.4, which is now available, the company is taking a two-pronged approach to updates. Specifically, it will update core Apache Hadoop components such as HDFS, MapReduce and YARN along with Apache Zookeeper annually, while extended services that run on top of those components -- including Spark, Hive, HBase and Ambari -- will be updated continuously throughout the year.

"We can give customers all the latest innovations in the moment without sacrificing a stable and reliable core," said Tim Hall, vice president of product management at Hortonworks, in an announcement. "This will change the way people consume Hadoop."

HDP 2.4 includes Apache Spark 1.6, Apache Ambari 2.2 and SmartSense 1.2. "We're the first to announce the inclusion of Apache Spark 1.6 in our distribution," said Rob Bearden, Hortonworks' CEO, in a webcast accompanying the announcement Tuesday.

Bearden also announced a data preview of Apache Zeppelin, which aims to help users get analytics insights out of their Spark workloads. "Think of it as Tableau for Spark," he said.

Coming later in the first quarter of this year is version 1.2 of Hortonworks' DataFlow product for data in motion, which will feature expanded streaming-analytics capabilities and support for Apache Kafka and Apache Storm. HDF 1.2 also supports integration with the Kerberos protocol for centralized authentication management across applications.

Finally, Hortonworks has partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to advance the Apache Spark data-processing tool, the companies announced.

"We’re hoping to enable the Spark community to derive insight more rapidly from much larger data sets without having to change a single line of code," said Martin Fink, executive vice president and CTO for HPE as well as a member of Hortonworks' board.