Q13Big Data Analytics
Question
4 marks
Discuss HDFS block replication strategy.
Answer
HDFS replicates each data block multiple times (default 3) across different DataNodes to ensure fault tolerance.
When a file is written to HDFS, it is split into blocks. The NameNode determines the replication strategy: the first replica is placed on the local node where the client is running, the second replica is placed on a different rack to protect against rack failure, and the third replica is placed on a different node within the same rack as the second. This strategy balances reliability and read/write bandwidth.