HBase Basics


HBase is a type of “NoSQL” database. “NoSQL” is a general term meaning that the database isn’t an RDBMS which supports SQL as its primary access language, but there are many types of NoSQL databases: BerkeleyDB is an example of a local NoSQL database, whereas HBase is very much a distributed database.

Technically speaking, HBase is really more a “Data Store” than “Data Base” because it lacks many of the features you find in an RDBMS, such as typed columns, secondary indexes, triggers, and advanced query languages, etc.

However, HBase has many features which supports both linear and modular scaling. HBase clusters expand by adding RegionServers that are hosted on commodity class servers. If a cluster expands from 10 to 20 RegionServers, for example, it doubles both in terms of storage and as well as processing capacity. RDBMS can scale well, but only up to a point – specifically, the size of a single database server – and for the best performance requires specialized hardware and storage devices. HBase features of note are:

  • Strongly consistent reads/writes: HBase is not an “eventually consistent” DataStore. This makes it very suitable for tasks such as high-speed counter aggregation.
  • Automatic sharding: HBase tables are distributed on the cluster via regions, and regions are automatically split and re-distributed as your data grows.
  • Automatic RegionServer failover
  • Hadoop/HDFS Integration: HBase supports HDFS out of the box as its distributed file system.
  • MapReduce: HBase supports massively parallelized processing via MapReduce for using HBase as both source and sink.
  • Java Client API: HBase supports an easy to use Java API for programmatic access.
  • Thrift/REST API: HBase also supports Thrift and REST for non-Java front-ends.
  • Block Cache and Bloom Filters: HBase supports a Block Cache and Bloom Filters for high volume query optimization.
  • Operational Management: HBase provides build-in web-pages for operational insight as well as JMX metrics.

When Should I Use HBase?

HBase isn’t suitable for every problem.

1) Make sure you have enough data. If you have hundreds of millions or billions of rows, then HBase is a good candidate. If you only have a few thousand/million rows, then using a traditional RDBMS might be a better choice due to the fact that all of your data might wind up on a single node (or two) and the rest of the cluster may be sitting idle.

2) Make sure you can live without all the extra features that an RDBMS provides (e.g., typed columns, secondary indexes, transactions, advanced query languages, etc.)

An application built against an RDBMS cannot be “ported” to HBase by simply changing a JDBC driver, for example. Consider moving from an RDBMS to HBase as a complete redesign as opposed to a port.

3) Make sure you have enough hardware. Even HDFS doesn’t do well with anything less than 5 DataNodes (due to things such as HDFS block replication which has a default of 3), plus a NameNode.

HBase can run quite well stand-alone on a laptop – but this should be considered a development configuration only.

How does HBase distribute the data across the cluster ?

HBase stores rows of data in tables. Tables are split into chunks of rows called “regions”. Those regions are distributed across the cluster, hosted and made available to client processes by the RegionServer process.

hbase-architectureA region is a continuous range within the key space, meaning all rows in the table that sort between the region’s start key and end key are stored in the same region. Regions are non-overlapping, i.e. a single row key belongs to exactly one region at any point in time. A region is only served by a single region server at any point in time, which is how HBase guarantees strong consistency within a single row#. Together with the -ROOT- and .META. regions, a table’s regions effectively form a 3 level B-Tree for the purposes of locating a row within a table.

HBase depends on HDFS for data storage. RegionServers collocate with the HDFS DataNodes. This enables data locality for the data served by the RegionServers, at least in the common case. Region assignment, DDL operations, and other book-keeping facilities are handled by the HBase Master process.

hbase-physical-architectureIt uses Zookeeper to maintain live cluster state. When accessing data, clients communicate with HBase RegionServers directly. That way, Zookeeper and the Master process don’t bottle-neck data throughput. No persistent state lives in Zookeeper or the Master. HBase is designed to recover from complete failure entirely from data persisted durably to HDFS.

What Is The Difference Between HBase and Hadoop/HDFS?

HDFS is a distributed file system that is well suited for the storage of large files. Its documentation states that it is not, however, a general purpose file system, and does not provide fast individual record lookups in files. HBase, on the other hand, is built on top of HDFS and provides fast record lookups (and updates) for large tables. This can sometimes be a point of conceptual confusion. HBase internally puts your data in indexed “StoreFiles” that exist on HDFS for high-speed lookups.

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Acerca de hvivani

sysadmin, developer, RHCSA
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