Performing Bulkloads with MapReduce

This section describes custom MapReduce applications used to perform bulkloads for HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database binary tables.

You can use the HFileOutputFormat configureIncrementalLoad() method for writing custom MapReduce applications to perform bulk loads. Although the name of the method implies that you can use it only for incremental bulk loads, the method also works for full bulk loads, provided that the -bulkload, BULKLOAD, or Bulkload parameter for a table is set to true, as described in Bulk Loading and HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database Tables.

If you have a custom MapReduce applications that does not use HFileOutputFormat.configureIncrementalLoad(), simply use the path to the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database table that you want to load. Using HFileOutputFormat.configureIncrementalLoad() provides at least two advantages:

This method performs a number of tasks that your application would otherwise need to do explicitly:

Inspects the table to configure a total order partitioner
Uploads the partitions file to the cluster and adds it to the DistributedCache
Sets the number of reduce tasks to match the current number of regions
Sets the output key/value class to match HFileOutputFormat's requirements
Sets the reducer up to perform the appropriate sorting (either KeyValueSortReducer or PutSortReducer)

This method turns off Speculative Execution automatically. For details, see the note below.

Warning: Turning off Speculative Execution

Speculative Execution of MapReduce tasks is on by default. For custom applications that load HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Database binary tables, it is recommended to turn Speculative Execution off. When it is on, the tasks that import data might run multiple times. Multiple tasks for an incremental bulkload could insert one or more versions of a record into a table. Multiple tasks for a full bulkload could cause loss of data if the source data continues to be updated during the load.

If your custom MapReduce application uses HFileOutputFormat.configureIncrementalLoad(), you do not have to turn off Speculative Execution manually. HFileOutputFormat.configureIncrementalLoad() turns it off automatically. Speculative Execution is automatically turned off for MapReduce utilities such as CopyTable and ImportTsv.

If you are writing a custom MapReduce application that does not use the HFileOutputFormat configureIncrementalLoad() method for bulk loading, you must turn off Speculative Execution manually.

Turn off Speculative Execution by setting the following MapReduce version 2 parameter to false: mapreduce.map.speculative

If the job is programmatically written, you can turn off Speculative Execution at the code level: job.setSpeculativeExecution(false);