Confusion of how hadoop splits work

Question

We are Hadoop newbies, we realize that hadoop is for processing big data, and how Cartesian product is extremely expensive. However we are having some experiments where we are running a Cartesian product job similar to the one in the MapReduce Design Patterns book except with a reducer calculating avg of all intermediate results( including only upper half of A*B, so total is A*B/2). Our setting: 3 node cluster, block size = 64M, we tested different data set sizes ranging from 5000 points (130KB) to 10000 points (260KB).

Observations:

1- All map tasks are running on one node, sometimes on the master machine, other times on one of the slaves, but it never processed on more than one machine.Is there a way to force hadoop to distribute the splits therefore map tasks among machines? Based on what factors dose hadoop decide which machine is going to process the map tasks( in our case once it decided the master, in another case it decided a slave).

2- In all cases where we are testing the same job on different data sizes, we are getting 4 map tasks. Where dose the number 4 comes from?since our data size is less than the block size, why are we having 4 splits not 1.

3- Is there a way to see more information about exact splits for a running job.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

What version of Hadoop are you using? I am going to assume a later version that uses YARN.

1) Hadoop should distribute the map tasks among your cluster automatically and not favor any specific nodes. It will place a map task as close to the data as possible, i.e. it will choose a NodeManager on the same host as a DataNode hosting a block. If such a NodeManager isn't available, then it will just pick a node to run your task. This means you should see all of your slave nodes running tasks when your job is launched. There may be other factors blocking Hadoop from using a node, such as the NodeManager being down, or not enough memory to start up a JVM on a specific node.

2) Is your file size slightly above 64MB? Even one byte over 67,108,864 bytes will create two splits. The CartesianInputFormat first computes the cross product of all the blocks in your data set. Having a file that is two blocks will create four splits -- A1xB1, A1xB2, A2xB1, A2xB2. Try a smaller file and see if you are still getting four splits.

3) You can see the running job in the UI of your ResourceManager. https://:8088 will open the main page (jobtracker-host:50030 for MRv1) and you can navigate to your running job from there, which will get you to see individual tasks that are running. If you want more specifics on what the input format is doing, add some log statements to the CartesianInputFormat's getSplits method and re-run your code to see what is going on.