Can hadoop map/reduce be speeded up by splitting data size?

Question

Can I increase the performance time of my hadoop map/reduce job by splitting the input data into smaller chunks?

First question: For example, I have 1GB of input file for mapping task. My default block size is 250MB. So only 4 mappers will be assigned to do the job. If I split the data into 10 pieces, each piece will be 100MB, then I have 10 mappers to do the work. But then each split piece will occupy 1 block in the storage, which means 150MB will be wasted for each split data block. What should I do in this case if I don't want to change the block size of my storage?

Second question: If I split input data before mapping job, it can increase the performance of the mapping job. So If I want to do the same for reducing job, should I ask mapper to split the data before giving it to reducer or should I let reducer do it ?

Thank you very much. Please correct me if I also misunderstand something. Hadoop is quite new to me. So any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

When you change your block size to 100 MB, 150 MB is not wasted. It is still available memory for the system.

If Mappers are increased, it does not mean that it will definitely increase performance. Because it depends on the number of datanodes you have. For example, if you have 10 DataNode -> 10 Mapper, it is a good deal. But if you have 4 datanode -> 10 Mapper, obviously all mappers cannot run simultaneously. So if you have 4 data nodes, it is better to have 4 blocks (with a 250MB block size).

Reducer is something like a merge of all your mappers' output and you can't ask Mapper to split the data. In reverse, you can ask Mapper to do a mini-reduce by defining a Combiner. Combiner is nothing but a reducer in the same node where the mapper was executed, run before sending to the actual reducer. So the I/O will be minimized and so is the work of actual reducer. Introducing a Combiner will be a better option to improve performance

Good luck with Hadoop !!

Answer 2

There can be multiple parallel mappers running in a node for the same job based on the number of map slots available in the node. So, yes making smaller pieces of the input should give you more parallel mappers and speed up the process.(how to input all the pieces as single input? - put all of them in one directory and add that as input path)

On the reducer side of you are OK to combine multiple output files post processing, you can set more number of reducers and max parallel reducers running could be the number of reduce shots available in your cluster. This should improve cluster utilisation and speed up reduce phase.

If possible you may use combiner also to reduce disk and network i/o overhead.