Cloudera upgrades Hadoop management tools, offers free version for startups

Apache Hadoop-focused management service Cloudera has considerably updated its Cloudera Enterprise software and will begin offering a free version of Cloudera Manager that startups can use, the company announced this morning.

Cloudera makes it possible for companies like Samsung, Aol and Groupon to manage and mine loads of unstructured and structured data. It provides its own spin on Hadoop’s powerful open-source data management software and couples it with IT support and management tools. With the announcement of Cloudera Enterprise 3.7 today, Cloudera is both helping its customers by giving them a larger tool set for managing Hadoop and giving small companies a chance to use Hadoop for free.

“There is no other solution on the market that can support and manage the full operational lifecycle for the full Hadoop stack with software and support integrated together,” Charles Zedlewski, vice president of product at Cloudera, told VentureBeat. “Customers no longer need to cobble together five or six tools and applications to operate a sophisticated Hadoop platform.”

The company identified the four biggest additions to Cloudera Enterprise 3.7 as the following:

• Intelligent Hadoop Log Management: Gathers and scans Hadoop logs for irregularities and proactively create events for the operator.
• Global Time Control: Correlates cluster-wide jobs, activities, logs, system changes, configuration changes and service metrics along a single timeline to dramatically simplify diagnosis.
• Alerts: Alerts on nodes or services in poor health, as well as jobs or activities that are slow or failing; integrates with the central company alerting system.
• Support Integration: Takes a snapshot of the cluster state and automatically sends it to a Cloudera support professional to assist with diagnosis and resolution.

As for the new free version — aptly named Cloudera Manager Free Edition — it supports up to 50 nodes and can be downloaded at cloudera.com/downloads. It allows developers and businesses to configure and perform basic management of a Hadoop cluster.

“The goal with the free version is to simply grow the base number of Hadoop users,” Zedlewski said. “We’re not in the business of making money on 20-person startups.”

Palo Alto-based Cloudera has raised an impressive $76 million to date in four funding rounds. The company last raised $40 million with the round led by Frank Artale of Ignition Partners with participation from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and In-Q-Tel.