Best Big Data Platforms for Apache Flink

StarTree Cloud is a fully-managed real-time analytics platform designed for OLAP at massive speed and scale for user-facing applications. Powered by Apache Pinot, StarTree Cloud provides enterprise-grade reliability and advanced capabilities such as tiered storage, scalable upserts, plus additional indexes and connectors. It integrates seamlessly with transactional databases and event streaming platforms, ingesting data at millions of events per second and indexing it for lightning-fast query responses. StarTree Cloud is available on your favorite public cloud or for private SaaS deployment. StarTree Cloud includes StarTree Data Manager, which allows you to ingest data from both real-time sources such as Amazon Kinesis, Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, or Redpanda, as well as batch data sources such as data warehouses like Snowflake, Delta Lake or Google BigQuery, or object stores like Amazon S3, Apache Flink, Apache Hadoop, or Apache Spark. StarTree ThirdEye is an add-on anomaly detection system running on top of StarTree Cloud that observes your business-critical metrics, alerting you and allowing you to perform root-cause analysis — all in real-time.

Iceberg is an advanced format designed for managing extensive analytical tables efficiently. It combines the dependability and ease of SQL tables with the capabilities required for big data, enabling multiple engines such as Spark, Trino, Flink, Presto, Hive, and Impala to access and manipulate the same tables concurrently without issues. The format allows for versatile SQL operations to incorporate new data, modify existing records, and execute precise deletions. Additionally, Iceberg can optimize read performance by eagerly rewriting data files or utilize delete deltas to facilitate quicker updates. It also streamlines the complex and often error-prone process of generating partition values for table rows while automatically bypassing unnecessary partitions and files. Fast queries do not require extra filtering, and the structure of the table can be adjusted dynamically as data and query patterns evolve, ensuring efficiency and adaptability in data management. This adaptability makes Iceberg an essential tool in modern data workflows.

EMR serves as a comprehensive enterprise-grade big data platform, offering cluster, job, and data management functionalities that leverage various open-source technologies, including Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Flink, and Storm. Alibaba Cloud Elastic MapReduce (EMR) is specifically designed for big data processing within the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem. Built on Alibaba Cloud's ECS instances, EMR integrates the capabilities of open-source Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark. This platform enables users to utilize components from the Hadoop and Spark ecosystems, such as Apache Hive, Apache Kafka, Flink, Druid, and TensorFlow, for effective data analysis and processing. Users can seamlessly process data stored across multiple Alibaba Cloud storage solutions, including Object Storage Service (OSS), Log Service (SLS), and Relational Database Service (RDS). EMR also simplifies cluster creation, allowing users to establish clusters rapidly without the hassle of hardware and software configuration. Additionally, all maintenance tasks can be managed efficiently through its user-friendly web interface, making it accessible for various users regardless of their technical expertise.

The Apache Hadoop software library serves as a framework for the distributed processing of extensive data sets across computer clusters, utilizing straightforward programming models. It is built to scale from individual servers to thousands of machines, each providing local computation and storage capabilities. Instead of depending on hardware for high availability, the library is engineered to identify and manage failures within the application layer, ensuring that a highly available service can run on a cluster of machines that may be susceptible to disruptions. Numerous companies and organizations leverage Hadoop for both research initiatives and production environments. Users are invited to join the Hadoop PoweredBy wiki page to showcase their usage. The latest version, Apache Hadoop 3.3.4, introduces several notable improvements compared to the earlier major release, hadoop-3.2, enhancing its overall performance and functionality. This continuous evolution of Hadoop reflects the growing need for efficient data processing solutions in today's data-driven landscape.