HDFS
HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) is a distributed, scalable, and fault-tolerant file system designed to store and manage large datasets across clusters of commodity hardware. It is a core component of the Apache Hadoop ecosystem, enabling high-throughput data access by splitting files into blocks and distributing them across multiple nodes. HDFS is optimized for batch processing workloads rather than low-latency data access.
Developers should learn and use HDFS when building big data applications that require storing and processing petabytes of data, such as in data lakes, log analysis, or machine learning pipelines. It is particularly valuable in scenarios involving massive, sequential reads and writes, as it provides reliability through replication and scalability by adding more nodes to the cluster. Use cases include ETL processes, data warehousing, and real-time analytics with frameworks like Apache Spark or MapReduce.