18 essential Hadoop tools for crunching big data

Hadoop has grown to stand for so much more than a smallish stack of code for spreading work to a group of computers. This core proved to be so useful that a large collection of projects now orbits around it. Some offer data housekeeping, others monitor progress, and some deliver sophisticated data storage.

The Hadoop community is fast evolving to include businesses that offer support, rent time on managed clusters, build sophisticated enhancements to the open source core, or add their own tools to the mix.

Here is a look at the most prominent pieces of today’s Hadoop ecosystem. What appears here is a foundation of tools and code that runs together under the collective heading "Hadoop."