MapR Announces Version 1.2 of the MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop

New release pushes the envelope by making Hadoop more accessible to more users, languages and platforms

San Jose, CA – December 6, 2011 – MapR Technologies, Inc., the provider of the industry’s most advanced distribution for Apache Hadoop, today announced Version 1.2 of the MapR Distribution which delivers a host of new features and capabilities and includes significant performance improvements. With the release of Version 1.2, MapR raises the bar by bringing robust performance and dependability to a host of new applications by expanding support for C/C++ API access and supporting Windows and Mac clients. A complete MapR Version 1.2 cluster is also available as a free virtual machine to make it easy for anyone to get familiar with MapReduce and Hadoop almost effortlessly. Version 1.2 also includes the underpinnings to support MapReduce 2.0 which further expands the types of applications that can take advantage of a Hadoop cluster.

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“MapR Distribution Version 1.2 vastly expands the selection of developed and deployed applications,” said Jack Norris, vice president of marketing, MapR Technologies. “These applications will also benefit from MapR’s continued innovations providing high availability, dependability and increased performance.”

Specific advances in Version 1.2 include:

• Ability to take advantage of next generation resource management framework: MapR users will be able to take advantage of MapReduce 2.0 once it is ready for production use. Although it is expected to take several months for the community to stabilize Hadoop 0.23, users will be able to take advantage of the combined benefits of MapReduce 2.0, such as backward-compatibility and scalability and MapR’s unique capabilities, such as HA (no lost tasks or jobs during a JobTracker or ApplicationMaster failure) and the high-performance shuffle.
• High-performance native access library: With Version 1.2, MapR provides a libhdfs implementation that bypasses Java altogether and provides high-performance access to the distributed file system from C/C++ applications and other compatible scripting languages. There is no need to recompile applications that use libhdfs, since the API (header file) is identical.
• Upgrade of various packages including HBase, Hive and Pig: The HBase package in the MapR Distribution has been upgraded to release 0.90.4 and includes significant performance improvements. In addition, MapR has identified several critical stability and data corruption issues in 0.90.4, which we have addressed by backporting 15 fixes from future HBase releases. Versions of Hive and Pig have been upgraded in the MapR distribution, so users can leverage the latest bug fixes and features available from these Apache projects.
• Mac and Windows clients: MapR provides easy-to-install packages for Mac and Windows (in addition to Linux), allowing users of all major platforms to run Hadoop applications without having to install third-party libraries like cygwin.
• MapR Virtual Machine (VM) capabilities: MapR now provides a VMWare virtual machine that allows users to experiment with the MapR Distribution. This version makes it easy to experiment with some of MapR’s unique capabilities, such as NFS and snapshots. The VM is also a great asset to new Hadoop users, making it possible for them to be running on any environment (e.g., a laptop) within minutes.

The latest MapR Distribution will be available this week and available for download here at http://www.mapr.com/download

About MapR Technologies
MapR delivers on the promise of Hadoop, making managing and analyzing Big Data a reality for more business users. The award-winning MapR Distribution brings unprecedented dependability, speed and ease-of-use to Hadoop. Combined with data protection and business continuity, MapR enables customers to harness the power of Big Data analytics. The company is headquartered in San Jose, CA. Investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA and Redpoint Ventures. To download the latest MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop, please visit http://www.mapr.com/products/download. Connect with MapR at http://www.facebook.com/maprtech http://www.linkedin.com/company/mapr-technologies and http://twitter.com/mapr.

Media Contacts
Beth Winkowski
MapR Technologies, Inc.
(978) 649-7189
bwinkowski@maprtech.com

Nancy Pieretti
MapR Technologies, Inc.
(603) 268-8007
npieretti@maprtech.com