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MapR Offers Free Big Data Test Drives on Amazon Cloud

• By David Ramel
• January 19, 2016

Test drives of various Big Data technologies are now available on the Amazon cloud in a new program launched by MapR Technologies Inc. that lets enterprises test the analytics waters with integrated third-party solutions.

MapR, one of the leading distributors of commercial Hadoop-based software, has teamed up with other vendors to provide solutions that showcase various software packages for working with sensitive data, SQL-based analytics, data visualization and more.

Provided free for education, demonstration and evaluation purposes, the offerings are part of the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) Test Drive for Big Data program, which features dozens of packages.

The AWS test drives are yet another vehicle developed by vendors to help enterprises get started with Big Data, a big endeavor fraught with big challenges and a big variety of options. Other vendor initiatives have included various other kinds of Big Data "onramps," such as simplified Big Data appliances, packaged Big Data services, labs and more.

"AWS Test Drives for Big Data provide private IT sandbox environments containing preconfigured server-based solutions," MapR said in a statement announcing the test drives last week. "In under an hour, and using a step-by-step lab manual and video, customers can launch, login, and learn about popular third-party Big Data IT solutions, powered by AWS CloudFormation."

MapR is providing test drives for Dataguise DgSecure, HPE Vertica, Apache Drill and TIBCO Spotfire, complete with enough free AWS time to launch and explore the live solution stacks.

One solution provides MapR software for working with Apache Drill, an open source, schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL data stores and cloud storage. "During this test drive, customers will gain hands on experience using the groundbreaking capabilities of Apache Drill and MapR to extract immediate insights from semi-structured data," MapR said. "Users will interact with sample data hosted on a functional three node cluster of MapR using multiple interfaces including command line, the Drill web UI and Tableau business analytics software. The lab takes approximately 1-1.5 hours to complete."

The Dataguise solution targets the handling of sensitive data. "Dataguise precisely detects and protects sensitive information to safely unlock the benefits of Big Data," MapR said. "Users can quickly and easily start-up a sandbox with MapR and DgSecure pre-installed and pre-configured. Users are taken through a tutorial of DgSecure that covers sensitive data detection, masking and encryption."

The HPE Vertica test drive brings SQL analytics to bear on the huge amounts of data stored in Hadoop data lakes. "With this AWS Test Drive, users can create a functional three-node cluster and install Vertica's SQL analytics database co-located within the MapR Hadoop environment," MapR said. "Users have four hours to evaluate and query Hadoop ORCFile formatted data via standard ANSI SQL statements."

For trying out Apache Drill and Spotfire, MapR teamed up with Syntelli Solutions Inc., an analytics company specializing in Big Data, data science and analytics application development. Apache Drill is an open source, schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL data stores and cloud storage. Spotfire provides data visualization and analytics software.

"This AWS Test Drive demonstrates ease of querying complex data and discovering schemas on-the-fly with Apache Drill and finding business insights and creating professional looking dashboards using Spotfire," MapR said. "Sample data-sets and a demo are provided that highlight these capabilities in an interactive experience that involves a fully functional three-node Hadoop cluster and Spotfire."

Dozens of other test drives are also available on AWS, ranging from Introduction to Splunk to Oracle BI Applications to the DataStax Cassandra Platform, intermixed with the MapR offerings.

"AWS provides a highly scalable platform where customers can easily spin up MapR clusters," said MapR exec Matt Lescohier in a statement. "MapR is the only Hadoop distribution on the AWS Cloud that is available as an option on Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), AWS Marketplace, and now via AWS Test Drive. These AWS Test Drive offerings add value for our ecosystem partners by showcasing the performance, reliability, and scale our combined solutions provide to customers."