cdh

CDH stands for Cloudera Distribution Including Apache Hadoop. It is a legacy distribution of Apache Hadoop and related big data software packaged and supported by Cloudera for enterprise use. CDH combined core Hadoop components with additional ecosystem projects to provide a ready-to-deploy data platform.

The distribution includes the foundational Hadoop stack—HDFS for storage and YARN for resource management—along with processing engines such as MapReduce and Apache Spark. It also bundles data warehousing and SQL tools like Apache Hive and Impala, NoSQL support with Apache HBase, data movement and workflow tools such as Apache Sqoop, Flume, and Oozie, and user interfaces through Hue. Cloudera Manager provides deployment, configuration, monitoring, and life-cycle management, while Parcels or packages distribute software across clusters. Security features typically include Kerberos-based authentication and authorization controls via Sentry or Ranger, with encryption options available for data in transit and at rest.

CDH emphasizes ease of administration in on‑premises and private cloud environments, supporting multi-node architectures with centralized governance and auditing. It integrates with the broader Cloudera ecosystem for governance, data lineage, and metadata management.

Licensing and ecosystem context: CDH is built on Apache Hadoop and other Apache projects, with additional proprietary management and support layers from Cloudera. Since the late 2010s, CDH has been largely superseded by Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) following Cloudera’s 2019 merger with Hortonworks. While CDH remains in use in some environments, CDP is now the primary development and deployment platform, offering unified data services across on‑premises and the cloud.