Hello friends of the Ambari community, I am just an ordinary contributor, a nobody. However, I would like to share some thoughts with you all.
Ever since HDP was acquired, there has been no significant big data distribution other than the HDP stack. The packing code and big data components of HDP have become closed source. While many old users are still using the HDP2 and HDP3.0 big data distributions, they no longer have the corresponding component source code. This is a frightening situation, as the lack of access to the source code for debugging when a component fails means we have lost control over the data platform!! Thus, I've been hoping that the community could collaborate with the Apache Bigtop community to release the first fully open-source big data distribution since HDP. Why Bigtop? Because the Apache Bigtop community is very active with many developers maintaining package compatibility across different platform architectures. Because of this, the Bigtop stack is a great choice. Devoted community PMC member, Wuzhiguo, has made immense efforts in developing Ambari 2.8.0 based on the Bigtop stack. Although he initiated a vote, sadly the process has stalled for reasons. The active contributors in the community, have been able to fix a few bugs on top of 2.8.0 and added some new components, aligning it with Apache Bigtop 3.3.0. We aim to release these fixes in Ambari 2.9, striving for the first stable, fully open-source, and user-friendly big data distribution since HDP. Here is the version issue for Apache Bigtop components: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BIGTOP-3909 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BIGTOP-3909> We've conducted extensive testing for Ambari 2.8.0, subsequent master branches as well as some important PR. We have also run it in a production environment. Except for recurrent hive 3 out of memory issues, all other components run smoothly. The hive 3 OOM issue has been submitted by another contributor to Apache Bigtop and will be resolved in the Apache Bigtop 3.2.1 and 3.3.0 releases. Members of the Ambari community who are still active have been working hard to achieve the release of a new version of Ambari based on the Hadoop 3 ecosystem. We are limited in resources and sincerely hope to receive support from other community members and precious advice and support from the Ambari community PMCs. Without PMC's participation, the community will stagnate, and no new Ambari releases will be published, a terrible outcome that none of us want to see. It would be a shame if Ambari were to retire again due to lack of activity, or if Ambari became outdated and unable to keep up with other big data community developments, causing it to lose users. Therefore, I sincerely hope that everyone can actively participate, discuss the release of the new version of Ambari, and the needed content. Your valuable opinions and feedback are greatly appreciated. The main content of the next issue, based on the Ambari version of Hadoop 3, is here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AMBARI-25951 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AMBARI-25951> We hope that the PMCs will look it over and share their valuable suggestions. Thanks, Jialiangcai
