Open Source | Data Engineering Podcast

Ship Faster With An Opinionated Data Pipeline Framework - Episode 100

October 1, 2019

Building an end-to-end pipeline for your machine learning projects is a complex task, made more difficult by the variety of ways that you can structure it. Kedro is a framework that provides an opinionated workflow that lets you focus on the parts that matter, so that you don’t waste time on gluing the steps together. In this episode Tom Goldenberg explains how it works, how it is being used at Quantum Black for customer projects, and how it can help you structure your own. Definitely worth a listen to gain more understanding of the benefits that a standardized process can provide.

Open Source Object Storage For All Of Your Data - Episode 99

September 23, 2019

Object storage is quickly becoming the unifying layer for data intensive applications and analytics. Modern, cloud oriented data warehouses and data lakes both rely on the durability and ease of use that it provides. S3 from Amazon has quickly become the de-facto API for interacting with this service, so the team at MinIO have built a production grade, easy to manage storage engine that replicates that interface. In this episode Anand Babu Periasamy shares the origin story for the MinIO platform, the myriad use cases that it supports, and the challenges that they have faced in replicating the functionality of S3. He also explains the technical implementation, innovative design, and broad vision for the project.

Navigating Boundless Data Streams With The Swim Kernel - Episode 98

September 18, 2019

The conventional approach to analytics involves collecting large amounts of data that can be cleaned, followed by a separate step for analysis and interpretation. Unfortunately this strategy is not viable for handling real-time, real-world use cases such as traffic management or supply chain logistics. In this episode Simon Crosby, CTO of Swim Inc., explains how the SwimOS kernel and the enterprise data fabric built on top of it enable brand new use cases for instant insights. This was an eye opening conversation about how stateful computation of data streams from edge devices can reduce cost and complexity as compared to batch oriented workflows.

Building A Reliable And Performant Router For Observability Data - Episode 97

September 10, 2019

The first stage in every data project is collecting information and routing it to a storage system for later analysis. For operational data this typically means collecting log messages and system metrics. Often a different tool is used for each class of data, increasing the overall complexity and number of moving parts. The engineers at Timber.io decided to build a new tool in the form of Vector that allows for processing both of these data types in a single framework that is reliable and performant. In this episode Ben Johnson and Luke Steensen explain how the project got started, how it compares to other tools in this space, and how you can get involved in making it even better.

Building A Community For Data Professionals at Data Council - Episode 96

September 2, 2019

Data professionals are working in a domain that is rapidly evolving. In order to stay current we need access to deeply technical presentations that aren’t burdened by extraneous marketing. To fulfill that need Pete Soderling and his team have been running the Data Council series of conferences and meetups around the world. In this episode Pete discusses his motivation for starting these events, how they serve to bring the data community together, and the observations that he has made about the direction that we are moving. He also shares his experiences as an investor in developer oriented startups and his views on the importance of empowering engineers to launch their own companies.

A High Performance Platform For The Full Big Data Lifecycle - Episode 94

August 19, 2019

Managing big data projects at scale is a perennial problem, with a wide variety of solutions that have evolved over the past 20 years. One of the early entrants that predates Hadoop and has since been open sourced is the HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) system. Designed as a fully integrated platform to meet the needs of enterprise grade analytics it provides a solution for the full lifecycle of data at massive scale. In this episode Flavio Villanustre, VP of infrastructure and products at HPCC Systems, shares the history of the platform, how it is architected for scale and speed, and the unique solutions that it provides for enterprise grade data analytics. He also discusses the motivations for open sourcing the platform, the detailed workflow that it enables, and how you can try it for your own projects. This was an interesting view of how a well engineered product can survive massive evolutionary shifts in the industry while remaining relevant and useful.

Solving Data Discovery At Lyft - Episode 92

August 5, 2019

Data is only valuable if you use it for something, and the first step is knowing that it is available. As organizations grow and data sources proliferate it becomes difficult to keep track of everything, particularly for analysts and data scientists who are not involved with the collection and management of that information. Lyft has build the Amundsen platform to address the problem of data discovery and in this episode Tao Feng and Mark Grover explain how it works, why they built it, and how it has impacted the workflow of data professionals in their organization. If you are struggling to realize the value of your information because you don’t know what you have or where it is then give this a listen and then try out Amundsen for yourself.

Scale Your Analytics On The Clickhouse Data Warehouse - Episode 88

July 8, 2019

The market for data warehouse platforms is large and varied, with options for every use case. ClickHouse is an open source, column-oriented database engine built for interactive analytics with linear scalability. In this episode Robert Hodges and Alexander Zaitsev explain how it is architected to provide these features, the various unique capabilities that it provides, and how to run it in production. It was interesting to learn about some of the custom data types and performance optimizations that are included.

Managing The Machine Learning Lifecycle - Episode 84

June 10, 2019

Building a machine learning model can be difficult, but that is only half of the battle. Having a perfect model is only useful if you are able to get it into production. In this episode Stepan Pushkarev, founder of Hydrosphere, explains why deploying and maintaining machine learning projects in production is different from regular software projects and the challenges that they bring. He also describes the Hydrosphere platform, and how the different components work together to manage the full lifecycle of model deployment and retraining. This was a useful conversation to get a better understanding of the unique difficulties that exist for machine learning projects.