Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) vs. Azure Databricks

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon EMR
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Amazon EMR is a cloud-native big data platform for processing vast amounts of data quickly, at scale. Using open source tools such as Apache Spark, Apache Hive, Apache HBase, Apache Flink, Apache Hudi (Incubating), and Presto, coupled with the scalability of Amazon EC2 and scalable storage of Amazon S3, EMR gives analytical teams the engines and elasticity to run Petabyte-scale analysis.N/A
Azure Databricks
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Azure Databricks is a service available on Microsoft's Azure platform and suite of products. It provides the latest versions of Apache Spark so users can integrate with open source libraries, or spin up clusters and build in a fully managed Apache Spark environment with the global scale and availability of Azure. Clusters are set up, configured, and fine-tuned to ensure reliability and performance without the need for monitoring. The solution includes autoscaling and auto-termination to improve…N/A
Pricing
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon EMRAzure Databricks
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Features
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Platform Connectivity
Comparison of Platform Connectivity features of Product A and Product B
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
-
Ratings
Azure Databricks
7.3
4 Ratings
13% below category average
Connect to Multiple Data Sources00 Ratings6.04 Ratings
Extend Existing Data Sources00 Ratings7.84 Ratings
Automatic Data Format Detection00 Ratings7.44 Ratings
MDM Integration00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Data Exploration
Comparison of Data Exploration features of Product A and Product B
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
-
Ratings
Azure Databricks
6.8
4 Ratings
22% below category average
Visualization00 Ratings6.04 Ratings
Interactive Data Analysis00 Ratings7.63 Ratings
Data Preparation
Comparison of Data Preparation features of Product A and Product B
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
-
Ratings
Azure Databricks
8.6
4 Ratings
5% above category average
Interactive Data Cleaning and Enrichment00 Ratings8.24 Ratings
Data Transformations00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
Data Encryption00 Ratings9.44 Ratings
Built-in Processors00 Ratings7.84 Ratings
Platform Data Modeling
Comparison of Platform Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
-
Ratings
Azure Databricks
8.0
4 Ratings
5% below category average
Multiple Model Development Languages and Tools00 Ratings6.44 Ratings
Automated Machine Learning00 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Single platform for multiple model development00 Ratings8.44 Ratings
Self-Service Model Delivery00 Ratings8.44 Ratings
Model Deployment
Comparison of Model Deployment features of Product A and Product B
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
-
Ratings
Azure Databricks
8.3
4 Ratings
3% below category average
Flexible Model Publishing Options00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Security, Governance, and Cost Controls00 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Jupyter Notebook
Jupyter Notebook
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudera Manager
Cloudera Manager
Score 9.9 out of 10
Posit
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 7.2 out of 10
Posit
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(19 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(4 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)Azure Databricks
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We are running it to perform preparation which takes a few hours on EC2 to be running on a spark-based EMR cluster to total the preparation inside minutes rather than a few hours. Ease of utilization and capacity to select from either Hadoop or spark. Processing time diminishes from 5-8 hours to 25-30 minutes compared with the Ec2 occurrence and more in a few cases.
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Microsoft
Centralised notebooks are out directly into production. This can lead to poorly engineered code. It is very good for fast queries and our data team are always able to provide what we ask for. It is a big cost to our business so it is important it runs efficiently and returns on our investment.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • EMR does well in managing the cost as it uses the task node cores to process the data and these instances are cheaper when the data is stored on s3. It is really cost efficient. No need to maintain any libraries to connect to AWS resources.
  • EMR is highly available, secure and easy to launch. No much hassle in launching the cluster (Simple and easy).
  • EMR manages the big data frameworks which the developer need not worry (no need to maintain the memory and framework settings) about the framework settings. It's all setup on launch time. The bootstrapping feature is great.
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Microsoft
  • Data Processing and Transformations based on Spark
  • Delta Lakehouse when clubbed with an external cloud storage
  • Governance using Unity Catalog to unify IAM
  • Delta Live Tables is a product, which although relatively newer, has a great potential with the visuals of a pipeline.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • It would have been better if packages like HBase and Flume were available with Amazon EMR. This would make the product even more helpful in some cases.
  • Products like Cloudera provide the options to move the whole deployment into a dedicated server and use it at our discretion. This would have been a good option if available with EMR.
  • If EMR gave the option to be used with any choice of cloud provider, it would have helped instead of having to move the data from another cloud service to S3.
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Microsoft
  • Intuitive interface
  • Ease of use
  • Providing FAQ or QRGs
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Usability
Amazon AWS
Documentation is quite good and the product is regularly updated, so new features regularly come out. The setup is straightforward enough, especially once you have already established the overall platform infrastructure and the aws-cli APIs are easy enough to use. It would be nice to have some out-of-the-box integrations for checking logs and the Spark UI, rather than relying on know-how and digging through multiple levels to find the informations
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Microsoft
The developers are able to switch between Python and SQL in the Notebook which allows the collaboration of SQL analyst and Data scientist. The integration of Mosaic AI allows users to write complex codes in natural languages. Unity catalog has centralized the security and governance features and simplified the process of maintaining it
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
I give the overall support for Amazon EMR this rating because while the support technicians are very knowledgeable and always able to help, it sometimes takes a very long time to get in contact with one of the support technicians. So overall the support is pretty good for Amazon EMR.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Snowflake is a lot easier to get started with than the other options. Snowflake's data lake building capabilities are far more powerful. Although Amazon EMR isn't our first pick, we've had an excellent experience with EC2 and S3. Because of our current API interfaces, it made more sense for us to continue with Hadoop rather than explore other options.
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Microsoft
I have found Azure Databricks to be much better than Snowflake for handling bigger, diverse data types. Snowflake is much simpler and better for smaller warehousing. The real time processing is much better in Azure Databricks and we have much more language options. Snowflake is more expensive but simpler to use. Both are great for different needs.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It was obviously cheaper and convenient to use as most of our data processing and pipelines are on AWS. It was fast and readily available with a click and that saved a ton of time rather than having to figure out the down time of the cluster if its on premises.
  • It saved time on processing chunks of big data which had to be processed in short period with minimal costs. EMR solved this as the cluster setup time and processing was simple, easy, cheap and fast.
  • It had a negative impact as it was very difficult in submitting the test jobs as it lags a UI to submit spark code snippets.
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Microsoft
  • The support team is amazing, they help you at every stage of the projects, from sales to delivery.
  • On a framework level, it has had an amazing impact and has reduced the clients overall data platform costs by a staggering 65%
  • There has been a 40% Manual work requirement on average for the clients when they move to Azure Databricks Data Platform
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