5 Free Online Courses to Learn Big Data, Hadoop, and Spark in 2024
If you want to learn Big Data technologies in 2024 like Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka and you are looking for some free resources e.g. books, courses, and tutorials then you have come to the right place.
In this article, I am going to share some of the best free online courses to learn Hadoop and Spark from Udemy and Pluralsight at your own pace.
I personally like to start with FREE resources before I have enough knowledge to choose the right book or enroll in a little expensive course. It’s also my passion to surf the web to find great free resources and share them with you guys.
Similar to Data Science, Big Data is another space that I am looking to learn better in 2024. There are a lot of tools, technology, frameworks, and libraries that exist in the Big Data space but I have chosen the one which is closer to the Java community like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka.
Since Big Data is not limited to Java, I have also included a free Scala course on Apache Spark. Just in case if you are a Scala developer or learning Scala to become a Polyglot programmer, which itself is a very good idea.
Btw, if you are new here then you may want to check out some more free courses on Java, Spring, Linux, Python, SQL, Angular, React, Oracle, Eclipse, Maven, and several other Java and related technologies.
Top 5 Courses to learn Big Data, Hadoop, and Spark in 2024
Without any further ado, here is a couple of free Big Data Courses from Udemy and Pluralsight to kick-start your journey into the beautiful world of Big Data in 2024:
1. Hadoop Starter Kit
If you don’t know, Apache Hadoop is the leading Big Data framework that provides utilities that facilitated using multiple computers to solve problems involving massive data e.g. Google Search. It’s based on Map Reduce pattern i.e. you can divide a Big Problem into several small ones and then combine the result from each node to produce the final result.
This is a great course to learn about Hadoop. It explains all core concepts of Hadoop in a fun and easy way like HDFS, Map Reduce, Apache Pig and Hive, etc.
Here is the link to sign up for FREE — Hadoop Starter Kit
If you are passionate about Big Data and Hadoop then this is a great course to start with. It’s free and you also get access to a multi-node Hadoop training cluster to practice along the course.
You will also learn to calculate the maximum closing price for stock symbols from a stock dataset using Apache Pig and Hive. Overall, a fantastic, hands-on course to learn about Hadoop.
2. Scala and Spark 2 — Getting Started
If you are thinking to learn Apache Spark, another great Big Data framework that provides better throughput than Hadoop in many cases with Scala Programming language then this is a great course to start with.
In this course, you will learn how to set up your development environment for building a Spark application using Scala with IntelliJIDEA. It comes with a Scala plugin which makes developing the Scala application really easy. You will also run how to integrate Spark within IntelliJ IDEA.
Here is the link to sign up for FREE — Scala and Spark 2 — Getting Started
Even if you are new to Java and Scala world you can take this course because it will guide you to step by step from installing Java, IntelliJIDEA to Apache Spark.
In short, a good introductory course on Apache Spark with Scala Programming language.
3. Big Data and Hadoop Essentials
This is one of the most popular free Big Data and Hadoop courses on Udemy with over 80,000 students already enrolled in it. This speaks volumes about the quality of the course.
In this course, you will develop an understanding of Big Data Problems with some real-world examples. You will learn about Hadoop and understand why it is so powerful.
You will also understand the difference between Data Science and Big Data which is often confusing programmer while selecting a career path or understanding a job description.
Here is the link to sign up for FREE — Big Data and Hadoop Essentials
Even though this is a very short course, just 45 minutes long you will learn enough about Big Data and Hadoop to start your journey.
I highly recommend this course before you can take any other course on BigData and Hadoop.
4. Setup Big Data Development Environment
One of the main challenges to start with Big Data development is setting your own development environment. Since Big Data is comprised of many open source technologies like Hadoop, Spark, Pig, Hive, etc it becomes complex to get an end-to-end environment.
This course will teach you how to set up a Big Data development environment on your personal computer or laptop using distributions like Cloudera or Hortonworks.
Both Cloudera or Hortonworks provides virtual machine image which contains all Big Data Eco System tools pre-packed, which makes it easy to start learning and doing development.
You will also learn to set up other necessary components such as MySQL database and log generation tool and review all essential concepts e.g. HDFS, Map Reduce, Pig, Hive, Spark, etc.
Here is the link to sign up for FREE — Setup Big Data Development Environment
5. Big Data: The Big Picture
One of the mistakes many developers made while learning a new technology or programming language, including me, is directly going into details without understanding the Big Picture.
If you know why something exists e.g. the problem then you will better understand the technology and how it solves the problem.
This course is just for that. It will tell you about concepts, companies, and technologies that make up the whole Big Data world and help you to understand how you can adapt Big Data to solve your own business problem.
Here is the link to sign up — Big Data: The Big Picture
The instructor Andrew Brust is ZDNet’s Big Data correspondent and provides a different overview of Big Data than you will get from a Programmer or fellow developer.
By the way, you would need a Pluralsight membership to join this course, which costs around $29 per month or $299 per year (14% discount). If you don’t have this plan, I highly recommend joining as it boosts your learning and as a programmer, you always need to learn new things.
Alternatively, you can also use their 10-day-free-trial to watch this course for FREE.
That’s all about some of the free courses to learn Big Data technologies like Hadoop and Apache Spark. You can take these courses in the comfort of your office or home. You can also learn at your own pace, no need to rush or go anywhere.
Btw, In Udemy a free course sometimes turns into a paid course, so make sure you check that before you join the course, but once you joined these courses, you will get lifelong access to them at free of cost.
I generally joined the course to get it free once it’s available even if I don’t have enough time to attend that fully. I can always go back and learn once I enroll in that course.
If you are interested in these courses better to enroll now than later when they may not be free.
Other Free Online Programming and Development Courses you may like to explore:
5 Free Courses to Learn Core Spring, Spring Boot, and Spring MVC
5 Free course to learn Servlet, JSP, and JDBC
5 Free JavaScript Courses for Web Developers
5 Free Docker Courses for Java and DevOps Engineer
5 Courses to learn Maven And Jenkins for Java Developers
5 Courses to Learn Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server database
3 Books and Courses to Learn RESTful Web Services in Java
5 Courses to Learn Blockchain Technology for FREE
7 Free Selenium Webdriver courses for Java and C# developers
15 Free Courses to Learn Python Programming
10 Courses to Learn Angular Development
10 Free JavaScript Tutorials for Beginners
Thanks a lot for reading this article so far. If you like these free Big Data courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.
P.S. — If you just want to start with one course to learn DevOps, I think The Ultimate Hands-On Hadoop — Tame your Big Data! is the best one to start with.
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