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Reading list

Machine Learning Basics for a Newbie
6 Steps of Machine learning Lifecycle Introduction to Predictive Modeling
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis & Data Insights Descriptive Statistics Inferential Statistics How to Understand Population Distributions?
Reading Data Files into Python Different Variable Datatypes
Probability for Data Science Basic Concepts of Probability Axioms of Probability Conditional Probability
Central Tendencies for Continuous Variables Spread of Data KDE plots for Continuous Variable Overview of Distribution for Continuous variables Normal Distribution Skewed Distribution Skeweness and Kurtosis Distribution for Continuous Variable
Central Tendencies for Categorical Variables Understanding Discrete Distributions Performing EDA on Categorical Variables
Dealing with Missing Values Understanding Outliers Identifying Outliers in Data Outlier Detection in Python Outliers Detection Using IQR, Z-score, LOF and DBSCAN
Sample and Population Central Limit Theorem Confidence Interval and Margin of Error
Bivariate Analysis Introduction
Covariance Pearson Correlation Spearman's Correlation & Kendall's Tau Correlation versus Causation Tabular and Graphical methods for Bivariate Analysis Performing Bivariate Analysis on Continuous-Continuous Variables
Tabular and Graphical methods for Continuous-Categorical Variables Introduction to Hypothesis Testing P-value Two sample Z-test T-test T-test vs Z-test Performing Bivariate Analysis on Continuous-Catagorical variables
Chi-Squares Test Bivariate Analysis on Categorical Categorical Variables
Multivariate Analysis A Comprehensive Guide to Data Exploration The Data Science behind IPL
Supervised Learning vs Unsupervised Learning Reinforcement Learning Generative and Descriminative Models Parametric and Non Parametric model
Machine Learning Pipeline Preparing Dataset Build a Benchmark Model: Regression Build a Benchmark Model: Classification
Evaluation Metrics for Machine Learning Everyone should know Confusion Matrix Accuracy Precision and Recall AUC-ROC Log Loss R2 and Adjusted R2
Dealing with Missing Values Replacing Missing Values Imputing Missing Values in Data Working with Categorical Variables Working with Outliers Preprocessing Data for Model Building
Understanding Cost Function Understanding Gradient Descent Math Behind Gradient Descent Assumptions of Linear Regression Implement Linear Regression from Scratch Train Linear Regression in Python Implementing Linear Regression in R Diagnosing Residual Plots in Linear Regression Models Generalized Linear Models Introduction to Logistic Regression Odds Ratio Implementing Logistic Regression from Scratch Introduction to Scikit-learn in Python Train Logistic Regression in python Multiclass using Logistic Regression How to use Multinomial and Ordinal Logistic Regression in R ? Challenges with Linear Regression Introduction to Regularisation Implementing Regularisation Ridge Regression Lasso Regression
Introduction to K Nearest Neighbours Determining the Right Value of K in KNN Implement KNN from Scratch Implement KNN in Python
Bias Variance Tradeoff Introduction to Overfitting and Underfitting Visualizing Overfitting and Underfitting Selecting the Right Model What is Validation? Hold-Out Validation Understanding K Fold Cross Validation
Introduction to Feature Selection Feature Selection Algorithms Missing Value Ratio Low Variance Filter High Correlation Filter Backward Feature Elimination Forward Feature Selection Implement Feature Selection in Python Implement Feature Selection in R
Introduction to Decision Tree Purity in Decision Tree Terminologies Related to Decision Tree How to Select Best Split Point in Decision Tree? Chi-Squares Information Gain Reduction in Variance Optimizing Performance of Decision Tree Train Decision Tree using Scikit Learn Pruning of Decision Trees
Introduction to Feature Engineering Feature Transformation Feature Scaling Feature Engineering Frequency Encoding Automated Feature Engineering: Feature Tools
Introduction to Naive Bayes Conditional Probability and Bayes Theorem Introduction to Bayesian Adjustment Rating: The Incredible Concept Behind Online Ratings! Working of Naive Bayes Math behind Naive Bayes Types of Naive Bayes Implementation of Naive Bayes
Understanding how to solve Multiclass and Multilabled Classification Problem Evaluation Metrics: Multi Class Classification
Introduction to Ensemble Techniques Basic Ensemble Techniques Implementing Basic Ensemble Techniques Finding Optimal Weights of Ensemble Learner using Neural Network Why Ensemble Models Work well?
Introduction to Stacking Implementing Stacking Variants of Stacking Implementing Variants of Stacking Introduction to Blending Bootstrap Sampling Introduction to Random Sampling Hyper-parameters of Random Forest Implementing Random Forest Out-of-Bag (OOB) Score in the Random Forest IPL Team Win Prediction Project Using Machine Learning Introduction to Boosting Gradient Boosting Algorithm Math behind GBM Implementing GBM in python Regularized Greedy Forests Extreme Gradient Boosting Implementing XGBM in python Tuning Hyperparameters of XGBoost in Python Implement XGBM in R/H2O Adaptive Boosting Implementing Adaptive Boosing LightGBM Implementing LightGBM in Python Catboost Implementing Catboost in Python
Different Hyperparameter Tuning methods Implementing Different Hyperparameter Tuning methods GridsearchCV RandomizedsearchCV Bayesian Optimization for Hyperparameter Tuning Hyperopt
Understanding SVM Algorithm SVM Kernels In-depth Intuition and Practical Implementation SVM Kernel Tricks Kernels and Hyperparameters in SVM Implementing SVM from Scratch in Python and R
Introduction to Principal Component Analysis Steps to Perform Principal Compound Analysis Computation of Covariance Matrix Finding Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues Implementing PCA in python Visualizing PCA A Brief Introduction to Linear Discriminant Analysis Introduction to Factor Analysis
Introduction to Clustering Applications of Clustering Evaluation Metrics for Clustering Understanding K-Means Implementation of K-Means in Python Implementation of K-Means in R Choosing Right Value for K Profiling Market Segments using K-Means Clustering Hierarchical Clustering Implementation of Hierarchial Clustering DBSCAN Defining Similarity between clusters Build Better and Accurate Clusters with Gaussian Mixture Models
Understand Basics of Recommendation Engine with Case Study
8 Ways to Improve Accuracy of Machine Learning Models
Introduction to Dask Working with CuML
Introduction to Machine Learning Interpretability Framework and Interpretable Models model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Implementing Interpretable Model Understanding SHAP Out-of-Core ML Introduction to Interpretable Machine Learning Models Model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Game Theory & Shapley Values
Introduction to Machine Learning Interpretability Framework and Interpretable Models model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Implementing Interpretable Model Understanding SHAP Out-of-Core ML Introduction to Interpretable Machine Learning Models Model Agnostic Methods for Interpretability Game Theory & Shapley Values
Introduction to AutoML Implementation of MLBox Introduction to PyCaret TPOT Auto-Sklearn EvalML
Pickle and Joblib Introduction to Model Deployment
Deploying Machine Learning Model using Streamlit Deploying ML Models in Docker Deploy Using Streamlit Deploy on Heroku Deploy Using Netlify Introduction to Amazon Sagemaker Setting up Amazon SageMaker Using SageMaker Endpoint to Generate Inference Deploy on Microsoft Azure Cloud Introduction to Flask for Model Deploying ML model using Flask
Model Deployment in Android Model Deployment in Iphone

Data Engineering for Beginners – Get Acquainted with the Spark Architecture

S
Siddharth Sonkar Last Updated : 01 Dec, 2023
5 min read

Overview

  • Learn about the Spark Architecture
  • Learn about different execution modes

Introduction

Apache Spark is a unified computing engine and a set of libraries for parallel data processing on computer clusters. It is the most actively developed open-source engine for this task, making it a standard tool for any developer or data scientist interested in big data.

Spark supports multiple widely-used programming languages (Python, Java, Scala, and R), includes libraries for diverse tasks ranging from SQL to streaming and machine learning, and Spark runs anywhere from a laptop to a cluster of thousands of servers. This makes it an easy system to start with and scale-up to big data processing or an incredibly large scale.

spark architecture

With more than 500 contributors from across 200 organizations responsible for code and a user base of 225,000+ members, Apache Spark has become mainstream and most in-demand big data framework across all major industries. E-commerce companies like Alibaba, social networking companies like Tencent, and Chinese search engine Baidu, all run apache spark operations at scale.

This article is a single-stop resource that gives the Spark architecture overview with the help of a spark architecture diagram.

Table of contents

The Architecture of a Spark Application

Below are the high-level components of the architecture of the Apache Spark application:

The Spark driver

The driver is the process “in the driver seat” of your Spark Application. It is the controller of the execution of a Spark Application and maintains all of the states of the Spark cluster (the state and tasks of the executors). It must interface with the cluster manager in order to actually get physical resources and launch executors.

At the end of the day, this is just a process on a physical machine that is responsible for maintaining the state of the application running on the cluster.

The Spark executors

Spark executors are the processes that perform the tasks assigned by the Spark driver. Executors have one core responsibility: take the tasks assigned by the driver, run them, and report back their state (success or failure) and results. Each Spark Application has its own separate executor processes.

The cluster manager

The Spark Driver and Executors do not exist in a void, and this is where the cluster manager comes in. The cluster manager is responsible for maintaining a cluster of machines that will run your Spark Application(s). Somewhat confusingly, a cluster manager will have its own “driver” (sometimes called master) and “worker” abstractions.

The core difference is that these are tied to physical machines rather than processes (as they are in Spark). The machine on the left of the illustration is the Cluster Manager Driver Node. The circles represent daemon processes running on and managing each of the individual worker nodes. There is no Spark Application running as of yet—these are just the processes from the cluster manager.

When the time comes to actually run a Spark Application, we request resources from the cluster manager to run it. Depending on how our application is configured, this can include a place to run the Spark driver or might be just resources for the executors for our Spark Application. Over the course of Spark Application execution, the cluster manager will be responsible for managing the underlying machines that our application is running on.

spark architecture - Cluster Manager

There are several useful things to note about this architecture:

  1. Each application gets its own executor processes, which stay up for the duration of the whole application and run tasks in multiple threads.This has the benefit of isolating applications from each other, on both the scheduling side (each driver schedules its own tasks) and executor side (tasks from different applications run in different JVMs).
    However, it also means that data cannot be shared across different Spark applications (instances of SparkContext) without writing it to an external storage system.
  2. Spark is agnostic to the underlying cluster manager. As long as it can acquire executor processes, and these communicate with each other, it is relatively easy to run it even on a cluster manager that also supports other applications (e.g. Mesos/YARN).
  3. The driver program must listen for and accept incoming connections from its executors throughout its lifetime (e.g., see spark.driver.port in the network config section). As such, the driver program must be network addressable from the worker nodes.
  4. Because the driver schedules tasks on the cluster, it should be run close to the worker nodes, preferably on the same local area network. If you’d like to send requests to the cluster remotely, it’s better to open an RPC to the driver and have it submit operations from nearby than to run a driver far away from the worker nodes.

Cluster Manager Types

The system currently supports several cluster managers:

  • Standalone – a simple cluster manager included with Spark that makes it easy to set up a cluster.
  • Apache Mesos – a general cluster manager that can also run Hadoop MapReduce and service applications.
  • Hadoop YARN – the resource manager in Hadoop 2.
  • Kubernetes – an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

A third-party project (not supported by the Spark project) exists to add support for Nomad as a cluster manager.

Execution Modes

An execution mode gives you the power to determine where the aforementioned resources are physically located when you go running your application. You have three modes to choose from:

  1. Cluster mode
  2. Client mode
  3. Local mode

Cluster mode

Cluster mode is probably the most common way of running Spark Applications. In cluster mode, a user submits a pre-compiled JAR, Python script, or R script to a cluster manager. The cluster manager then launches the driver process on a worker node inside the cluster, in addition to the executor processes. This means that the cluster manager is responsible for maintaining all Spark Application– related processes.

Client mode

Client mode is nearly the same as cluster mode except that the Spark driver remains on the client machine that submitted the application. This means that the client machine is responsible for maintaining the Spark driver process, and the cluster manager maintains the executor processes. These machines are commonly referred to as gateway machines or edge nodes.

Local mode

Local mode is a significant departure from the previous two modes: it runs the entire Spark Application on a single machine. It achieves parallelism through threads on that single machine. This is a common way to learn Spark, to test your applications, or experiment iteratively with local development.

However, we do not recommend using local mode for running production applications.

Conclusion

To sum up, Spark helps us break down the intensive and high-computational jobs into smaller, more concise tasks which are then executed by the worker nodes. It also achieves the processing of real-time or archived data using its basic architecture.

I recommend you go through the following data engineering resources to enhance your knowledge-

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1.What is Spark streaming architecture?

Spark Streaming helps Spark handle data in real time. It breaks down info into small bits, letting you analyze data as it comes in quickly.

Q2.What are the main concepts of Apache Spark?

Apache Spark works around RDDs (think of them as datasets), and two main actions: transforming data (changing it) and taking actions (doing something with it

Q3. What is the architecture of RDD in Spark?

 RDD is like an intelligent way to organize data in Spark. It’s good at handling errors and works across a bunch of computers. You can change data (transformations) or do stuff with it (actions) using RDDs.

Q4.What is the Main language of Apache Spark?

 Spark mostly talks Scala, a coding language. But it’s cool with others like Java, Python, and R too. Scala is like Spark’s favorite language because they get along well and make things happen faster.

I hope you might have liked the article. If you have any questions related to this article do let me know in the comments section below.

Apache Spark ArchitectureClient ModeCluster managerCluster ModeLocal ModeSpark driver
S
Siddharth Sonkar

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