Memory Implications on NameNode of creating SymLinks using FIleContext

[Geovanie Marquez <ge...@wellcentive.com>]

Hi,

Symbolic Links are supported in Hadoop 2.0 using FileContext's objects
createSymLink()<http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/api/org/apache/hadoop/fs/FileContext.html>
 method.

I am looking at using symlinks heavily in a program that places all files
for the previous month in Hadoop Archives (HARs), but I am wondering if
using symlinks consume Namenode memory similar to having small files in
HDFS which would defeat the purpose of placing these in HARs and bring me
roundrobin to the original problem of small files.

Also, the reason I want to use symlinks is so that when the files are
HAR'ed (and as a consequence moved) I don't have to update HBase (my file
metastore) with the new file location.

What is the memory footprint of symlinks in a NameNode?

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