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Apache Hadoop vs IBM Db2 Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Hadoop
Ranking in Data Warehouse
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Db2 Warehouse
Ranking in Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Apache Hadoop is 3.2%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 2.9%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Hadoop3.2%
IBM Db2 Warehouse2.9%
Other93.9%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

NR
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance maintained but requires ongoing management and support
Hadoop was used for years, but there were problems since the people who originally set it up left the firm. The group that owned it later didn't have the technical resources to properly maintain it. Although there was nothing wrong with Hadoop itself, issues arose without proper management and upgrades.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The Distributed File System, which is the base of Hadoop, has been the most valuable feature with its ability to store video, pictures, JSON, XML, and plain text all in the same file system."
"Apache Hadoop is crucial in projects that save and retrieve data daily. Its valuable features are scalability and stability. It is easy to integrate with the existing infrastructure."
"I liked that Apache Hadoop was powerful, had a lot of tools, and the fact that it was free and community-developed."
"The most valuable features are powerful tools for ingestion, as data is in multiple systems."
"Its flexibility in handling and storing large volumes of data is particularly beneficial, as is its resilience, which ensures data redundancy and fault tolerance."
"Hadoop File System is compatible with almost all the query engines."
"Hadoop is a distributed file system, and it scales reasonably well provided you give it sufficient resources."
"I recommend it for the telecom sector. I know it well, and it's a good fit."
"The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions."
"If you have good people designing how the data is stored, it's a marvelous tool."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"Provides good security and reliability."
"The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
 

Cons

"It would be good to have more advanced analytics tools."
"Hadoop in and of itself stores data with 3x redundancy and our organization has come to the conclusion that the default 3x results in too much wasted disk space."
"The solution is very expensive."
"It requires a great deal of learning curve to understand. The overall Hadoop ecosystem has a large number of sub-products. There is ZooKeeper, and there are a whole lot of other things that are connected. In many cases, their functionalities are overlapping, and for a newcomer or our clients, it is very difficult to decide which of them to buy and which of them they don't really need. They require a consulting organization for it, which is good for organizations such as ours because that's what we do, but it is not easy for the end customers to gain so much knowledge and optimally use it."
"The load optimization capabilities of the product are an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Since it is an open-source product, there won't be much support."
"From the Apache perspective or the open-source community, they need to add more capabilities to make life easier from a configuration and deployment perspective."
"The solution needs a better tutorial."
"The primary challenges customers face with IBM Db2 Warehouse are related to its complexity in usage. It requires highly skilled professionals who understand Db2, and both training and support are challenging to obtain."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"I previously used DataStage, which I think is better than InfoSphere Warehouse."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
"Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We just use the free version."
"This is a low cost and powerful solution."
"It's reasonable, but there's room for improvement in cost-effectiveness."
"We don't directly pay for it. Our clients pay for it, and they usually don't complain about the price. So, it is probably acceptable."
"Do take into consider that data storage and compute capacity scale differently and hence purchasing a "boxed" / 'all-in-one" solution (software and hardware) might not be the best idea."
"The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level."
"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."
"If my company can use the cloud version of Apache Hadoop, particularly the cloud storage feature, it would be easier and would cost less because an on-premises deployment has a higher cost during storage, for example, though I don't know exactly how much Apache Hadoop costs."
"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Hadoop?
The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level. While it might be free for students, organizations typically need to pay for their subscriptions. Th...
What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your primary use case for Apache Hadoop?
My use cases for Apache Hadoop include the setups I completed, connecting to the database, and analyzing the incidences, making it a good tool for Hadoop. Apache Hadoop helps us analyze all of the ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Hadoop vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.