The Data Engineer’s Journal

How to Configure a Databricks Cluster to Process 10 TB of Data Efficiently 🚀 Sizing a Databricks Cluster for 10 TB: A Step-by-Step Optimization Guide Processing 10 TB of data in Databricks may sound intimidating, but with a smart cluster sizing strategy, it can be both fast and cost-effective . In this post, we’ll walk through how to determine the right number of partitions, nodes, executors, and memory to optimize Spark performance for large-scale workloads. 📌 Step 1: Estimate the Number of Partitions To unlock Spark’s parallelism, data must be split into manageable partitions . Data Volume: 10 TB = 10,240 GB Target Partition Size: ~128 MB (0.128 GB) Formula: 10,240 / 0.128 = ~80,000 partitions 💡 Tip: Use file formats like Parquet or Delta Lake to ensure partitions are splittable. 📌 Step 2: Determine Number of Nodes Assuming each node handles 100–200 partitions effectively: Without overhead: 80,000 / 100–200 = 400 to 800...

  🚀 Why Your Spark Pipelines Are Slow: The 5 Core Bottlenecks (and How to Fix Them) Apache Spark is renowned for its ability to handle massive datasets with blazing speed and scalability. But if your Spark pipelines are dragging their feet, there’s a good chance they’re falling into one (or more) of the five core performance traps . This post dives into the five fundamental reasons why Spark jobs become slow, along with practical tips to diagnose and fix each one. Mastering these can make the difference between a sluggish pipeline and one that completes in seconds.           ┌──────────────┐           │                 Input File          │           └─────┬────────┘                           ▼         ┌─────────────┐         ...