Hi Ramana,
We've isolated the problem! Below is our simple test case whereby a SQL query only runs local and not distributed. Our single zookeeper instance is running only on node Drill1 amd the foreman drillbit is running on Drill2. SQL --> use dfs; select xbin,ybin,numberOfConnections from `/geo/appdata/rawdata/2014/SameNamedata.json`; where SameNamedata.json is present on nodes : Drill1, Drill2 and Drill3, and is of the form --> { "NumberOfConnections": 1, "StartTime": "2014-10- 02T14:30:00Z", "EndTime": "2014-10-02T14:45:00Z", "XBin": 566150, "YBin": 3270100 } { "NumberOfUniqueSubscribers": 2, "NumberOfConnections": 2, "StartTime": "2014-10-02T14:30:00Z", "EndTime": "2014-10- 02T14:45:00Z", "XBin": 571350, "YBin": 3268100, "AverageSnr": - 6.2870720195528573 } On the 'foreman' node (Drill2) , drillbit.log reveals the following trace --> 2014-10-28 10:55:06,883 [UserServer-1] DEBUG o.a.drill.exec.rpc.user.UserServer - Received query to run. Returning query handle. 2014-10-28 10:55:06,893 [WorkManager Event Thread] DEBUG o.apache.drill.exec.work.WorkManager - Starting pending task org.apache.drill.exec.work.WorkManager$RunnableWrapper@bec4752 2014-10-28 10:55:06,911 [091c7c1d-fb6b-4685-9f1d-04f08afd1053:foreman] DEBUG o.a.d.e.s.h.HBaseStoragePluginConfig - Initializing HBase StoragePlugin configuration with zookeeper quorum 'localhost', port '2181'. 2014-10-28 10:55:06,912 [091c7c1d-fb6b-4685-9f1d-04f08afd1053:foreman] DEBUG o.a.drill.exec.store.SchemaFactory - Took 17 ms to register schemas. 2014-10-28 10:55:06,953 [091c7c1d-fb6b-4685-9f1d-04f08afd1053:foreman] DEBUG o.a.d.e.p.s.h.DefaultSqlHandler - Optiq Logical : ProjectRel(xbin=[$1], ybin=[$2], numberOfConnections=[$3]): rowcount = 100.0, cumulative cost = {200.0 rows, 401.0 cpu, 0.0 io, 0.0 network, 0.0 memory}, id = 1259 EnumerableTableAccessRel(table= [[dfs, /geo/appdata/rawdata/2014/SameNamedata.json]]): rowcount = 100.0, cumulative cost = {100.0 rows, 101.0 cpu, 0.0 io, 0.0 network, 0.0 memory}, id = 1256 The line --> 2014-10-28 10:55:06,911 [091c7c1d-fb6b-4685-9f1d- 04f08afd1053:foreman] DEBUG o.a.d.e.s.h.HBaseStoragePluginConfig - Initializing HBase StoragePlugin configuration with zookeeper quorum 'localhost', port '2181'. may be the key. We're not using HBase and their is no Zookeeper instance running local on Drill2 !! May be a bug ? (Although it might still be our configuration I suppose). Cheers, Chris