Github user srowen commented on a diff in the pull request:
https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/12004#discussion_r113696235
--- Diff: docs/cloud-integration.md ---
@@ -0,0 +1,512 @@
+---
+layout: global
+displayTitle: Integration with Cloud Infrastructures
+title: Integration with Cloud Infrastructures
+description: Introduction to cloud storage support in Apache Spark
SPARK_VERSION_SHORT
+---
+<!---
+ Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+ you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+ You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+ http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+ Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ limitations under the License. See accompanying LICENSE file.
+-->
+
+* This will become a table of contents (this text will be scraped).
+{:toc}
+
+## <a name="introduction"></a>Introduction
+
+
+All the public cloud infrastructures, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google
GCS and others offer
+persistent data storage systems, "object stores". These are not quite the
same as classic file
+systems: in order to scale to hundreds of Petabytes, without any single
points of failure
+or size limits, object stores, "blobstores", have a simpler model of `name
=> data`.
+
+Apache Spark can read or write data in object stores for data access.
+through filesystem connectors implemented in Apache Hadoop or provided by
third-parties.
+These libraries make the object stores look *almost* like filesystems,
with directories and
+operations on files (rename) and directories (create, rename, delete)
which mimic
+those of a classic filesystem. Because of this, Spark and Spark-based
applications
+can work with object stores, generally treating them as as if they were
slower-but-larger filesystems.
+
+With these connectors, Apache Spark supports object stores as the source
+of data for analysis, including Spark Streaming and DataFrames.
+
+
+## <a name="quick_start"></a>Quick Start
+
+Provided the relevant libraries are on the classpath, and Spark is
configured with your credentials,
+objects in an object store can be can be read or written through URLs
which uses the name of the
+object store client as the schema and the bucket/container as the hostname.
+
+
+### Dependencies
+
+The Spark application neeeds the relevant Hadoop libraries, which can
+be done by including the `spark-hadoop-cloud` module for the specific
version of spark used.
+
+The Spark application should include <code>hadoop-openstack</code>
dependency, which can
+be done by including the `spark-hadoop-cloud` module for the specific
version of spark used.
+For example, for Maven support, add the following to the
<code>pom.xml</code> file:
+
+{% highlight xml %}
+<dependencyManagement>
+ ...
+ <dependency>
+ <groupId>org.apache.spark</groupId>
+ <artifactId>spark-hadoop-cloud_2.11</artifactId>
+ <version>${spark.version}</version>
+ </dependency>
+ ...
+</dependencyManagement>
+{% endhighlight %}
+
+If using the Scala 2.10-compatible version of Spark, the artifact is of
course `spark-hadoop-cloud_2.10`.
+
+### Basic Use
+
+You can refer to data in an object store just as you would data in a
filesystem, by
+using a URL to the data in methods like `SparkContext.textFile()` to read
data,
+`saveAsTextFile()` to write it back.
+
+
+Because object stores are viewed by Spark as filesystems, object stores can
+be used as the source or destination of any spark work âbe it batch,
SQL, DataFrame,
+Streaming or something else.
+
+The steps to do so are as follows
+
+1. Use the full URI to refer to a bucket, including the prefix for the
client-side library
+to use. Example: `s3a://landsat-pds/scene_list.gz`
+1. Have the Spark context configured with the authentication details of
the object store.
+In a YARN cluster, this may also be done in the `core-site.xml` file.
+
+
+## <a name="output"></a>Object Stores as a substitute for HDFS
+
+As the examples show, you can write data to object stores. However, that
does not mean
+That they can be used as replacements for a cluster-wide filesystem.
+
+The full details are covered in [Cloud Object Stores are Not Real
Filesystems](#cloud_stores_are_not_filesystems).
+
+The brief summary is:
+
+| Object Store Connector | Replace HDFS? |
+|-----------------------------|--------------------|
+| `s3a://` `s3n://` from the ASF | No |
+| Amazon EMR `s3://` | Yes |
+| Microsoft Azure `wasb://` | Yes |
+| OpenStack `swift://` | No |
+
+It is possible to use any of the object stores as a destination of work,
i.e. use
+`saveAsTextFile()` or `save()` to save data there, but the commit process
may be slow
+and, unreliable in the presence of failures.
+
+It is faster and safer to use the cluster filesystem as the destination of
Spark jobs,
--- End diff --
I sort of know what this is about, but is it really a problem to use say S3
as the result of a job? it seems like that's a case that's relatively fine.
It's using it for intermediate storage where the eventual consistency could be
a problem.
I guess, generally, the object stores are more prone to errors. I'm just
wondering how actionable this is -- can we really say, here's how to do X but X
doesn't really work, so work around it?
Is it really any more reliable to distcp -- why would that be more reliable
w.r.t. S3?
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