What is big data?

It’s actually quite simple: You have big data whenever a single host isn’t enough to either store or process your data.

What does it mean?
Suppose you have a Postgresql Database and you run into scaling problems. There’s a choice now, either get ΓÇ£betterΓÇ¥ hardware so that you can continue to work on a single host or split the database to span multiple hosts.

Suppose you have a file store and all disks are full. You can either buy larger disks or use some distributed storage system where you just add hosts to expand the total storage capacity.

In both cases you are dealing with big data.

Big data (for me) isn’t anything that says X MB of data. It’s simply the case when you ~~need~~ decide to use a distributed system to handle your data.
/serverhorror