It seems the same question discussed at   https://community.cloudera.com/t5/Support-Questions/Passing-list-of-directories-to-ListHdfs-Processor/td-p/364798 To address the limited number of tables is to limit the number of files in HDFS terms, Listing strategy can only be controlled by File Filter and file-filter-mode on what can be listed. The Listting processing has a two-step -->What to list " controlled by the filter " -->From Whereto list  "where in your case looks like sub directory under root has a widespread and number of nested sub dirs are huge where the processor is spending time on recursive searching.    If you found this response assisted with your issue, please take a moment to login and click on "Accept as Solution" below this post. Thank you, Chandan      ... View more