Can anyone please suggest me where should I start?   Well I started it off with Apache Hadoop binary on Ubuntu  Then moved on to manual installation of Cloudera hadoop  finally landed in Cloudera manager .  to start with I would suggest you from apache hadoop manual deployment and then side by side Cloudera Quickstart to explore other cdh eco systesm like hive , impala , many more .    Do you recommend taking training courses with cloud era in order to eventually build an career in this area?    That totally depends on to be frank to bring up a cluster i mean single node cluster :)) it took me a good20 days because i am from Java J2ee development guy had to roll up my sleeves to  vmare , Linux Os then hang on to hadoop. Cloudera community is pretty active so we have your back on any troubleshooting  :)))                                             Welcome  to the  Cloudera Hadoop  Community .    ... View more