Hi Bill Thanks a lot for the long explanation. So two options exists (please correct me If I am wrong): 1) Use persistent master nodes and expand for extra temp workloads on demand 2) Alternatively, Have components (Hive, Navigator, etc) save their metadata into S3 or RDS so that all cluster can be teared off and then created from scracth repeately. (That is a better option for cost savings) Many Thanks, Cengiz ... View more

Thanks for this. I think, we can summarize this as follows: * If only External Hive Table is used to process S3 data, the technical issues regarding consistency, scalable meta-data handling would be resolved. * If External & Internal Hive Tables are used in combination to process S3 data, the technical issues regarding consistency, scalable meta-data handling and data locality would be resolved. * If Spark alone is used on top of S3, the technical issues regarding consistency with (in memory processing), scalable meta-data handling would be resolved. As Spark will perform transient storage in memory and only read the initial data from S3 and write back the result. ... View more