No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Apache Hadoop vs IBM Db2 Warehouse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Hadoop
Ranking in Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Db2 Warehouse
Ranking in Data Warehouse
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Apache Hadoop is 3.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Db2 Warehouse is 3.2%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Warehouse Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Hadoop3.2%
IBM Db2 Warehouse3.2%
Other93.6%
Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

NR
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance maintained but requires ongoing management and support
Hadoop was used for years, but there were problems since the people who originally set it up left the firm. The group that owned it later didn't have the technical resources to properly maintain it. Although there was nothing wrong with Hadoop itself, issues arose without proper management and upgrades.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Advanced features enhance business intelligence, but complex management calls for improved user guidance
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master. They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues. They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Since both Apache Hadoop and Amazon EC2 are elastic in nature, we can scale and expand on demand for a specific PoC, and scale down when it's done."
"It's good for storing historical data and handling analytics on a huge amount of data."
"Hadoop is extensible — it's elastic."
"It is a reliable product."
"The solution is perfect for when you have big data."
"If the data volume is too big, it's IoT data, or the stream of data is too much, this solution can handle it and I would definitely recommend Apache Hadoop."
"The ability to add multiple nodes without any restriction is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Apache Hadoop helps us in cases of hardware failure because it works 24/7, and sometimes servers crash in the field."
"Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies."
"The solution works with big data, so it's pretty scalable."
"If you have good people designing how the data is stored, it's a marvelous tool."
"It's easy and practical to use."
"The initial setup was really easy; it's Docker compliant, you just pull the image from the IBM repository and that's it, and the deployment must have taken less than an hour, making it really fast to have it completely working."
"It can scale effectively as long as resources are available."
"The most valuable features of IBM Db2 Warehouse include its availability, easy integration, ability to deal with a large size of data, excellent performance with no delays, powerful security mechanisms, and effective support."
"It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily."
 

Cons

"It needs better user interface (UI) functionalities."
"It would be good to have more advanced analytics tools."
"It's good for what is meant to do, a lot of big data, but it's not as good for low latency applications."
"In certain cases, the configurations for dealing with data skewness do not make any sense."
"It could be because the solution is open source, and therefore not funded like bigger companies, but we find the solution runs slow."
"The key shortcoming is its inability to handle queries when there is insufficient memory. This limitation can be bypassed by processing the data in chunks."
"The solution is not easy to use. The solution should be easy to use and suitable for almost any case connected with the use of big data or working with large amounts of data."
"The product's availability of comprehensive training materials could be improved for faster onboarding and skill development among team members."
"There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad."
"The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web."
"IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface."
"In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable."
"The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years."
"There should be more material available for training and training should be free."
"Lacks sufficient documentation and particularly in Spanish."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's reasonable, but there's room for improvement in cost-effectiveness."
"The price of Apache Hadoop could be less expensive."
"If my company can use the cloud version of Apache Hadoop, particularly the cloud storage feature, it would be easier and would cost less because an on-premises deployment has a higher cost during storage, for example, though I don't know exactly how much Apache Hadoop costs."
"We just use the free version."
"For any big enterprise the costs can be handled, and it is suitable for big enterprises because the scale of data is large. For medium and small enterprises, the tool is on the high-price side."
"​There are no licensing costs involved, hence money is saved on the software infrastructure​."
"Do take into consider that data storage and compute capacity scale differently and hence purchasing a "boxed" / 'all-in-one" solution (software and hardware) might not be the best idea."
"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."
"In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Hadoop?
The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level. While it might be free for students, organizations typically need to pay for their subscriptions. Th...
What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your primary use case for Apache Hadoop?
My use cases for Apache Hadoop include the setups I completed, connecting to the database, and analyzing the incidences, making it a good tool for Hadoop. Apache Hadoop helps us analyze all of the ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The pricing for medium and large environments is almost the same as Oracle. I rate the pricing as six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Warehouse?
While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more u...
What is your primary use case for IBM Db2 Warehouse?
The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
InfoSphere Warehouse, IBM InfoSphere Warehouse
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
Alameda County Social Services Agency, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Hadoop vs. IBM Db2 Warehouse and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.