Hadoop Distributed File System vs SeaweedFS

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is the primary distributed storage used by Hadoop applications. Its clusters use a NameNode to manage filesystem metadata and DataNodes to store data. HDFS is designed for fault tolerance on commodity hardware and high-throughput streaming access and batch processing, not low latency. It is tuned for files from gigabytes to terabytes, clusters with hundreds of nodes, and tens of millions of files in one instance. Administration includes shell-like commands, NameNode and DataNode web servers, fsck diagnostics, safemode, and a cluster balancer. Its permissions model shares much with POSIX and can optionally use POSIX ACLs; authentication supports simple operating-system identity or Kerberos. Configured encryption protects data at rest and in transit using encryption zones and the Hadoop Key Management Server. WebHDFS provides a REST API, and listed storage integrations include Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Tencent COS. HDFS is free to use under Apache License 2.0, with self-hosted cluster deployment.

SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system that serves S3 objects, Iceberg tables, and POSIX files from one cluster. It supports S3, POSIX mounts, HDFS-compatible access, an Iceberg REST catalog, and WebDAV. Its built-in Iceberg catalog supports queries with Spark, Trino, Dremio, and DuckDB. The product describes scaling from gigabytes to petabytes and supporting billions of files. Development and testing under 25 TB are free, but production deployments require a paid license regardless of size. Monthly capacity licensing is $2 a month, based on used storage including replication or erasure-coding overhead; yearly licensing is $20 a year. Enterprise features include deleted-file recovery within a configurable retention window, point-in-time restoration, repair of missing or corrupted erasure-coding shards, and OIDC sign-in with role mapping. The free 25 TB trial limits deleted-file recovery retention to one hour. Enterprise support is optional and priced separately from capacity licensing. Community support is free and has no guaranteed response time. SeaweedFS is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, with API access and self-hosted deployment.