HortonWorks introduced the latest release of its open Hadoop distribution yesterday morning.  Version 1.2 features several major features and improvements, including the addition of Ambari.

Apache Ambari is a provisioning and monitoring utility for Hadoop clusters. The web-based tool displays usage and performance metrics that can come in very handy when troubleshooting technical difficulties in large deployments that can’t be manually monitored.

“The inclusion of the newest version of Apache Ambari in the Hortonworks Data Platform represents a major step forward in the open source community and the Apache Hadoop ecosystem,” said Herb Cunitz, president of Hortonworks.  “ Hortonworks remains solely committed to developing a 100-percent open source, stable and reliable Apache Hadoop-based platform that will help grow and expand the ecosystem around Hadoop, driving the collection, storage, management and analysis of big data at leading enterprise organizations worldwide.”

HDP 1.2 includes several other major enhancements, including a redesigned architecture that’s easier to secure and support for multi-threaded Hive queries. In addition, HortonWorks says that it tweaked HBase to perform better in demanding environments where scalability is especially important.  The Big Data startup says the upgraded software offers “important performance and operational improvements” in this area.

Finally, HDP 1.2 features an improved ODBC connector that allows for easier integration with proprietary databases. This is one of the more important additions to the platform.

Big Data can prove to be a huge asset when handled properly, but it has to be practical first. The enterprise users that HortonWorks is targeting with its software rely on missing-critical systems that can’t just be replaced on a whim because they’re not compatible with Hadoop. That’s why the startup has been pushing the OBDC driver so aggressively ever since it was first made available in October last year