HFile is the internal file format for HBase to store its data. These are the first two lines of the description of HFile from its source code:
File format for hbase.
A file of sorted key/value pairs. Both keys and values are byte arrays.
We don't need to know the details of HFile for our administration tasks. However, by using the HFile tool, we can get some useful information from HFile.
The HFile tool provides the facility to view a textualized version of HFile content.
We can also get the metadata of an HFile file by using this tool. Some metadata, such as entry count and average Key/Value size, are important indicators of performance tuning.
We will describe how to use an HFile tool to show textualized content and metadata of HFile files.
