The NameNode stores modifications to the file system as a log appended to a native file system file, edits.
When a NameNode starts up, it reads HDFS state from an image file, fsimage, and then applies edits from the edits log file.
It then writes new HDFS state to the fsimage and starts normal operation with an empty edits file.
FsImage is a file stored on the OS filesystem that contains the complete directory structure (namespace) of the HDFS with details about the location of the data on the Data Blocks and which blocks are stored on which node.
EditLogs is a transaction log that recorde the changes in the HDFS file system or any action performed on the HDFS cluster such as addtion of a new block, replication, deletion etc., It records the changes since the last FsImage was created, it then merges the changes into the FsImage file to create a new FsImage file.
When we are starting namenode, latest FsImage file is loaded into "in-memory" and at the same time, EditLog file is also loaded into memory if FsImage file does not contain up to date information.
Namenode stores metadata in "in-memory" in order to serve the multiple client request(s) as fast as possible. If this is not done, then for every operation , namenode has to read the metadata information from the disk to in-memory. This process will consume more disk seek time for every operation.
