How to change the replication factor of specific directory in Hadoop

Question

I know that the default replication factor of Hadoop is 3. But I have a file which is very important, so I want to change the replication factor of the directory where I am placing the file. Is it possible to change the replication factor of a directory?

Answer 1

Yes, you can change the replication factor of the file as well as the directory. Use the below commands:

hdfs dfs –setrep –w 4 /dir/file.txt 
hdfs dfs -setrep -R 4 /dir

But the important thing to keep in mind is altering the replication factor will only change the replication of the file which is already present. But the new file will be created by the default replication.