Overcoming Common Performance Issues in Apache Spark (Udemy.com)
Speed up your Spark Scripts and overcome errors
Created by: Kieran Keene
Last updated April 2023
What you will learn
- The three main causes of performance issues in Apache Spark
- How to overcome shuffle induced performance issues in Apache Spark
- How to overcome skew induced performance issues in Apache Spark
- How to overcome spill induced performance issues in Apache Spark
How it compares
Against the other 150 rated Udemy courses in Hadoop on CourseDuck:
- Rating4.4 out of 5higher than 54% of them
- Reviews44#141 of 151 by number of reviews
- Length0.7 hoursshorter than 98% of them
- Last updatedApril 2023more recently than 50% of them
Course Description
Spark is a powerful framework for processing large datasets in parallel. But, with the complex architecture come frequent performance issues.
In my experience, it can be frustrating looking everywhere, trying to find a resource online that is worded in such a way that you fully understand the inner workings of Spark and how to address these issues. So, I created this course!
This is not a code-along course. This course assumes you already know how to code in Spark. Here, we're talking about how you resolve the performance issues that you encounter during your development journey! We will walk through all of the theory & you'll have actionable steps to take to resolve your performance issues.
In this course, we will cover off:
The Apache Spark Architecture
The type of deployment modes in Apache Spark
The structure of jobs in Apache Spark
How to handle the three main performance concerns in Spark
If you don't yet know how to code in Spark, you can join my 60 minute crash course in PySpark, here on Udemy.
Let's get to work understanding why your scripts are not performing as you may hope and resolve your performance issues together. Shuffle, Skew and Spill will be concerns of the past after this course!
Instructor Details
- 4.4 Rating
44 Reviews
Kieran Keene
Hey guys! I am a data engineer by trade and specialize in Python, SQL, Spark, Hive, MongoDB and more. I've come on Udemy to try and make simple, short crash courses into these technologies as I personally find the longer courses too drawn out & I often lose interest. The idea is to keep it short and sharp!
For loads of advanced Spark, Python & Big Data topics, please visit my website (the button on this page will take you there) - where I talk about scaling up to enterprise grade solutions.
More courses by Kieran Keene
Crash course: Data analytics in Python using Pandas (2023)
4.6 (593 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 1h
$49.99
More Hadoop courses
Spark Streaming - Stream Processing in Lakehouse - PySpark (2024)
4.9 (2,251 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 22.4h
$11.99
Apache Kafka Series - KSQL on ksqlDB for Stream Processing ! (2026)
4.9 (2,161 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 4h
$12.99
Apache Kafka Series - Kafka Streams for Data Processing (2026)
4.8 (6,826 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 4.8h
$14.99
Apache Kafka Series - Confluent Schema Registry & REST Proxy (2026)
4.8 (3,794 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 4.5h
$94.99
Apache Kafka - Real-time Stream Processing (Master Class) (2023)
4.8 (2,925 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 11h
$10.99
Apache Spark 3 & Big Data Essentials in Scala (2024)
4.8 (2,302 Reviews)
Provider: Udemy
Time: 7.3h
$39.99
Reviews
By Afzal M on 8/30/2026
This course is excellent for understanding the theory behind Spark performance issues. I liked how the instructor explained Shuffle, Skew and Spill in simple words, without making it too complicated and helped me understand the "why" behind performance problems, not just the "what". A humble request: It would be great if you make a follow-up course, more hands-on, where we take actual Spark jobs (similar to what we face in corporate/production environment) and walk through identifying performance issues using Spark UI, logs, execution plans, and then fixing them step by step with real code. Many of us know the theory now after this course, but connecting it to real project scenarios will make it complete. Even a case-study based approach (like "this job was taking 2 hours, here's how we found the bottleneck and brought it down to 20 mins") would be super valuable. Overall, excellent course for beginners to understand Spark performance concepts. Just needs a practical/applied version to go with it.
By Archit Bhatnagar on 7/1/2025
Short and Precise. Could have Improved by showing live examples.
By Dmitry Ochnev on 10/1/2024
The good part: The information is useful and the course is concise. The bad part, not necessarily for all: The author's manner of speech with redundant sounds, smacking between phrases. It's uncomfortable to listen. The neutral part, kind of good too: Theoretical courses are also needed. This format is perfectly OK.
By Hasan on 6/15/2023
great course thanks
By Bartlomiej Danilczyk on 5/10/2023
Great overview of Spark and the solutions to some common performance issues, would definitely recommend for anyone starting off with spark!
By Luke Thomas on 5/3/2023
Great course, highly informative and straight to the point.
By Kenneth Meeren on 4/20/2023
Brilliant course, very relevant to my work in Data Analytics (working with large datasets in AWS cloud). The presenter speaks well and is very clear, and the course moves at a good tempo.
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 88 / 100








