Hadoop is an open source framework for distributed storage and processing of large datasets across clusters of commodity hardware. It uses Google's MapReduce programming model and Google File System for reliability. The Hadoop architecture includes a distributed file system (HDFS) that stores data across clusters and a job scheduling and resource management framework (YARN) that allows distributed processing of large datasets in parallel. Key components include the NameNode, DataNodes, ResourceManager and NodeManagers. Hadoop provides reliability through replication of data blocks and automatic recovery from failures.