The Big Data team has added a new tutorial for beginners wanting to try out the GIS Tools for Hadoop. It walks you through the steps of downloading and installing a virtual machine, installing the tools using GitHub, and points you to interesting samples and tutorials to try out.
https://github.com/Esri/gis-tools-for-hadoop/wiki/GIS-Tools-for-Hadoop-for-Beginners
This introductory tutorial is also outlined in a blog post on the Esri website.
Welcome to the wonderful world of big data!
Big Data Geodatabase Geoprocessing Developers GIS