Hadoop is a framework for distributed storage and processing of large datasets across clusters of computers. It addresses problems like hardware failure and combining data after analysis. The core components are HDFS for distributed storage and MapReduce for distributed processing. HDFS stores data as blocks across nodes and handles replication for reliability. The Namenode manages the file system namespace and metadata, while Datanodes store and retrieve blocks. Hadoop supports reliable analysis of large datasets in a distributed manner through its scalable architecture.