title: Scaling HBASE *down* instead of *up*
body: <p>I know that you can launch hbase in non-distributed mode. It's not clear from my reading whether it's practical to use it in production for a range from one node through a few up to a full-fledged cluster. The alternative would be to abstract out an interface and toss in something simpler in the small case(s). Has anyone out there experience in deploying hbase on the low end of the scaling spectrum?</p>