1. A method for spill management during a shuffle phase of a map-reduce job that is performed in a distributed computer system on distributed files, said method comprising: a) identifying key-value pairs (ki,vi) belonging to said distributed files for said map-reduce job; b) performing a pre-shuffle phase of said map-reduce job on said key-value pairs (ki,vi) on a number of map nodes of said distributed computer system to generate keyed partitions (Ki,PRTj); c) providing a spilling protocol for said keyed partitions (Ki,PRTj) based on at least one popularity attribute of said key-value pairs (ki,vi); d) spilling said keyed partitions (Ki,PRTj) over storage resources of said distributed computer system in accordance with said spilling protocol; e) providing said spilling protocol to a number of reduce nodes of said distributed computer system to enable said reduce nodes to locate and access said keyed partitions (Ki,PRTj) during said shuffle phase; and f) performing a post-shuffle phase of said map-reduce job to produce an output list of said map-reduce job.