The NameNode is the centerpiece of an HDFS file system. It keeps the directory tree of all files in the file system, and tracks where across the cluster the file data is kept. It does not store the data of these files itself.
There is only One NameNode process run on any hadoop cluster. NameNode runs on its own JVM process. In a typical production cluster its run on a separate machine.
The NameNode is a Single Point of Failure for the HDFS Cluster. When the
NameNode goes down, the file system goes offline.
Client applications talk to the NameNode whenever they wish to locate a file, or when they want to add/copy/move/delete a file. The NameNode responds the successful requests by returning a list of relevant DataNode servers where the data lives.