Optimizing resource allocation and task distribution for Hive and Apache Airflow involves considerations such as hardware infrastructure, workload characteristics, monitoring and tuning, and data partitioning strategies. Understanding these factors enables enterprises to efficiently allocate resources, distribute tasks, and optimize performance for their data pipelines, ensuring scalability and reliability in processing large volumes of data.

Designing security measures for sensitive data in Hive involves implementing a combination of strategies such as role-based access control (RBAC) to manage user permissions, encryption to protect data at rest and in transit, audit logging for monitoring access and activity, and fine-grained access control policies to restrict access to sensitive data at a granular level. These measures collectively ensure that only authorized users can access and manipulate the data, meeting the company's security requirements.

The primary advantage of using Apache Spark with Hive is its faster data processing speed, enabled by Spark's in-memory computation and optimized query execution engine, which leads to improved performance and efficiency in data processing tasks.

In case of critical data loss due to hardware failure, the immediate steps involve identifying the root cause, restoring data from the latest backup to minimize data loss, and checking for any recent system updates or changes. Additionally, seeking assistance from technical support can expedite the recovery process and ensure the restoration of normal operations.

Hive backup and recovery processes primarily aim to ensure the availability of critical data by providing mechanisms for data restoration in case of failures or data loss, thereby enhancing the reliability of Hive data storage systems.

Log Compaction is a key feature of Apache Kafka that ensures durability and fault tolerance by compacting log segments and retaining only the latest message for each key, thereby reducing storage requirements and ensuring reliable message delivery, crucial for maintaining data integrity and fault tolerance in distributed systems.

Hive supports LDAP and Kerberos authentication modes, providing flexibility and security in authenticating users accessing the Hive system, enhancing overall data security.

The Metastore component in Hive is responsible for managing metadata such as table and column definitions, storage formats, and partition information. It requires configuration during installation to specify parameters like the database type (Derby or MySQL) and connection details to the Metastore database.

The integration between Apache Airflow and Hive simplifies the orchestration of complex data pipelines, allowing for efficient scheduling, monitoring, and error handling, thereby streamlining the development and execution of data workflows involving Hive tasks.

Resource management in Hive plays a crucial role in optimizing query performance by preventing resource contention among concurrent queries, ensuring each query receives adequate resources for efficient execution, thereby reducing query latency and improving overall system throughput.