NameNode receives following two messages from every DataNode:
1. Heartbeat: This message signals that DataNode is still alive. Periodic receipt of Heartbeat is vey important for NameNode to decide whether to use a DataNode
or not.
2. Block Report: This is a list of all the data blocks hosted on a DataNode. This report is also very useful for functioning of NameNode. With this report, NameNode gets information about what data is stored on a specific DataNode.