Apache Flume is a product enabling the flow of logs and other data into a Hadoop environment.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.
Apache Flume is well suited when the use case is log data ingestion and aggregate only, for example for compliance of configuration management. It is not well suited where you need a general-purpose real-time data ingestion pipeline that can receive log data and other forms of data streams (eg IoT, messages).
Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.
We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.
You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.
Apache Flume is open-source so support is limited. Never the less, it has great documentation and best practices documents from their end-users so it is not hard to use, setup and configure.
Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.
The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.
Apache Flume is a very good solution when your project is not very complex at transformation and enrichment, and good if you have an external management suite like Cloudera, Hortonworks, etc. But it is not a real EAI or ETL like AB Initio or Attunity so you need to know exactly what you want. On the other hand being an opensource project give Apache a lot of room to personalize thanks to its plug-able architecture and has a very nice performance having a very low CPU and Memory footprint, a single server can do the job on many occasions, as opposed to the multi-server architecture of paid products.
I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.
