Apache Kafka vs. IBM MQ vs. HPE Zerto Software

Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.

In the context of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, IBM MQ plays a pivotal role in managing the substantial data streams emanating from interconnected devices. Its primary function is to guarantee the dependable transmission and processing of data, catering to a diverse range of IoT use cases, including but not limited to smart city initiatives, healthcare monitoring systems, and industrial automation solutions. In the telecommunications sector, IBM MQ is employed for message routing, call detail record (CDR) processing, and network management to ensure real-time data exchange and fault tolerance. When managing the supply chain and logistics, IBM MQ is used to ensure timely and accurate communication between different entities, including suppliers, warehouses, and transportation providers. IBM MQ can be cost-prohibitive for smaller organizations due to licensing and maintenance costs. In such cases, open-source or lightweight messaging solutions may be more appropriate. For scenarios requiring extremely low-latency, real-time data exchange, and high throughput, other messaging technologies, like Apache Kafka, may be more suitable due to their specialized design for such use cases.

Incentivized

Zerto is well suited for disaster recovery and virtual machine replication between multiple data centers. DR testing for audit or regulations is much easier with Zerto, great reporting, dashboard etc. It is not well suited for physical server replication for disaster recovery or as a primary backup solution.

Incentivized

• Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
• Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
• Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).

Incentivized

• The documentation is very clear,It is understandable and the support helps to configure it in the best way.
• Server guidelines make it possible to get the most out of work management. It's broad, we can work with different operating systems, I really recommend using linux.
• It is highly compatible with systems, brockers, applications, and data accumulation programs, it is possible to configure everything so that after the installation of programs, they can communicate with each other and then throw data to an external program that accumulates it and represents in clear details of steps to follow and make business decisions.

Incentivized

• Anyone with a large disk (VMDK) knows the issues of VMware snapshots. Most backup software is a "point in time backup" that uses snapshots. While the backup can be run multiple times per day the stress of the snapshot on the host and storage is eliminated by the continuous protection of Zerto log replication.
• A client had a the disks on a VM go missing for some reason. We had them "flip the switch" for a real fail over and press the fail over button. The VM on our DR site started to come alive as the VM at the customer site was brought down. When the DR VM was fully up, automatic reverse replication started. The DR machine was available in a few minutes (to take into account different host hardware) for access. One the vm at both sites were in sync, we had the customer again repeat the fail over process and the DR site VM was turned off and the Production site VM was brought back on line. This was a 200 GB VM and the whole process was finished in about 3 hours.
• Zerto also allows for "Test" fail overs that can be configured on many different functions, such as host, datastore, network and IP usage. Configuring the IPs is crucial to avoid inadvertent site cross contamination of the same VM.
• Zerto can also retrieve files from any VM disk on the DR site without starting a VM. Very handy for retrieving files or directories.
• Since Zerto is running continuous log replication, changes on the production VM are nearly instantaneously copied to the DR site. As with any data process, having sufficient bandwidth for "churn" peaks minimizes the delay in updating the DR site.

Incentivized

• Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
• Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
• Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified

• There is limitation on number of svrconn connections you can have to MQ on the mainframe which has been an major issue for us. This has been an issue for us for over 4 years and still no fix although I am aware IBM have been working on a solution over the last year.
• When upgrading to MQ V9.3 on our MQ appliances there is no fall-back option. This was the same for MQ V9.2 upgrade from MQ V9.0. For production upgrades this I believe is not acceptable.
• AMS is not supplied as part of the standard mainframe MQ licence. You need an extra licence. IBM tell customers how important security and protecting data is yet they still want to charge for this software. The cost of MQ on the mainframe is not cheap so I would expect AMS to be part of the base product.

Incentivized

• Moving a VM from one protection group to another could be simplified.
• I would like to see an executive-style report of recovery and testing for upper management.
• The ability to deploy Zerto as a virtual appliance, without the need for a windows server.

Incentivized

Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet

Incentivized

We really like the easy setup of this replication solution, as well as the ease of management. Not to mention, our internal IT Economist determined that the Zerto solution would provide the best ROI out of the competing solutions we analyzed. So far, his calculations have been spot on, and we have saved substantially

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file

Incentivized

I give it a nine because it has significantly improved my team's data reliability and operational efficiency. Its great security features give us peace of mind, knowing our sensitive data is well protected. While the setup might initially be complex, I believe the long-term benefits far outweigh this hurdle.

Incentivized

Zerto is very easy to implement and support. Uses are broad, only issues are once something doesn't sync it is difficult to get assistance until your reach tier 2 or tier 3 support. Basic file and folder recovery is great. Live and test fail overs are also easy to implement without issue.

Incentivized

The messages are delivered instantly with this software and it integrates with our technology stack, in terms of availability we only had one failure when we were doing some testing and integration with third parties, the features of this software make it always available and its deployment is easy for the company, it does not generate expenses due to failures

Incentivized

Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.

Incentivized

There are very specific things that must be elevated to more specialized areas of support, but the common support is very agile when receiving questions or when we leave concerns in real time. I recommend the support of the program in this regard.

Incentivized

Overall support is very good. We sometimes get pushback when asking Level 1 support to escalate to Level 2. This causes undue frustrations when you need a more knowledgeable support person to get involved. We've had to escalate to account reps a few times for this scenario. Zerto is very responsive and normally handles our requests very quickly.

Incentivized

Make sure the end goal is in mind before implementing. That way results meet expectations.

Incentivized

I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.

Incentivized

We found IBM MQ very easy to get started and quick to learn by the new users with a short learning curve and seamlessly integrates with IBM products, and quick to perform self-service analytics and make informed business decisions. IBM MQ is also very straightforward in creating simple and best reports, which are very profitable and productive.

Incentivized

We started out using Backup Exec which was in service until we virtualized our environment where it didn't perform as well at the time. Then we switched to Veeam which worked well, but then as we started needing to do migrations and off-site DR, we found ourselves relying on Zerto more often.

Incentivized

For my organization, the pricing model was an upfront investment for the Zerto licenses. My organization prefers to pay upfront and not deal with month-to-month or year-to-year pricing models that most companies are moving to. But for some, the investment may be more than they can afford, and would prefer the year-to-year pricing model.

Incentivized

I mean, it was 6 years ago, but we were up and going with all applications synchronizing in short order. The longest tasks was getting the 30 TB of application data synchronized between the datacenters.

Incentivized

• Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
• Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
• Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.

Incentivized

• Positive- Message Reliability and Reduced downtime, increases the ROI many times.
• Positive- Increased stability and enhanced customer experience
• Negative- cost is very high - Both licensing and integration cost
• Negative- Learning and training cost of IBM MQ is high as its complex to use and integrate

Incentivized

• Zerto is like having the best possible insurance ... it just works, and often provides the backups taken overnight that are key in recovering data/work between overnight backups.
• Zerto easily enabled the move of primary datacenters by allowing easy failover to a secondary site, and failback to the primary site.

Incentivized