Apache Kafka is awesome! Tricky sometimes, but we love it!
Updated January 21, 2022
Apache Kafka is awesome! Tricky sometimes, but we love it!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Apache Kafka
Kafka is an event streaming platform and this is exactly the purpose we use it for in our company. Application data-in-transit goes into Kafka, which generates an even, and all relevant applications (consumers) get notified and then consume said messages. We are really happy with the volume of data we get through and the speed that we get from Kafka. It's used in multiple 1st and 3rd party components of the applications we develop in the entire company. It addresses data proliferation and notifications. If not for Kafka, we'd have to invent a pub/sub model (which multiple people have in the past in this company) - those are complex, hard to maintain, extend and customize. Kafka is fair well documented and used so there is a lot of info about multiple use cases online.
- The pub/sub model
- Quick data transfer - regardless of volume (if you have enough resources)
- Ability to transfer large amounts of data consistently (non-binary)
- The Kafka Tool is a community-made Java application that looks and feels from the past century.
- Logging can be confusing. This certainly shows when we have to do troubleshooting.
- Hybrid scenarios - pub/sub, but there are services in and outside a Kubernetes cluster. Then there are a ~3 options, but only 2 (the harder ones) are production-safe.
- 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.
For us, Kafka really doesn't have a 1:1 alternative. We have used ActiveMQ extensively and we still use it as a lighter option for small messages. The situation is similar with Redis - although it could be used like a Kafka alternative, we do use it just as a per-component queue which other components rarely access. Kafka is just easier for our group of developers to use and encompass more use cases without having to introduce more tools into the mix.
Do you think Apache Kafka delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Apache Kafka's feature set?
Yes
Did Apache Kafka live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Apache Kafka go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Apache Kafka again?
Yes