How Confluent Adds to Open-Source Kafka
Author: Carl Parker
Release Date: 12/12/2023
In our digital-first world, it rarely feels like there is a one-stop shop or singular solution to a problem; however in the current landscape Open-Source Kafka is the clear leader in the data streaming world. It was the first solution of its kind upon its open-source initial release in 2011.
Many people and organisations now take advantage of the opportunities provided by OSK daily when they stream data in real-time. OSK, being open-source, is a popular tool because it is totally free to use. It can be used and configured exactly how you want, but it requires time and effort put into managing and coding your Kafka cluster.
With that in mind, wouldn’t it be easier if someone else had put that effort in for you, with professional level connectors, stream processors, and security built in? Well, our partner Confluent, can do just that.
Confluent works with Open-Source Kafka to do the heavy lifting for you, so that you can actually utilise your data streams and evaluate them effectively, rather than focusing your efforts on making them work. Confluent has a wide selection of options to ensure you can deploy its services for your cluster, whether you are new to both Apache Kafka and Confluent, or a dab hand at Kafka and want to bring in Confluent to enhance your environment.
Kafka on Confluent Cloud
Firstly, the Confluent Cloud Migration Services are available to you, which are designed to migrate your existing Kafka environment into Confluent Cloud. This engagement will provide you with hands-on help from a Confluent Professional Services expert to safely, smoothly, and securely migrate your OSK deployment into Confluent so you can begin to see the benefits of this partnership. After incorporating it into your environment, you can start effortlessly utilising the tools available, in the knowledge that they are safe and secure.
Once you have your Kafka cluster generating data and processing it through Confluent Cloud, you will experience a significant increase in scalability, automatically scaling up and down to meet demand. Not only this, but you will also benefit from infinite, cost-effective storage.
Reduce Kafka Maintenance with Confluent
One of the key downfalls of Kafka, when it is deployed in-house, is the amount of infrastructure management required to achieve your objectives. As briefly mentioned earlier, it’s a lot of effort! Instead of monitoring Kafka tooling consistently to ensure it works as needed, administrators can utilise Confluent’s holistic set of enterprise-grade capabilities to take control of these maintenance tasks and to enhance performance.
Although Kafka allows users to configure and customise it depending on their use case, Confluent truly completes the experience, with 120+ pre-built connectors, security & data governance options and a Stream Designer tool to build pipelines quicker than ever before.
With these laborious management tasks taken care of, and additional functionality tools provided, this opens up admins to focus on what really matters, whether that be investigating real-time data trends, or securing the network.
Kafka is Available Everywhere with Confluent
The final ace up Confluent’s sleeve (for this article anyway) is that it exists everywhere your applications and data reside, whether that be on-premise or in the cloud. It’s a crucial facet of any data streaming solution that it spans all environments, particularly in today’s climate.
Adopting Confluent means your Kafka data streams can be included in fully managed cloud services on all leading public cloud platforms, or it can be hosted on self-managed software for projects taking place on-premise more locally. Cluster Linking for the Confluent platform also enables you to directly connect Kafka clusters and mirror topics from one cluster to another, making hybrid-cloud deployments more straightforward to build.
Overall, with Confluent and Kafka, the reality is if you’re using one without the other, it’s like only getting the chassis and engine without the rest of the car. It works but it will be a lot of effort to get it going. With both together, however, you can be up and streaming your data efficiently and effectively in barely anytime at all.
More Resources like this one:
Confluent Explained in 60 Seconds
— Leverage Apache Kafka® to Process Real-Time Data
for Real-Time Decision Making Datasheet
