Amazon MSK Reviews

We chose MSK over Kinesis Data because it was mainly cost driven based on volumes. So the amount of workflow that flows through MSK compared to Kinesis, the Kafka clusters were much cheaper. Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow. But it will be cost-effective to connect to the support for a smaller workload.

There's a bit of operational overhead, but it's not a transmission. It's something you can live with because the setting out of the Kafka cluster is less managed compared to Kinesis. Once it's set up, everything goes smoothly without going through that operational overhead again. So maybe that could be some disadvantage, but it's not a transmission related to what you're getting from Kafka. Operational overhead for setting up the Kafka cluster compared to the Kinesis data stream is easier. For Kinesis, you have to do a few clicks and your data stream is ready if I need to do some config to set up the transfer.

The solution does not auto-scale.

The pricing can be improved.

I have been using the solution for two-three months. We always use the latest version because there's no specific version requirement. So we always default to the latest if there's no specific version.

It has been a stable solution for the time we have been using it. But it is a new solution, so cannot be commented on stability.

The solution is scalable even though it does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster. Compared to Kinesis, where auto-scale is based on the load. I rate it six out of ten.

I will say it's good based on the support plan you have. But, it's good so far we don't have any issues with the support so far. I rate it ten out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward, as I've worked with Kafka before. I am familiar with how to set up the cluster on the initial setup. It was simple for me, I did work with Kafka, but we set it up on-prem. So setting up the MSK was familiar to me. It was something that I'd done a few times before. 

The deployment was quick because it had three nodes, so it wasn't a massive cluster. So it took less than ten minutes. Only one engineer is required for the installation. 

The project is still new. I wonder if maintenance is needed because the MSK is already provisioned. Also, we are busy looking at something else now. So once the whole thing is integrated, we will know which maintenance is required.

The pricing depends on your use case. If you have a small use case, it will be expensive. But if you have a bigger load, it's reasonable because when you compare it to Kinesis data streams on the same workload it's managed, you don't have to keep nodes up to seven. But if you have a bigger workload on the other end, you can use all those compute and CPU resources to their fullest on MSK. The pricing could be made cheaper.

MSK has a monthly licensing cost of fifty dollars.

My advice would be to compare it with other details, too, like Data streaming services, and then see which is cheaper than the other based on the use case. Because if you need to pass maybe a hundred messages through a day, then Kinesis would be much cheaper than setting up a Kafka cluster. And the other thing is with the Kafka cluster; you need a minimum of three nodes for higher availability. So having to set up a cluster for just a hundred messages daily. That's overkill. And, it becomes expensive in that sense.

I rate it eight out of ten.

Behind the scenes, we use Kafka. We tried using MSK to collect old data surrounding inventory from e-commerce websites, for example.

MSK should be easier to integrate with other solutions. It should be more flexible, integration-wise.

MSK has a private network that's an out-of-the-box feature. For our case, we needed something public. We can't handle private-only. So, in order to make the data public, we had to do some extra work. It became too risky for us. That's the main reason we stopped using it.

I didn't use Amazon MSK very long; I was just running some evaluations on it. 

I haven't used this solution enough to know if there are any bugs present.

It's quite scalable. I didn't notice any scalability concerns while I was evaluating it. As it's cluster-based, I didn't see any limitations, scalability-wise. I think it's pretty easy to scale out.

I haven't used technical support directly related to this solution; however, I have contacted Amazon support for other solutions. Most of the time, they're helpful, but sometimes they're not. When I started using AWS roughly nine years ago, the support was very good. Recently, it seems as though the support is less knowledgeable. 

I don't think it's too complicated. It's pretty straightforward.

If you're interested in using this solution, be sure to do some POC before integrating it. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

Kafka is open-source software. In order for you to leverage it behind the scenes, you have to use ZooKeeper, which is essentially a type of server — you have to integrate with it. If you don't use MSK, then you'll have to do this manually, by yourself. MSK has already launched ZooKeeper and the cluster. This is included as an out-of-the-box feature, which is very convenient. 

We are only using Amazon MSK for basic use cases.

The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration.

Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence.

I have been using Amazon MSK for one month.

Amazon MSK is stable.

The scalability of Amazon MSK is good.

We have four or five users using the solution in my organization. We plan to increase the usage of the solution in the future.

The initial setup of Amazon MSK is straightforward.

The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence.

I rate the price of Amazon MSK a four out of five.

My advice to others is this solution is straightforward and the integration is flawless.

I rate Amazon MSK a seven out of ten.

We are currently running tests and experimenting with other solutions.

The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available.

I have used this solution for one month. 

It offers good stability. 

It is a scalable solution. 

We were already users of AWS, so trying Amazon MSK was a logical choice for us.

The initial setup is fairly complex. If you are new to it, it demands certain knowledge and technical fluency. 

It is important to understand completely the technology stack for the solution to be utilized properly, but there is a lack of information availability. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.