Apache Airflow Reviews

The primary use case for this solution is to automate ETL process for datawarehouse.

The most valuable feature is the UI, for automation.One can monitor all ETL processes in single screen. Complex workflows are shown as DAGs SVG images.

This is a simple tool to automate using Python.

There are some drawbacks to this solution. The code does not cover all tasks in the data warehouse automation process.  Currently , in production, we have a large installation with a complex workflow that includes hundreds of tasks. Most of them are dispatched by existing engine, but not all.
For example, sometimes we need to create cycles in our workflow but we are not able to, because Airflow supports only Direct Acyclic Graphs ( DAGs )

We need to develop our workflow description and notations because out of the box, Apache Airflow does not provide some features that are needed. It is our understanding that it is limited by design.

We will wait for the latest 2.0 version, as it is awaited to be much more mature than the 1.8-1.10 version. We believe that it will be better.

There should be some improvement made to the Doc Management features from within the UI. They should think about Outlook integration, which should be out of the box, and the object model should be expanded to support cyclic graphs inside the workflow.

We have been using this solution for eighteen months.

This solution is not very stable. There are a number of configurations issues.

This solution is scalable. We use this solution in a single node, but it is possible to have a  cluster of workers.

It can be used for one or two thousand related tasks and should be done in a cluster configuration. 

We don't use a cluster, rather we only use single nodes. It is sufficient for our tasks. Tasks are long and the parallelism is limited by the database engine, and not by the workflow engine. 

We would like to evaluate clusters in the future.

We are using the Cron Task scheduling feature for Apache Airflow. Users can configure the Apache Airflow themselves. There are up to ten users that can configure Apache Airflow.

This is a part of the wage solution, and it is the initial point of the wage slot process. The wage solution has hundreds of users.

We don't use any paid technical support, as it is an open-source solution. We have used Stack Overflow and other open information sources, but we know that some companies provide technical support. 

As we have studied their solutions that are available on the internet, it is my understanding, that, we are on a pretty high level and could provide commercial support ourselves. 

We don't use any support from commercial companies, but some very useful recent solutions we could extract from Apache Airflow GitHub, as an example.  

Previously, we used Control-M for a short period. It was a solution used by our customers, and we needed to understand their difficulties and the results. 

For low to middle scaled tasks, Apache Airflow could be a substitute for Control-M. 

The deployment model we used was through a private cloud. It was a private installation on Google Cloud.

In-house team.

It 's measured jut now. Precise data is awaited in 3..4 months. First conclusion - positive ROI

There are no costs associated with this solution. Apache Airflow is a free solution that can be downloaded and ready for use at any moment.

Our tasks can be automated by simple Jenkins, but our customer wanted to implement it on Apache Airflow. This was a solution used by our customer.

Apache Airflow is mainstream and everyone wants to use it. Google provides Apache Airflow as part of the Cloud services.

My advice would be to use this solution for simple tasks. 

They should have a Python expert for features that are not available out of the box, as it is not enough. 

It could be a good solution for enterprise workflow automation and solutions like Control-M within the next two to three years.

We are happy and satisfied with this solution, but not fully satisfied, as this solution has some positive and negative aspects.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.