Apache Kafka Reviews

We use the product for high-scale distributed messaging. The processing capability of the product is enormous. Being a distributed platform, multiple consumers can sync with it and fetch messages.

Another great feature is the consumer offset log which tells you where the consumer left and where he needs to start again. Consumers aren’t required to code and put extra effort to maintain the offset.

We were using another commercial messaging engine, which was not scalable unless you paid more. Each hub that we provisioned was expensive. This solution is open source, which is much easier to use and doesn’t cost us anything.

This product guarantees at-least-once delivery. We have asked JIRA to provide features such as at-most-once delivery to remove duplicate message consumption.

We haven’t faced any issues so far. Some of the clusters churn millions of records per seconds with ease.

We have clustered environments and we haven’t seen any scalability issues. We can provision a new node in as little as 45 minutes.

It is open source, so support is in our own hands. The only option is to make a new feature request through JIRA. When multiple people in the community make a request for similar feature, it gets priority.

We switched from a previous solution mainly to reduce costs and to have a more scalable solution.

The initial setup was a bit complex in terms of how to manage it across data centers. But once it was setup, we never faced issues.

We evaluated multiple options, such as ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. We leaned towards this solution.

I would advise others to start with non-SSL implementations and try to do PoCs. Afterwards, they should move towards more secure features.

We use Apache Kafka primarily to queue the transactions or total the transactions.

Apache Kafka has helped our organization handle larger volumes without affecting the infrastructure load.

All the features of Apache Kafka are valuable, I cannot single out one feature.

Prioritization of messages in Apache Kafka could improve.

I have been using Apache Kafka for approximately six years.

The stability of Apache Kafka is very good.

Apache Kafka is the most scalable solution in the market.

I have not used the support from Apache Kafka.

Apache Kafka is straightforward to implement.

We did the implementation of Apache Kafka in-house.

I did not evaluate other solutions.

I rate Apache Kafka a nine out of ten.

Our company provides services and we use Apache Kafka as part of the solution that we provide to clients.

One of the use cases is to collect all of the data from multiple endpoints and provide it to the users. Our application integrates with Kafka as a consumer using the API, and then sends information to the users who connect. 

The most valuable feature is that it can handle high volume.

Apache Kafa is open-source and some of our clients are interested in becoming more involved in that.

Kafka does not provide control over the message queue, so we do not know whether we are experiencing lost or duplicate messages. Better control over the message queue would be an improvement. Solutions such as ActiveMQ do afford better control. Because of this, there is sometimes a gap in the results where we have either lost messages, or there are duplicates.

We have had problems when there was an imbalance because all of the messages were being sent back.

I'm a beginner with Apache Kafka.

I cannot judge stability without having better control over the message queue, although I feel that it is not 100% stable. 

We have not been in contact with technical support. For our first implementation with it, Kafka was already set up and running. When we did our PoC, I was not part of the team who was facing issues and it was they who were in contact with support.

I also have experience with IBM MQ.

We had problems when we were setting up Kafka ourselves to conduct our PoC internally. Kafka would not start and it was related to parameters or property settings in Java. We were able to work around it, but we had problems like adding certificates.

In one case, we were using Kafka after it had already been set up, externally. It worked fine and we just had to configure some of the connectors that we wanted to try out.

Apache Kafka is open-source and can be used free of charge.

In this type of solution, you need to be able to accept a high volume of messages, but not lose any, and not have any duplicates. Because we are unable to control the queue in Kafka, I cannot say that this works 100%.

The suitability of this solution depends on the use cases. There are two or three things that we are worried about, and we will be very careful in choosing solutions. In cases where the messages are well organized, or there is no worry that there will be duplicate or dropped messages, then I recommend using Kafka. Also, I recommend this solution for those looking to get involved with open-source applications.

Other than the problems with having no control over the queue, Apache Kafka is wonderful.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have a camera monitoring security system, in which we post messages onto the queue, which involves various steps in processing the message, like checking for the number of clients, running it against the police data, etc. So Apache Kafka is a security application with many types of consumers. We set up a workflow system with different sites, which works well.

As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable. The support team sends available information regarding the library and how to use the plugins. The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems. We have other alternatives, but this is the one that seems to be the most popular database support.

The solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release.

I have been using it for three years.

It is a stable solution. We never faced any issues. I rate it a ten out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. We set up a category with different consumers balancing things, which works as I thought.

I did not contact the technical support as it was not required.

We used Linksys for visualization along with Confluence, but there needed to be more value. For us, Apache Kafka is the best solution based on the support and third-party systems as it builds our subsystems around because we have a lot of development teams.

The initial setup was straightforward because I've got a lot of experience in this field. But even for a junior person, it would be fine. There are so many resources, and it's very well documented as they are a premium service provider. So it makes the setup just easier.

The deployment takes a few days.

We set up a free cluster for this service because we use a lot of data. We use ZooKeeper to secure different products for instruction with the cluster. But, it was easy as it is a popular product, and much information is available. It can download data, like fifty gigs per day. We can effectively handle it all as well. I never developed any issues.

It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us.

Apache Kafka is an out-of-the-box, reliable solution. For people in the fiber business, we need a reliable solution, and this solution is hundred percent reliable. If it is set up correctly, it hardly has any issues due to the more extensive user base; even if there are issues, it is sorted by the community. I rate it nine out of ten.

The primary use case of the solution is for asset communication through our microservices.

The solution has allowed us to take the use cases provided by another communication tool and resolve those issues.

The most valuable feature is how persistent it is. For example, we are able to reprocess messages when we need to, we're able to recover methods to consume them.

The solution can be improved by reducing the cost to run it on the premises.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The stability of the solution is good.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The implementation was through a vendor.

I have seen a return on investment with this solution.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have 80 people using the solution and five people are required to maintain it.

I suggest using cloud services because the solution is expensive if you are using it on-premises.

We are building solutions on Apache Kafka for four customers. The customers we have are in various sectors, such as healthcare and architecture.

Apache Kafka has good integration capabilities and has plenty of adapters in its ecosystem if you want to build something. There are adapters for many platforms, such as Java, Azure, and Microsoft's ecosystem. Other solutions, such as Pulsar have fewer adapters available.

I have been using Apache Kafka for three years.

Apache Kafka is stable.

I would recommend Apache Kafka for any enterprise.

The amount of people using the solution depends on the application. However, the starting point is from 6,000 to 7,000 concurrent users.

There is not any support, Apache Kafka is open-source.

We have been experimenting with other solutions such as VMware RabbitMQ and Pulsar.

We are going to replace the Apache Kafka solution using Pulsar.

Pulsar gives more scalability to an even grouping, but Apache Kafka is used more if you want to send something in a time series-based. If this does not matter to you then Pulsar could be more customizable. Apache Kafka is nothing but a streaming system with local storage. Apache Kafka fits into many use cases, it's very direct, but if you want more specific use cases and you use Apache Kafka, Pulsar could be considered.

Apache Kafka was simple to install. If you have a complicated clustered production, it takes time. However, for the development, it doesn't take more than one or two hours.

We have approximately two to four technical managers that are deploying and supporting Apache Kafka. A technical manager is necessary.

Apache Kafka is an open-sourced solution. There are fees if you want the support, and I would recommend it for enterprises. There are annual subscriptions available.

Apache Kafka is one of the best open-source solutions that are available today.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Apache Kafka an eight out of ten.

We have got this product, which is meant for integration. So our use cases are essentially integrating with other systems, using any messaging stack. We use these products in Dev and QA and we have connectors for various different messaging applications. Apache Kafka just happens to be one of the messaging applications that we connect with. We also have our own messaging, it's called Enterprise Messaging Server and Rendezvous, we connect to those also. Our product is essentially used for integration. So we connect to almost all messaging applications.

The most valuable feature is the speed at which the solution can be deployed.

The solution can improve its cloud support.

I have been using the solution in Dev and QA for a few years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

Since we are supporting various different messaging applications, we tend to use and support all the messaging applications that are popular. Like SQS, Google pops up, Active MQ, Rapid MQ, MQTT, and IBM MQ.

The open-source version is relatively straightforward to set up and only takes a few minutes.

We typically implement the solution in-house.

The solution is open source.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

We test all the supported versions of the solution based on our customers' use.

We support our integration product. So we need to do dev and QA with Apache Kafka or any other messaging applications. But we do not provide support. The solution can be supported by someone else.

We don't need to have any specific staff for deployment. All the developers in QA can install and configure the solution. We don't have a separate person for maintenance.

Our team and our product dev and QAs all use the solution.

I think Apache Kafka is a good solution and I recommend it to others.

It's a combination of an on-premise and cloud deployment. We use AWS, and we have our offshore deployment that's on-premise for OpenShift, Red Hat, and Kafka. Red Hat provides managed services and everything. We use Kafka and a specific deployment where we deploy on our basic VMs and consume Kafka as well.

We publish or stream all our business events as well as some of the technical events. You stream it out to Kafka, and multiple consumers develop a different set of solutions. It could be reporting, analytics, or even some data persistence. Later, we used it to build a data lake solution. They all would be consuming the data or events we are streaming into Kafka.

With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions.

We are still on the production aspect, with our service provider or hyper-scalers providing the solutions. I would like to see some improvement on the HA and DR solutions, where everything is happening in real-time. 

Kafka's interface could also use some work. Some of our products are in C, and we don't have any libraries to use with C. From an interface perspective, we had a library from the readies. And we are streaming some of the products we built to readies. That is one of the requirements. It would be good to have those libraries available in a future release for our C++ clients or public libraries, so we can include them in our product and build on that.

We've been using Apache Kafka for the past two to three years.

Kafka is stable. It's a great product. 

We did some benchmarking, but we are still looking further to scale up some of the benchmarking and performances. So far, it meets all our business requirements. We are just developers, so everything goes to the clients, who will deploy it at their scale and use it for their end customers. So were are looking at it from a developer's perspective. Those who are developing the products are working on this.

We haven't really contacted technical support, but some of our clients have subscribed to support from the vendors. We generally look for open-source solutions. From there, we try to figure out if there are any issues. There's a good online community where you can ask questions.

We were able to deploy and use it with no problems for our use case. We didn't find it so complex. We work with so many applications, databases, Postgres, and so many other things, so we could manage it easily. We deployed Kafka in a few hours. We have an infrastructure team and DevOps. Those teams are pretty capable, and they've completely automated the whole deployment. It always takes time the first time you upgrade any application, not just Kafka. We might discover some issues, such as configuration, parameters, compatibility, etc. Once that becomes standard, it is stable, and then they only need to replicate it to the different environments or different developers groups. We have a sophisticated process.

I rate Apache Kafka eight out of 10. There are so many products on the market, so my advice is to consider if Kafka suits your business requirements first. If it's suitable, the next step is to check whether all the technical requirements are met. If everything checks out, I would say that Kafka is a relatively stable, sound, and scalable product, so they can try it out.