Apache Kafka Reviews

One of our clients needed to take events out of SAP to stream them through Apache Kafka while applying data enrichment before reaching the consumers.

The solution can handle more speed and has horizontal scalability for both messaging, but more specifically stream processing and data enrichment. By using this solution it can reduce the number of components required in the tech stack. For example, we were taking data events out of SAP and sending them to consumers without having to go through multiple processors that were outside of the KAFKA space. Additionally, we are using Kafka from GoldenGate to propagate database updates in real-time.

The most valuable features are the stream API, consumer groups, and the way that the scaling takes place. 

I would like to see real-time event-based consumption of messages rather than the traditional way through a loop. The traditional messaging system works by listing and looping with a small wait to check to see what the messages are. A push system is where you have something that is ready to receive a message and when the message comes in and hits the partition, it goes straight to the consumer versus the consumer having to pull. I believe this consumer approach is something they are working on and may come in an upcoming release. However, that is message consumption versus message listening.

Confluent created the KSQL language, but they gave it to the open-source community. I would like to see KSQL be able to be used on raw data versus structured and semi-structured data.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

The solution is stable.

I have found the Apache Kafka to be highly scalable

The project we were working on was open-source, we were using Confluent as support and they were great.

Apache Kafka on AWS is a bit complex. There is a third-party company called Confluent and they have the support that makes their installation much easier, especially for the on-premise deployment. You install Apache Kafka alone it can be a little complex compared to other queuing messaging solutions.

The on-premise deployment takes approximately a few days. The cloud or hybrid deployments including all the permissions, typologies, firewalls, and networking configuration can take weeks for all the accessibility issues to be resolved. However, the delay could have been client-related and not necessarily the solution.

We provide the implementation service.

Apache Kafka is free. My clients were using Confluent which provides high-quality support and services, and it was relatively expensive for our client. There was a lot of back and forth on negotiating the price.

Confluent has an offering that has Cloud-Based pricing. There are different packages, prices, and capabilities. The highest level being the most expensive. AWS provides services to their market, for example, to have Kafka running. I do not know what the pricing is and I am fairly confident, Azure and GCP provide similar services.

My advice to others wanting to implement this solution is to start with data streaming projects, not simple messaging projects because while it is very good at general-purpose messaging, it is more suited and geared for when you are using it as a streaming solution.

I rate Apache Kafka an eight out of ten.

We use Apache Kafka for financial purposes. Every time one of our subscribed customers is due for an insurance payment, Apache Kafka sends an automated notification to the customer to let them know that their bill is due.

Resiliency is great and also the fact that it handles different data formats. There is one data format that's universal across multiple application domains — Avro. It's pretty universal compared to JSON, XML, SQI, and other formats.

Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring. Some come with Linux for default monitoring. Monitoring is very important. If something is not working properly, then our subscribers won't receive a notification. You then have to trace it back to Kafka and find the glitch or the messaging sequence that hasn't been racked up correctly.

It should support Avro — which handles different data formats — as a default data format. It would be much more flexible if it did.

I have been using Apache Kafka for three years.

It seems to be quite stable.

Apache Kafka is Scalable. You can actually launch a server node or a broker. Three nodes and Zookeeper (the Kafka server management system) is optimal. If one of them goes down you can automatically launch another one. You can go three servers or brokers back — there's a repetition on each Kafka broker.

Apache Kafka is open-source. They don't offer technical support.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Apache Kafka a rating of eight.

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 use an open-source version of this solution, and we have two deployments of it. One is on-prem, and the other is in the cloud. We use the on-prem version to aggregate our logs. We use the cloud version to manage queues for financial services. 

It just works and it's super fast. We were struggling with a Rabbit MQ cluster, so the Apache cluster is way easier.

I would like them to reduce the learning curve around the creation of brokers and topics. They also need to improve on the concept of the partitions. 

As for features, RabbitMQ has an instant response feature where you can send a queue and get an instant response, but Kafka only has one way to send queues. If that's something they could improve on, it would be great.

This is my second year working with this solution. 

I think it's very stable. I would rate the stability as a four or five out of five. 

The solution is very scalable. We started with a cluster of three and then scaled it to seven. I would give the solution a five out of five for scalability. Currently, we have 20+ employees on the technical team that are using the solution. 

We provide outsource services for other institutions. There is a whole set queue management form, and we have about five institutions, with three technical teams that use the same cluster.

There was a little learning curve, but we managed it. I think it took us around six weeks to complete the deployment. 

We have a team of three people who handled the deployment in-house. They also handle the maintenance for the solution. 

We do not use customer support, but there is a lot of documentation available.

I would definitely recommend this solution to other people. I would rate it as an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case for this solution is streaming.

We have been using this solution for four years.

The solution is stable. However, it's not possible to substitute IBM MQ with Apache Kafka because the JMS part is not very stable. It is inadequate and doesn't have the support of the MQI interface of IBM MQ.

The solution is scalable. Deployment is speedy, but we don't have many installations. We have over a thousand users using this solution and will most likely increase the number of users because we have tested 100,000 messages per second. The solution is impressive.

We previously used Mosquitto and Rabbit solutions, but we currently use Apache Kafka.

We are licensed annually for this solution.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten for streaming. I recommend it to other people. The solution is good, but its performance can be improved.

We use Apache Kafka for our messaging. 

We publish a message and ask the subscriber to listen to it. We use it to save events generated by integration with external systems. There are external events, that are first published to our Kafka queue, and then to a topic, and then we save it to our own data storage system.

I believe that the speed, and especially the performance, are very good features.

Also included is a cluster with built-in failover. 

It is the performance that is really meaningful.

In terms of features, we are satisfied. I don't require any additional features. I don't believe we require any additional features at this time.

More Windows support, I believe, is one area where it can improve. We need to wrap it as a service, but there isn't one built into Windows. So that's something they could improve.

I believe Windows Server is primarily aimed at the Windows shop or those who use Windows.

I don't recall the specific version that we are using, it may be Kafka 2.11, but it is not the latest one.

It's stable. However, the Windows Service is not very stable because it is a wrapper.

We are a small team with a few people.

We might increase our usage in the future.

We don't get in touch with technical support. We rely on open-source software. We haven't used the help of technical support. We did not seek assistance. As a result, I have no opinion on the subject.

This is the first product we have used. We didn't have anything prior to that.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's easy to set up.

It took a few days to get it up and running.

We only need one or two engineers to keep this solution running. We basically let it run and monitor what's going on. We usually don't touch it unless something goes wrong.

We deployed it ourselves.

It's free. We use the free version.

VMware RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ are products that are not being used by us. I wanted to look into it. But we use different things.

We compared our findings to those of other researchers. We are primarily concerned with performance. Kafka is unquestionably the performance leader.

I would recommend trying this solution, but you should probably run it on Linux.

I like this product, I would rate Apache Kafka a nine out of ten.

We deployed this solution in a project for one of our customers to synchronize the different applications; to transport information from one application to another. I'm a program manager and we are customers of Apache.

This solution is robust and delivers messages quickly. It's a simple but good product.

The management tool could be improved.

I've been using this solution for the past few months. 

In this project, we used Kafka to synchronize 28 nodes spread out nationally and it seems scalable. We plan to consolidate the 28 nodes for national integration of nodes and schemas.

We didn't need to contact technical support. We just allotted the software, installed it and started working with it. We carried out a lot of testing pre-development. Development was done with a company that previously used Kafka so we were able to exchange technical information. 

We previously used ActiveMQ for another project.

The initial setup was a little complex. We carried out the development ourselves. 

Our clients purchased the license and they think it's an affordable solution. 

I recommend this solution, we're probably going to use it again in another project.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We are in the early stages of testing this solution in our lab as a demo. It is in development and we are not in production at this point.

We are using this solution to relay events when they happen to multiple receivers at once to allow better functionality.

Apache Kafka has helped our client's online restaurant company by allowing them to take any orders and send the notifications with some other details, such as logic commands, to the different microservices.

The valuable features are the group community and support.

The solution can improve by having automation for developers. We have done many manual calculations and it has been difficult but if it was automated it would be much better.

I have been using this solution for approximately three months.

The solution's scalability is important for our ability to have more throughput from multiple receivers. If we need more throughput it can deliver.

We did use other solutions previously but this solution makes things a lot easier.

The installation is fairly easy. Additionally, there is a cloud-based version available if a use case requires it.

We did the implementation ourselves.

The solution is free, it is open-source.

There is a lot of configuration involved in this solution. We have found many configurations that have helped us but it would be beneficial if there was automation. 

I rate Apache Kafka a five out of ten.