Commit logs have been around for some time now, and they have shown their ability to process large clusters of data concurrently. Apache Kafka has taken this capability and evolved simple commit log technology into a highly scalable data streaming platform. A modern web application often needs to be capable of receiving data from multiple interfaces and segregating that data into concurrent clusters across multiple endpoints, for which Kafka is perfect.
Since web applications can be developed in a browser, it is beneficial for developers who want to implement Kafka, to utilize a development environment that has support for the platform built in. One such platform is amplication.com. Building bug-resistant code should be at the top of any developer’s priority list, and using professional tools goes a long way to ensuring this.
What is Kafka
The short answer is that Kafka is a data streaming platform that has the capability of sending multiple data requests and events across multiple servers at scale.
These events can be any type of process or request that originates from one system or application into another, basically, an action that triggers a response. Based on the conceptual idea behind a distributed commit log. Kafka is essentially a distributed data storage platform built for real-time input and processing of streamed data.
Advantages of Using Kafka
Apart from being able to sequentially process large volumes of continuous data from disparate data origins, Kafka can relay data equally as fast which gives rise to the following advantages.
Kafka is Highly Scalable
Apache Kafka easily distributes data load across a collection of endpoints by partitioning a message into many individual sections, which enables developers to scale production clusters up or down to meet their needs.
Increased Data Throughput
Kafka can distribute data to endpoints at low latency. The net effect of this is that data transmission and throughput are very fast, improving the overall performance of the web application.
High Fault Tolerance
Kafka is highly fault-tolerant. This is achieved by two main characteristics of Kafka. Distributing data loads into concurrent streams protects the servers from failure. It also provides a level of replication within data clusters since messages are stored on a disk.
Drawbacks of Using Kafka
While Kafka has many benefits related to speed, cost, and fault tolerance it is not distributed with a full suite of monitoring tools natively. This might create skepticism among new as external monitoring tools are often necessary. This concern is valid though, since Kafka, at times, in scenarios where the number of queues is increased in a cluster, behaves unpredictably.
The Kafka broker delivers messages to the user by utilizing system calls. In the case where the message needs to be changed, for whatever reason, a decline in the overall performance of Kafka is experienced.
Kafka does not have support for wildcard topic selection and can only be utilized by processing identical topic names. And finally, Kafka’s performance and throughput are affected negatively by altering the level of compression used during the flow of data.
Kafka Security Best Practices
Even though cyber security is such a high-priority pillar of any web application, some specialists and development teams habitually deploy technologies without considering the risk they might be introducing. Implementors of Kafka must configure the platform with cyber security in mind.
All incoming traffic needs to be authenticated. It is often an easy fix to simply disable this requirement to allow Kafka to function as soon as possible. Developers should realize that Kafka will form part of the organization’s attack surface once implemented and should be dealt with as such.
Encryption of all clusters will serve to preserve the integrity of the aforementioned. The importance of data integrity should overshadow the reduction of performance.
And finally, Kafka has the ability, with a native plugin, to facilitate access control lists. These lists will filter out services and users who should not have access to specific end nodes.
In Conclusion
Apache Kafka is a trusted platform utilized by many industry leaders due to its cutting-edge handling of concurrent connections and accurate data handling capabilities. Spending time to configure the platform correctly can greatly improve the performance and security of your web application.