To achieve better scalability and competitiveness, businesses are converting their analytical applications into data stream formats. This reinvention is proposed by Apache Kafka, which is a widely adopted open-source streaming platform providing real-time data stream injection and processing to let users scale their data production and applications as needed. Here, the data stream may include application log files, purchase data, activities, social networking information, financial trading data, and more. While migrating open-source Apache Kafka clusters to AWS, you may face some challenges, such as a lack of agility in deploying clusters, configuration inconveniences while making Apache Kafka proactive, and other operational challenges. Above all, while operating an automated Apache Kafka platform, you may need to spend your most time on the following processes:

1. Managing capacity according to the variations in demands

2. Deploying, configuring, and substituting servers on failure

3. Configuring software upgrades and patch & remediation management

4. Architecting Apache Kafka platform to make it highly available and secure

Monitoring and securing infrastructure

Amazon Managed Streaming platform for Apache Kafka, known as Amazon MSK, helps a lot to solve this issue. It simplifies your efforts involved in building and running applications on the Apache Kafka environment even if you don’t have any expertise in working with Apache Kafka infrastructure. In short, you can say that Amazon MSK enables users to reduce their enterprise IT infrastructure management tasks and concentrate more on building mission-critical applications.

Why Should You Migrate to Amazon MSK?

As we said earlier, Amazon MSK eases up your efforts for building and running applications to process the streaming data or data streams. It also boosts your organizational productivity and availability by proactively managing infrastructure monitoring and alerting processes. Establishing a connection with data sources and driving meaningful data in real-time becomes more important to add value when it is required to shift monitoring metrics for better outcomes. The emergence of the digital transformation played a leading role in enabling organizations like yours to work with on-demand and highly available infrastructure. However, this new advancement has brought some new challenges and difficulties in the form of infrastructural operations. In this case, Amazon MSK comes up as an essential helping factor by providing real-time infrastructural statistics and making it work faster with more comprehensive decisions.

What Strategy Should You Choose to Get a Smooth Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK Migration?

Amazon MSK is the best alternative implementation option to Apache Kafka, especially in the long-term approach. It enables you to achieve enhanced scalability and flexibility along with better cluster resource utilization. It then lets you realize the importance and need for cost optimization. As Amazon MSK is a type of managed service, it eradicates the additional enterprise IT infrastructural management-related requirement. In the following, we have mentioned a few considerations, which you should follow during the Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK migration process:

1. Migrating distant Kafka topics individually and validating them after each migration

2. Accounting cluster sizing activity before migrating data to Amazon MSK

3. Ensuring cluster sizing guidelines

4. Designing clusters by making them highly available

5. Starting precise monitoring process for all migrating brokers and topics

6. Ensuring to write Update Logs into the AWS CloudWatch and S3 buckets for the data validation process during the beginning phases of the migration process

As Amazon MSK doesn’t have any specific code change requirement, you can continue running Apache Kafka APIs in it efficiently.

Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK Migration Best Practices:

1. Ensure the size of the Kafka clusters

2. Ensure complete dedication while planning the number of partitions per topic

3. Configure CloudWatch alarms while utilizing disks

4. In the requirements of upscaling, ensure to make clusters available to distribute resources for new rollouts.

5. Eliminate unnecessary or ideal Kafka topics to secure more storage space from exhaustion

6. Configure the necessary time duration of the retention period

7. Encrypt the data in transit for better security

8. Enable cluster auto-scaling policies to trigger automatic expansion when the workload starts to increase

What Are the Benefits of Shifting Apache Kafka to Amazon MSK?

1. Completely managed workloads and streamings

2. Automatic cluster provision and management

3. Provisioning of clusters’ availability in just a few clicks

4. High security of clusters with all-time encryption availability

5. Making directing resources more proactive to work dedicatedly on development, which in turn results in effort reduction

6. Open-source features and abilities

7. Data replication to multiple Availability Zones (AZs)

Wrapping Up:

Shifting your organizational Apache Kafka on Amazon MSK will not just improve or modernize your infrastructural efficiency but also will provide real-time analytics and actionable insights reflecting better decision-making abilities. The soon you move to Amazon MSK, the better advantages you can reap on an early basis and gain your respected market position. Contact us today to get your own customized Amazon MSK migration plan to boost your market competitiveness and other AWS application and cloud deployment solutions.