[HN Gopher] Kafka without ZooKeeper
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       Kafka without ZooKeeper
        
       Author : toomanybits
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2021-03-30 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.confluent.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.confluent.io)
        
       | CatDogIsGod wrote:
       | Awesome!
        
       | airhead969 wrote:
       | IIRC, ZK would be more modern and cloud-friendly if it could
       | self-assemble with a preshared passphrase alone. It's good
       | technology otherwise, it's just a PITA to deploy, configure, and
       | support.
        
         | cmckn wrote:
         | I really love a lot of the software under the Hadoop umbrella,
         | but so much of it assumes a static deployment on bare metal
         | hosts, it's a struggle to use it in "modern" setups (HBase, for
         | example; I miss my old friend).
        
       | autophagian wrote:
       | One immediate downside to this: it is now likely that fewer and
       | fewer people will be exposed to the absolutely excellent
       | Zookeeper logo.
        
         | colineartheta wrote:
         | My, what big hands you have.
        
         | jaytaylor wrote:
         | See:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_ZooKeeper
         | 
         | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/81/Apache_...
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | Those are some impressively sized hands.
        
             | ignoramous wrote:
             | https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55c36ebce4b0923c12bbb2cd
        
             | koolba wrote:
             | Pretty sure he has gout too.
        
             | temuze wrote:
             | This is the ideal open source logo. You may not like it,
             | but this is what peak performance looks like.
        
         | jakebasile wrote:
         | Every once in a while I learn of something on HN that really
         | changes my life. This is one of those times. Thank you.
        
         | timdorr wrote:
         | Is there some backstory on this? It looks like it's modelled
         | after a real person. Perhaps one of its creators?
        
         | spicybright wrote:
         | I did a google image search and wish I didn't.
        
         | lotyrin wrote:
         | Still better than the sudo logo.
        
           | 0x008 wrote:
           | Wait.. sudo has a logo? Wow, that logo is ... special.
        
       | deveffort wrote:
       | Sweet!! Thank you.
        
       | cmckn wrote:
       | Oh hell yeah! That's great news, tons of work went into this --
       | props to the contributors!
       | 
       | I _will_ take the opportunity to say that Kafka is kind of
       | painful, with or without ZK. Check out NATS! [0]. It doesn 't
       | solve all the same problems, but is so much easier to use (during
       | development especially) and can do a lot of the same things.
       | 
       | [0]: https://docs.nats.io/whats_new_20
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | vorpalhex wrote:
         | NATS isn't actually using a log structure though, it's a
         | streaming message broker with a different set of
         | consistency/delivery promises.
        
           | cmckn wrote:
           | Correct; but I've seen many uses of Kafka that NATS could
           | totally be used for. For example, load balancing across
           | subscribers (use a NATS queue instead of a Kafka consumer
           | group).
           | 
           | NATS doesn't ever store messages persistently; but this might
           | be fine for your application, and then you don't have to
           | worry about setting 5 different config options to make sure
           | Kafka actually frees up disk space like you expect it to ;)
           | 
           | NATS also enables some unique patterns like request/reply via
           | a "reply to" message header.
           | 
           | Anyway, it's been a joy to use!
        
         | simplecto wrote:
         | Using Kafka only for ordered pub-sub is like ordering tap water
         | at French Laundry.
        
           | andyxor wrote:
           | "The" French Laundry
        
         | yes_but_no wrote:
         | I believe NATS Streaming[0] and upcoming Nats Jetstream[1]
         | could be more relevant to those who looking for a Kafka
         | alternative. They offer persistent messages, at-least-once
         | delivery similar to Kafka.
         | 
         | [0] https://docs.nats.io/nats-streaming-concepts/intro [1]
         | https://github.com/nats-io/jetstream
        
         | foobiekr wrote:
         | NATS is not a replacement for any use of kafka that I think is
         | actually a good fit.
        
         | bruth wrote:
         | There was a more recent 2.2 release with durable streams [0].
         | There is also a comparison page including Kafka [1].
         | 
         | [0]: https://docs.nats.io/whats_new_22 [1]:
         | https://docs.nats.io/compare-nats
        
       | haolez wrote:
       | Kafka is a pretty cool technology, but for every project that I
       | work on, it's never used because it feels like it's overkill
       | (costly and operation heavy). Maybe I should start looking for
       | bigger projects :D
        
         | keithnz wrote:
         | yeah, really needs a use case that justifies it, I have a
         | particular IoT backend where I made it pluggable between kafka
         | and rabbitmq, ended up just using rabbitmq as it is simpler to
         | work with / manage, and still not really pushing it in terms of
         | performance with thousands of devices.
        
         | toomanybits wrote:
         | I think that's one of the main points. Now you can run it as a
         | single process more like a traditional broker (although it's
         | obviously still a log).
        
         | cmason wrote:
         | What do you use instead?
        
           | NicoJuicy wrote:
           | Nats
        
             | unixhero wrote:
             | What kind if projects so you work om? I am genuinely
             | curious about use cases. Feel free to obfuscate.
        
         | math wrote:
         | You can tune Kafka down fairly well if you know what you're
         | doing, but it's not optimised for that OOTB. Or just use
         | Confluent Cloud, which is fully managed and scales down as low
         | as you want (costs cents per Gb). Disclosure: work for
         | Confluent.
        
           | unixhero wrote:
           | Thank you for disclosing and not disclaiming.
        
         | dmlittle wrote:
         | Haven't used it personally myself but I've heard it enough to
         | remember it. Redpanda[1] aims to be a Kafka replacement without
         | having to worry about Zookeeper or the JVM
         | 
         | [1] https://vectorized.io/
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | timdorr wrote:
           | https://vectorized.io/redpanda/ is a more useful link, since
           | the main domain appears to have some JS errors right now.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-30 23:00 UTC)