Streaming with Apache Kafka FAQ

General questions

What is Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform capable of handling high-throughput, low-latency data streams. It is widely used for building real-time data pipelines and streaming applications.

What is streaming data?

Streaming data refers to data that is continuously generated by various sources such as log files, social media activity, sensors, or transactional databases. This data is processed in real time or near real time to enable timely insights and actions.

How can I migrate my existing Kafka workloads to the managed service?

Migrating to our managed Kafka service is straightforward. We provide detailed migration guides and tools to help you transfer your existing Kafka clusters and configurations with minimal downtime.

How can I join the Limited Availability program?

Talk to one of our experts. Get in touch.

Functionality

What are Apache Kafka’s primary capabilities?

Apache Kafka excels in large-scale real-time data streaming, offering capabilities such as high throughput, low latency, fault tolerance, and scalability. It supports event streaming, data integration, and real-time analytics.

What versions of Apache Kafka are supported?

Our managed Kafka service supports the latest stable release of Apache Kafka 3.7, 3.6, and 3.5, as well as several previous versions. You can find the full list of supported versions in our documentation.

What are the key features of the managed Kafka service?

Our managed Kafka service offers high throughput, low latency, easy scaling, and built-in monitoring and alerting. It also includes features such as seamless upgrades, security enhancements, and 24/7 support.

What are the most common use cases for Apache Kafka?

Typical use cases for Kafka include processing and analyzing streaming data in real time, such as monitoring financial transactions for fraud detection or collecting and analyzing log data from various sources for immediate insights.

Security and high availability

What security measures are in place for the managed Kafka service?

Security is a top priority. Our managed Kafka service includes encryption at rest and in transit, fine-grained access control through Kafka ACL or SASL/SCRAM or mTLS-based authentication mechanisms, and integration with existing security protocols and tools. We also perform regular security audits and updates.

Is the managed Kafka service HA?

Multibroker architecture delivers 99.9% availability. The service self-heals by replacing failed brokers automatically, ensuring maximum availability.

Pricing and billing

How does the pricing model work for the managed Kafka service?

OCI Streaming with Kafka pricing is based on the underlying infrastructure cost using OCI, plus a simple, unique fee SKU based on compute usage.