Chapter 1. Key features
AMQ Streams simplifies the process of running Apache Kafka in an OpenShift cluster.
This guide is intended as a starting point for building an understanding of AMQ Streams. The guide introduces some of the key concepts behind Kafka, which is central to AMQ Streams, explaining briefly the purpose of Kafka components. Configuration points are outlined, including options to secure and monitor Kafka. A AMQ Streams distribution provides the files to deploy and manage a Kafka cluster, as well as example files for configuration and monitoring of your deployment.
A typical Kafka deployment is described, as well as the tools used to deploy and manage Kafka.
1.1. Kafka capabilities
The underlying data stream-processing capabilities and component architecture of Kafka can deliver:
- Microservices and other applications to share data with extremely high throughput and low latency
- Message ordering guarantees
- Message rewind/replay from data storage to reconstruct an application state
- Message compaction to remove old records when using a key-value log
- Horizontal scalability in a cluster configuration
- Replication of data to control fault tolerance
- Retention of high volumes of data for immediate access
1.2. Kafka use cases
Kafka’s capabilities make it suitable for:
- Event-driven architectures
- Event sourcing to capture changes to the state of an application as a log of events
- Message brokering
- Website activity tracking
- Operational monitoring through metrics
- Log collection and aggregation
- Commit logs for distributed systems
- Stream processing so that applications can respond to data in real time
1.3. How AMQ Streams supports Kafka
AMQ Streams provides container images and Operators for running Kafka on OpenShift. AMQ Streams Operators are fundamental to the running of AMQ Streams. The Operators provided with AMQ Streams are purpose-built with specialist operational knowledge to effectively manage Kafka.
Operators simplify the process of:
- Deploying and running Kafka clusters
- Deploying and running Kafka components
- Configuring access to Kafka
- Securing access to Kafka
- Upgrading Kafka
- Managing brokers
- Creating and managing topics
- Creating and managing users
